Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men: Searching Through Scotland for a Border Collie

by Donald McCaig

Pastor’s Hill House is a two-story Jacobean stone farmhouse on eighty grassy acres. Stone outbuildings, slate roofs, stone workpens.

  I didn’t see all that when I got out and stretched. The car ticked. Fluids gurgled. Metal shrank and cooled. For the first time I sniffed the spring English countryside. It was a dank, luxuriant smell—attar of roses. Overhead, the chilly stars winked. But these were British stars. Dogs cried out, “INTRUDER, INTRUDER!”

  “Oh hush now, you, Tag, hush.”

  Straightaway Barbara Carpenter led me into her home, through the kitchen, into the siting room, with its table, two plump chairs by the fire, and a couch (which Border Collies had appropriated). Two dogs came over to say hello. The others decided to wait a bit. “I hope you haven’t eaten,” she said, pouring a cup of strong tea. “It’s just stew.” Chunks of beef, carrots, onions, potatoes. What is good over here is good over there. I was back in dog land and, suddenly, sleepily, everything was all right.

  Since the British aristocracy was selected for war skills, and since hunting approximates those skills, and since writers eat by praising the rich (“Old King Olaf is a mighty King, flattens his foes with his pinky ring”), there is a considerable literature on sporting dogs. Border Collies, the dogs of poor, frequently illiterate shepherds, have been rarely sung. Though Samuel Pepys noticed them, it wasn’t until 1829 that anyone (James Hogg in A Shepherd’s Calendar) wrote anything memorable about them. Collections of sheepdog books make a scruffy library: Government pamphlets issued by the Queensland Agricultural Board (Practical Cattle and Sheepdog Training) vie for space with skinny privately printed tracts (Ten Thousand Dogs, The Sheepdog in South Africa) and a few hardcover books from agricultural presses that, on the back flap, offer their backlist books on “stick dressing,” “laying of proper hedgerows,” “building and maintenance of the drystane wall.” Barbara Carpenter has a grand collection. She also has scrapbooks, ISDS (International Sheepdog Society) studbooks, photographs and slides of dog men and great dogs, and jumpy home movies of J. M. Wilson with Ben and Jock Richardson with Sweep.

  She’d say, “I hope all this isn’t boring you.”

  “I’ll have a little more tea if it’s hot.”

  Barbara Carpenter’s a sixtyish, shy, happily obsessed farm woman who was putting together a photo book of all the dogs who’d won the International Sheepdog Trial since 1906. She wrote letters, imploring—begging—descendants to search one more time through granddad’s trunk.

  “Oh, aye, I remember Granddad speaking about a dog—Kep, was it? Sweep?”

  Mrs. Carpenter’s small flock of Welsh mountain sheep was in good bloom except for one young ewe who’d suffered a back injury. Daily, Barbara Carpenter got the ewe onto her feet (physical therapy), and once a week she’d lift her into the station wagon and haul her twenty miles to the chiropractor. She’s got a dozen dogs: trial dogs, retired trial dogs, dogs that never quite made the grade. “Oh I couldn’t sell Lynn. They’d find out what a terrible coward she is and they’d lose their temper, and it’s not her fault” (with a pat). “She can’t help it that she’s afraid.”

  Bob spent all his waking moments pressed to the crack in the sitting room door, hoping for a glimpse of the cats. Donald haunted Chip’s heels, hoping for an excuse for a fight. Chip and Tag and Tash were Barbara’s trial dogs.

  We walked the farm, worked dogs, talked. She talked about Jon, the dog she’d inherited in 1978 when her husband Will died. Jon was a hard sort of dog with a merle face and a black patch over one eye. “Quite raffish, Jon was. He sort of, well, took over when Will died. I don’t know what I would have done without him.” As Will’s funeral party was leaving the graveyard, a dog man slipped up to her elbow and offered to buy Jon, and she thought, “If I was going to sell Jon, I wouldn’t sell him to you.” She’d never had a dog sleep in her bedroom before but, a woman deep in the country, widowed, newly alone. … During the night, if something was wrong—a car parked by the gate, some fox worrying the sheep—Jon’d reach out and touch her cheek with his paw, just a touch.

  Of course she trialed him, or tried to. She laughed, “Sometimes we were together—other times”—(she shook her head). “One trial had a right-hand cross-drive, and John drove them all the way across and then turned and drove them all the way back again, despite my shouts. How I shouted. Oh, Jon had his head down. He heard me all right. ‘Well, Bugger her,’ he said. We were the second to last dog to run, and afterwards the judge came up and asked how I was, and I said I was bloody furious. ‘Well yes,’ the judge said.”

  Most men have only one great dog in a lifetime. After Lyr Evan’s Coon died, Lyr was never any use on the trial field. John Angus McLeod still talks about Ben as if Ben were alive. When Thompson McKnight’s Drift died, Thompson gave up trialing.

  Such bright memories. In May when I asked Jock Richardson about his great dog Wiston Cap, Jock shook his slow head, “I can see him running yet in my mind,” he said, “I just canna explain it.”

  I asked Barbara Carpenter if the Scots had the best dogs. “They’ll tell you so,” she said. “They’re certainly the dearest.”

  I wasn’t the first American to come to Britain to look for a dog. Every year, the National and International Trials have their contingents of Yanks making notes in their programs, dogging the great handlers, chasing rumors of a great dog the length of the island.

  There’ve been good Border Collies in the States since the Civil War. Some came to work the vast ranches British syndicates were building in the American West, with British livestock worked by British dogs. Sometimes Scottish immigrants would bring over a favorite dog to use on their new homesteads. There are reports of Border Collies driving turkeys down the peninsula to San Francisco for the Christmas holidays of 1879, and I’ve photographs of Border Collies in Montana sheep camps in the 1880s. America no long imports Angus or Hereford cattle. We no longer import Cheviot or Suffolk or Dorset sheep. But every year, we cross the ocean for Border Collies.

  The very first people in America who could handle the dogs were Scots like Sam Stoddart, who’d handled them in his native land. American farmers and stockmen had never seen anything like these dogs, and, in fact, would pay money to see them work. Men like Stoddart and, later, Arthur Allen, made the circuit of state fairs, livestock exhibitions, and rodeos (Allen and his dogs were regulars for many years with the Roy Rogers Show). A handful of Americans knew how to train and handle the Border Collie. They were making a living from their knowledge and, with only a few exceptions (Lewis Pence, Pope Robertson), they didn’t share their knowledge.

  And Americans, who train horses as well as anyone, breed sheep, cattle, and hogs among the best in the world, are appallingly ignorant about dogs. Pick up any veterinary supplies catalog, turn to the dog section: Count the shock collars. Shock collars?

  As Americans became increasingly urban, they lost touch with animals familiar to earlier generations, and as two-worker households became the norm, the dog population dwindled. Thanks to televised nature shows many American children know more about whales and Bengal tigers than they know about man’s best friend.

  Suppose you were a stockman who saw Stoddart or Allen with their wonderful dogs and maybe you bought a pup. Sometime after those gents left town, after the pup was half grown, you took the pup out to your sheep and said, “Shep, fetch,” and sure enough, Shep took off like a streak and gathered the sheep but what he did then was run around them in circles, nipping and pulling wool; and Shep, who until that moment had been the smartest, most obedient dog you’d ever seen, wouldn’t listen to a word you said. What would you do then? Many stockmen shot the dog.

  Of a Border Collie litter of six puppies, five will work stock. Of twenty young “started” dogs, perhaps one will be good enough to trial. Of sixty trial dogs, one can win a local trial. A couple of wins will qualify him for the Scottish, English, Welsh, or Irish National Trials, where eight hundred trial winners are winnowed to a team of fifteen dogs per nation. (Ireland has only ten
dogs.) Of the fifty-five dogs that run in the International, only one is the supreme champion. The oldest champion was J. J. McKnight’s Gael, at 10½ years. The youngest was Telfer’s Midge at 13 months.

  There is no way to pick an International winner from a litter of pups. Until the pups see sheep, at six months of age, there’s no way to know which will work at all. Border Collie pups are cheap: 80 to 90 pounds. You can’t buy an International winner. John Templeton’s Roy has earned 10,000 pounds in prize money and stud fees.

  For hill shepherds, whose income runs to 400 pounds a month, starting and training sheep dogs is a grand way to put extra jam on the table. Many sell a dog every year. Others use their dogs until they’re three or four before they replace them with younger ones. They’ll take a new dog to the Hill (with a couple experienced dogs for backup), using the young dog as his skills increase. A trained hill dog will finally be able to gather eight hundred ewes scattered over two or three thousand acres. He will be able to work by himself or to whistled commands at distances of a mile or more. He can run a hundred miles Thursday and get up Friday morning and do it again.

  Since the dogs are trained by real work, training is never a quantity business. Each dog is trained individually, and each takes time and attention.

  The best dogs are scarce and sought after. The trial men want them, and dog dealers want them. Every week, buyers like Peter Hetherington are on the phone. “Have you heard of a strong dog? Two year old? For Texas.”

  Again, I asked Barbara Carpenter: “Are the Scottish dogs really best?”

  Barbara remembered a dog Bob James bought for the trials. One day the dog would work beautifully, but at the next trial he’d sulk and dive in at his sheep and refuse commands. James phoned the dog’s trainer: What was the trouble here?

  Ever afterwards, just before the dog stepped onto the trial course, Bob James brought it a wee tot of whiskey. After the dog lapped it up he ran fine. “Of course,” Barbara Carpenter said slyly, “He was a Scottish dog.”

  Sunday afternoon. After lush Gloucestershire, the Scottish Borders were charmless: cold, barren, hard. Some of the rubble heaps on the sere hills might have been castles at one time, but they were definitely rubble heaps now. A sign outside Moffat boasted that it was the “Best Kept Small Village in Scotland.” The British commonly tour in coaches (buses), and coaches were bumper to bumper around the town square. Holidayers strolled the town inspecting wool shops and gewgaw shops (“See our collection of single malts”), and a tinny loudspeaker squeaked bagpipe tunes of love and death at plump tourists placidly chewing toffees. The sky was overcast, dull. One of Moffat’s hotels is the world’s narrowest, listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. The only statue in the town square is a statue of a sheep. One day, perhaps Moffat will erect one to the tourist, who is much easier to shear.

  Hands in pockets, I moped through the Moffat graveyard. Tall, spikey, red stones; part marker, part lance. A fair number of stones were for Scots who had “died in America.” I knew I should think about this, it disturbed me, but I didn’t know how.

  I telephoned Viv Billingham.

  “Oh yes, Donald. Glad you made it all right. I’m sorry I didn’t answer your letter, but it came late and you’d be here soon anyway. Oh it’s a jumble at Tweed-hope. Builders, you see.”

  I asked if there were any B & Bs nearby, and Viv said she was sorry but the accommodations at Tweed-hope weren’t finished yet and there was nothing in Tweedsmuir; but surely there was something in Moffat.

  “Do come by and see us, Donald,” she added. Uh-huh.

  I was up at dawn and unbolted the narrow wooden doors of the respectable guesthouse and hiked down to the square. No coaches. All the rubbish bins were overflowing, but the garbage men were working at it. The few souls on the streets all seemed to know each other. I killed time. The newsagent opened. I bought a tabloid and read about heartbreak and fury. Drank coffee. Ate a scone. Asked where I could find a laundromat. Someone thought, perhaps, Dunfries. The butcher shop had homemade sausages and thick cut bacon and advertised: “Scottish Beef.” The grocer had few canned or frozen vegetables and only taties and onions fresh.

  Among the tourist brochures at my guesthouse (Scotland’s Whiskey Tour, Guided Hillwalks) was one for the Billinghams’ place: Tweedhope Border Collie and Shepherding Centre. It had a nice photograph of Viv’s Garry and Laddie.

  Outside Moffat, the road steepened as it climbed the side of the Devil’s Beeftub. That’s what they named the vast bowl when Border rustlers used to store stolen cattle there. It would have held several million. The Beeftub was big enough to have fog in the bottom, clouds obscuring the top, and enough blue sky in between for a Sunday picnic.

  Drystane dykes (walls) clambered slopes so steep it would have been tough to stand upright let alone lay an eighty-pound stone in place. What men had done this work?

  On top, the hills blurred under ranks of young spruce, deep and featureless, blackish green. Other hills were furrowed, like a giant child had dragged his fingers down them, and puny trees shivered in those furrows. Road signs noted points of historical interest, at present swallowed by trees.

  The Billinghams’ place is the first human habitation on the downslope, a scattering of stone buildings on both banks of the headwaters of the River Tweed. It has the feel of a roadhouse on a high pass in America’s Rocky Mountains. The Billinghams have a hundred acres along the stream, hemmed in by the road on one side, impenetrable dark woods on the other.

  Vanloads of workmen were hard at it. One crew was gutting the old drover’s inn, a taciturn young man was laying a drystane abutment below Tweedhope’s parking area, the district council had started (but not completed) a coach layby (roadside pulloff).

  The lane was prettily landscaped. The heavy heads of yellow crocuses bent to the chill breeze.

  Geoff Billingham’s a soft spoken, tallish artistic man, distinguished enough for a whiskey ad. The Dewar’s White Label ad showed Geoff with his team of brace bitches at his feet and a young puppy in his arms.

  For the past twenty years, Geoff Billingham has trained more champion Scottish Border Collies than you can shake a crook at. But more than winning, what he really enjoys is teaching a new dog the old tricks.

  Geoff’s pals twigged him about this. Most Scots have never heard of Dewar’s White Label, all of which is exported to the States.

  “Hullo, Donald,” Geoff took my hand. “How was your trip? You’ll be looking for a young bitch, then.”

  Yes, I was. The trip was okay. Looked like they had plenty of work going on. Hi, Viv.

  Geoff smiled ruefully, “Too much if you ask me. Come, I’ll show you.”

  Geoff gestured as we stood on mounds of broken lath and old plaster in the old drover’s inn while sheetrockers’ hammers banged away upstairs. The plumbers would be there next week. Painters were expected any day. They’d finished a great green-and-gold sign with a sheepdog rampant, but the ironmonger in Moffat hadn’t finished the frame to hang it.

  “Geoff,” Viv said, “please go in tomorrow and talk to him. He promised it three weeks ago.”

  Viv Billingham’s a vivid woman. She plucks at your sleeve until you see the world she sees: the brilliant dogs, the brilliant hills, the funny tups (rams), the super lambs.

  And of course, first thing, I had to inspect their dogs: Garry (retired), Laddie (not working on account of bad feet), Cap, Glen and Holly (mainstays), Lucy (retraining), and Stell and Jed and the pups from two litters. I liked Cap. I thought Holly was wonderful.

  After the builders knocked off for the day, we sat in the Billinghams’ tiny high-window kitchen and had tea, and cheese on a roll. No, they hadn’t heard of any good young bitches for sale.

  Geoff couldn’t help. Perhaps I’d spot one at the trials. The Neilston Trial was next weekend. “You might look in the paper, Donald. The Scottish Farmer. Sometimes it has dogs for sale.” I glanced through the current issues but found only a few ads, all for farm dogs. “The good ones ar
e snapped up pretty quickly, I’m afraid,” Geoff added.

  I looked at my watch. Viv rinsed the teacups at the sink. There was a big pause. Geoff said, “Say, Viv, we haven’t been out in weeks. Perhaps we should take Donald to the pub. …”

  “Just let me feed my dogs and I’ll get changed.”

  The Tweedsmuir Valley is chockablock with sheepdog lore. James Hogg (Viv’s favorite author) shepherded the Ettrick Valley, on the far side of these hills. Hogg was a fair shepherd but a desperately unsuccessful farmer, who (like Bobby Burns) did better writing about farming than practicing it. Hogg started by writing poetry, but Walter Scott convinced him he should turn to prose. Scott gave good advice. James Hogg’s poetry is conventional Augustan stuff, neat and dull. His prose is clean as an oiled scythe, affectless, contemporary. Viv’s written two autobiographical books and identifies strongly with Hogg, the shepherd poet of 150 years ago. “You know what they did when James Hogg came to Edinburgh?” she asked angrily. “They made him put on his kilt and dance on the tabletop!”

  Downstream, the Tweed passes Easter Dawyck Farm (Johnny Bathgate’s great dog Vic), and through the lovely village of Peebles (McTeir’s Ben; J. M. Wilson’s Cap, Roy, Glen, Ben). The Crook Inn, where we stopped, was Jock Richardson’s local (Wiston Cap, Richardson’s Sweep, and Mirk), when he was still shepherding. When I asked about Jock, Geoff shook his head. Viv said, “Poor Jock. When he was on top, he had no end of friends. Where are they today?”

  Shepherds’ crooks decorated the pub’s walls and dangled from the low beams of the public bar. Half a dozen clunky stools at the corner bar, three tables. We took the table nearest the fire. Geoff and I had a wee dram. Viv liked lemonade in her whiskey. A sign on the bar wall defined a “gill” of whiskey. Scottish legalese and the pouring gadget on the bottle ensured that you got a gill, not a pennyweight less.

  The fireplace was shallow and tall, and welcome heat poured over our legs and shoes. Two years ago, Geoff had been made redundant at the duke of Roxburgh’s estate. There are plenty of young men clamoring for a shepherd’s place, and very few openings for an older one.