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

by Donald McCaig

  Perry wasn’t above pumping the pump. “You think so, then?”

  “Oh aye, I do. A grand dog, Don. I’ve never seen better.”

  “I’ve been thinking of entering him in the sheepdog trials.”

  “Oh aye, aye.”

  “Do you think he’d do well at the trials?”

  Hector shot Perry a look and said, exactly, “Aye. Any fool could win with a dog like that.”

  John Angus smacked his leg and repeated the punch line, “You see, Donald, any fool could win with a dog like that.”

  About two in the afternoon, we arrived at Loch Assynt in the northwest Highlands. This was John Angus’s old stamping grounds—his hotel hadn’t been far from here. The course was laid out on the loch shore; a great hill loomed on the far side. An aluminum caravan served as the trial secretary’s headquarters, and behind the caravan a table displayed all the trophies, plus bottles of whiskey and bags of dogfood to be raffled off. The hill shepherds had come away from their flocks, local citizens were enjoying the spring sunshine, and children dodged among the parked cars. Everybody knew John Angus, and he joked and cracked and didn’t walk the course or fret about the sheep.

  I was wearing my Texas hat, which is appropriate attire for sheepdog trials in the States, and the Scots asked me about them. Yes, we have a good many trials. We have some good dogs, yes. Sometimes you Scots make a mistake and export a good one. Laughter.

  The beer tent was busy, and some had spent more time in its shelter than their livers required. One neat young man in impeccable plus fours introduced himself and admired my hat, “We need a dash of color,” he said. “No offense.” When I said I’d come with John Angus, the young man said he personally owed John Angus a great debt and I could tell John Angus so. Would I have a wee dram?

  Hamish MacLean ran his bitch, Lynn, who came fourth at last year’s International. I got a couple hamburgers from the luncheon caravan (they don’t taste the same over here). Beside the cashbox, they have postcards for sale: a single sheep exiting the shearing shed, flying in her glee, literally flying: all four feet in the air.

  John Angus takes Flint out several times to talk to him and show him the sheep. When Flint runs, he’s erratic at first, but settles toward the end.

  At one time, Hamish MacLean was a good-enough piper to play for the Alec Guinness film, Tunes of Glory. Alec Guinness is a fine man, Hamish says. Once the filming was done, the actor took all the pipers to dinner. Hamish no longer plays the pipes, “The dogs do nae care for them.”

  At the Edinburgh trial, last summer, while Hamish MacLean was trying to get his sheep shed, a dachshund whipped onto the course, yapping. Without pause, Hamish bent, scooped up the little dog, tucked it under his arm like the bag of his bagpipe, and squeezed the little snout shut while concluding his work.

  Perry MacKenzie and Hamish are great pals. At the crossdrive, Perry MacKenzie retires Don and comes off the course. “I retire when the dog’s no longer pleasing me,” he said.

  “Is that so? Would you retire, then, if the dog was not pleasing you but you had lost no points? Would you retire then?”

  Perry says he would surely retire, he would surely.

  John Angus’s Taff has a wonderful run until the pen, when one ewe refuses to go into the pen with the others. Taff finally presses her in but has lost most of his pen points by the delay.

  When John Angus comes off the course, he says, “The moment I saw that blue kidney, I knew we were for it. Damn the brute.”

  Hirsels are identified by distinctive crayon marks. Four of John Angus’s sheep had shoulder marks; the stroppy ewe was marked blue on the kidney. Since her running mates were strangers, the blue-kidney ewe wished to have nothing to do with them, and her stubborness at the pen ruined Taff’s run.

  With the loch, the blue hills, and the sunlight, the citizens sniffed the air and told one another how lovely it was. They were full of innocent self-congratulations.

  The young man in plus fours came to tell me, once again, how much he owed John Angus. “He doesn’t speak about it, but it’s true.”

  Later, when I asked John Angus, he sighed, “That lad will stay drunk all day,” he said. “He comes from a good family, too.”

  After the last run, notables give out trophies and envelopes with prize money, and as each place is announced, there’s a flurry of applause. Taff is third, Flint is seventh. There’s a chill in the air. Three men fold the beer tent and bag the empty cups and pint cans. Prizes are awarded to the youngest handler and to the oldest. “And for the loudest handler!” To hoots and applause, a young man is awarded a two-foot sausage. The whiskey and dogfood are raffled off, the Trial Committee and Secretary applauded.

  The Assynt Hotel is situated on a rise above the loch and they’re sorry, but so early in the season, they only serve dinner for guests.

  The young man in plus fours comes out of the hotel bar and passes us without speaking. He wobbles his bicycle down the lane until he falls. He dusts himself off and walks the bicycle around the turn.

  Villages are far between up here, and we don’t stop until Ullapool, where we’re almost too late for service. It’s a midsize seafood restaurant, full of young people and their dates on a Saturday night. While I look over the menu, John Angus takes our small change to the pay phone, ringing handlers who ran at Luss. When he returns, he says that after we left Luss, the sheep got very difficult, so Taff, despite his flawed outrun, is in the prize list.

  After Ullapool, I take the wheel, scaring the daylights out of John Angus. (I still have trouble judging the left verge with right-hand-drive cars.) I do better on the A9, opening the car up to the limit and cruising right along. The car is an isolated world, lit by the gauges, the infrequent headlights of overtaking cars. John Angus talks about the hotel he had, how damnably difficult it was. There were legal problems and questions about the fishing rights, and it was difficult collecting the insurance after the fire. I talk about my life, my farm.

  At Tummel Bridge, we come off the motorway, and John wants to drive. The roads are no wider than before, no less steep. Sheep are bedded down in unexpected dips. Our tires crunch across mats of their droppings.

  On top of the highest ridge, John stops and we get out for a pee. From here, I can’t see a light on any horizon. John Angus lets Taff and Flint out so they can have a pee, too. The sky is very big, bounded by the silhouetted hills. Taff’s ears perk up when he hears a distant sheep bleat.

  Kenny Gibson has fed and exercised the dogs so there’s nought to do after we pull in to Kiltyrie. Since daybreak, we’ve traveled nearly five hundred miles and it’s 2 A.M. Taff’s third at Assynt paid twenty-two pounds, Flint’s seventh, seven. As I went up to bed, John Angus said, “You can sleep in tomorrow, Donald. The Falkirk trial won’t start until nine.”

  When I returned to Scotland, eight months later, speeding over some of the same roads toward the Blair Atholl International, I recalled the spring day John Angus trialed Luss and Assynt in one day. John Angus said, “Aye. Assynt is a lovely trial.”

  I said, “The roads look better in the daylight.”

  When nineteenth-century scientists began ranking animals by intellect, they were perplexed by the dog. Chimpanzees and other primates were physically most like humans, exhibiting “human behaviors”: problem solving, tool making, and the like. But, unlike the dog, chimps were useless. (And nineteenth-century men had a broader experience of useful animals than we do today.) In Mental Evolution in Animals (1883) zoologist George Romanes ranked dogs and apes equally, below only humankind.

  Other theorists made capital of a blurry meaning. “Ah yes,” they said, “The ape is more intelligent, but the dog is more sagacious.” This stroke pleased abstract thinkers and practical livestock men alike. The root of sagacity is “a keen attention to the sense, particularly the sense of smell,” but, of course, the word has come to mean rather more than that.

  The Border Collie has been called “the wisest dog in the world.” The shepherd
’s dog, described in Dr. Caius’s British Dogges (1570) sounds very like the Border Collie of today:

  This dogge, either at the hearing of his master’s voyce, or at the wagging and whistleling in his fist, or at his shrill and hoarse hissing, bringeth the wandring weathers and straying sheep into the selfsame place where his master’s will and wish is to have them, whereby the shepherd reapeth the benefit, namely, that with little labour and no toyle or moving of his feete he may rule and guide his flocke according to his owne desire, either to have them go forward, or to stand still, or to drawe backward, or to turn this way or to take that way. …

  No doubt, breeding the shepherd’s dog in the sixteenth century was a rough business. When early shepherds needed a turn of speed, they probably looked to the whippet or greyhound, and the Border Collie’s implacable glare, its “eye,” is descended from the hunting dog’s point. (Sometimes, approaching his sheep, a Border Collie will freeze, one foot in the air. When a pointer does this, he’s praised. In a Border Collie, it is called “sticky.”)

  When collies came from the Borders to the Highlands during the Clearances, their skills were stretched by necessity. Valued dogs had keen hearing (at a mile, it’s hard to distinguish command whistles from bird calls), great stamina (a dog on a gather can easily traverse a hundred miles of rough ground in a day), and a desire to herd.

  Until this century, there was a fair variety of working stock dog breeds. Drovers’ dogs brought the livestock to market; there, market dogs chivvied them from pen to pen, and many British counties had their own distinct collies.

  Like the Welsh Grey and the Dalesman, most of these collie types are probably now extinct. Others, like the Shetland and rough collie, have been taken up by show breeders and are virtually useless for livestock work.

  The Border Collie has been saved as a work dog by being beneath human vanities. Nobody could look at this utilitarian, peasant’s dog and say, “What a noble head!” or “Also owned by several crowned heads of Europe.” Until recently, in Britain the dog wasn’t showed at all. Its breeding was left in the hands of agriculturists, who founded the International Sheepdog Society to “promote and foster the breeding, training and improvement in the interests and for the welfare or benefit of the community of the breeds or strains of sheepdogs, to secure the better management of stock by improving the shepherd’s dog. …”

  Breeders who select the stud dogs and bitches within a breed effectively direct the breed’s progress, and among sheepdogs, the eminent dogs have been those who excelled at sheepdog trials. The ISDS has always been directed by practical stockmen (J. M. Wilson was made an M.B.E., not for his expertise with sheepdogs, but for improvements he made in the Scottish Blackface), and these men were (and are) largely indifferent to a dog’s appearance if the dog could get the job done. The ISDS has no conformation standard for sheepdogs and (theoretically) if your Rottweiler was trained to such a standard that it could win a major sheepdog trial, it could be registered with the ISDS. Several Bearded Collies have been so registered in the past.

  There is a strongly held belief that a Border Collie often resembles its dominant ancestor. You hear of a “Gilchrist spot type” or “Bosworth coon markings.” The first time Davey McTeir took his Ben to a trial, an old herd came over. “I’ve a bitch to put to your dog,” he said.

  Astonished, Davey asked, “Don’t you think you’d like to see how he goes before you decide?”

  “Oh, no need. No need. Your dog’s the very image of Wilson’s Cap. It’s taken thirty years to make another one.”

  It’s worth noting that McTier’s Ben went on to win the Scottish National in 1972 and did become an eminent sire.

  It is possible to think of circumstances where other breeds of stock dog can outperform the Border Collie. In close work (pens, yards, and chutes) in Australian summer heat, the kelpie (another variety of collie) has more stamina than a Border Collie. When you wish to drive a great number of sheep up narrow trails, a hunter is more useful than a Border Collie. A hunter’s barking hastens the whole flock along, while a Border Collie’s silent intimidation can pressure only the last ewe in line. In New Zealand, the Huntaway is a distinct breed. In Scotland, most hunters are Border Collies who’ve been trained to bark on command.

  These exceptions noted, the Border Collie is the most frequently employed livestock dog in the world. Trials are held in South Africa, Australia, the United States, Canada, France, the Falklands, and Switzerland. Johnny Bathgate exports most of his dog’s progeny to Scandinavia.

  The Border Collie’s singular ability is to work well (sagaciously?) at a great distance from his shepherd. This is a complex skill. Since the dog is often out of the shepherd’s sight, he must work well on his own. Geoff Billingham said, “Even when my old Jed bitch was getting past it, I could still send her out to gather the Hill while I went inside to have my breakfast. When I’d finish and come out, she’d have them all down, in the steading.”

  Yet the dog must be willing to take instructions, too. One scientist claimed that the Border Collie was able to comprehend 274 distinct commands. This is, I think, a fair bit of nonsense. There are brilliant Border Collies and dullards. And it isn’t clear what constitutes a command. When John Angus unlatches the boot and the dogs jump in, has he given them a command? When he’s parked on the trial grounds and the boot is open for air and the dogs don’t jump out, is this a command? When John Angus holds Flint’s sore eye open so I can squeeze ointment directly onto the eyeball, what commands keep Flint from struggling or snapping at me?

  When a Border Collie changes hands, his original handler will routinely make a tape of the dog’s whistle commands so the new owner can get them exactly right.

  Typically, a tape will contain whistles for

  go left (comeby)

  You’re too near, get out

  go right (away to me)

  You’re too far, come in

  lie down

  This one (shed this sheep and hold it)

  stand

  Go back (stop, abandon

  pause

  the sheep you pres-

  walk onto your sheep

  ently have, go back

  go slow

  [to the right or left]

  and seek a new lot)

  These commands can be modulated. By tone, a shepherd can tell his dog whether he wants him to stop and stay or stop, but get back up again. He can tell the dog to go left a little, go left a lot, go left wide, or go left NOW. If you shut your eyes when a dangerous handler has a classy dog on the course, you’ll hear assurances, insistences, demands, soothings. You’ll hear who the man is and what he hopes his dog to be.

  On the second day of qualifying at Blair Atholl, I will time the commands as Johnny Templeton directs Roy on his crossdrive. I count seventeen distinct commands in fifteen seconds.

  In the late sixties, when J. M. Wilson was running Bill II, near at hand, he used the dog’s name for commands. “Bill” meant “Go Left.” “Bill-uh!” meant “Go Left, NOW.” “Will-yum” meant “Go Right,” and when J. M. wanted Bill to walk skittish sheep into the pen, at a tense moment, he’d pop his fingers … just pop.

  In animal training, control is inversely proportional to distance. How biddable would the circus tigers be, uncaged, five hundred yards from the trainer with the whip? And when the family pet dog strikes a fascinating scent, your ability to halt the dog will depend on how near you are.

  Davey Sutherland is estate manager at Borobil, a 22,000-acre spread in the northern Highlands. Davey’s unregistered Border collies, Bert and Bob, are on identical commands; Bert’s “Go Left” whistle is the same as Bob’s. The Borobil hills are low, thousand footers, strewn with boulders. One day last fall, Davey brought both dogs along while gathering ewes. Davey lay Bert down, told him “Stay,” and proceeded with Bob after the sheep. When Bob brought in the first hirsel, he missed a few, so Davey whistled “Go Back.” and Bob found more, but still hadn’t them all, so Davey whistled “Go Back
” again. The sheep came off a steep ridge, Davey whistled Bob left and right, brought him on, told him “Go Slow.” At such distances, mind, he was commanding a dot that was herding glints.

  When Davey had the ewes down, he started for home but didn’t find Bert where he’d left him. That was unusual, but Davey figured Bert had gotten frustrated and gone back to the farmhouse. When Davey and Bob got the sheep put away, no Bert. Before Davey could get worried, a neighbor phoned. “Are you missing a dog?”

  Anxious to do his part, Bert had taken Bob’s first “Go Back” whistle and topped the hill as the second “Go Back” sounded. The first sheep he found were in a neighbor’s paddock, and Bert began working the sheep to and fro to Davey Sutherland’s whistled commands.

  The neighboring farmer said it was lucky he knew Bert. He would have shot a strange dog. As it was, the neighbor thought Bert had gone mad, chivvying the sheep back and forth to whistles only Bert could hear, from a shepherd 2½ miles away.

  Blair Atholl estate, the venue of the 1988 International Sheepdog Trial, is 148,000 acres. Much of the estate is hill land, but there’s lush bottomland, too, and that’s where the trial course is laid out. It is rumpled slightly. Not quite “flat as a pancake.”

  When John Angus and I drove in, the evening before the qualifying trial, the grandstands were set up, six canvas-roof portable units stretched across the foot of the course. At the televised sheepdog trials, they set up remote cameras along the course so viewers could see the dog gather its sheep and fetch them, but here, as at most sheepdog trials, the judges, spectators, and handler can see only the inbye work (the drive, pen, and shed). The outfield work (outrun, lift, and fetch) are incompletely visible.

  The dog handlers wore thigh-high green wellies and waxed-cotton waterproof jackets. Some wore waterproof leggings as well. It had been a wet summer. Some men walked the course. Some pointed out difficulties with the shepherds’ crook they all carried. John Angus said a few hellos. One handler stood at the handler’s post, envisioning the next day. Another tried the action of the pen’s gate. A rope is attached to the gate and once the handler goes from the shedding to the pen and takes the rope (or gate), he cannot turn loose until all his sheep are in the pen and the gate is closed.