Sheepdog Competition

Hubby and I have always had a dog around the house, even before we had kids.  It's been a sheltie, another sheltie, a collie or an australian shepherd. Shadow has always been such a herding dog, never running to far away or getting too far behind on our walks.  She keeps us in site and I'm sure it's part of her breeding.

On Saturday we decided to do something we've wanted to do but have never done - go to the Soldier Hollow Classic Sheepdog Championship.  Soldier Hollow is the 2002 Olympic site of biathlon and other cross country skiing competitions.  It lends itself well to this competition between sheepdogs.

 It cost $11 - 12 each to get in and we didn't stay for more than 3 hours because the heavens opened and rain poured down.  But we thoroughly enjoyed what we did see in that time.

 All of the dogs we saw competing were border collies.  All of the handlers we saw used various whistles and pitches from those whistles to signal what they dogs should do.

 You can see the handler standing by the white pole in the foreground, the pen to his left and the large hillside in the background.  The dog has 13 minutes to run all the way to the other side of that hill, direct 6 large sheep through the white gates in the middle of the picture, direct them through another set of gates out of view, separate them into 4 sheep without collars and 2 with collars in the "shedding" ring, then bring them over to the pen and get them inside.

Hubby really enjoyed it.

The brown dog on the right got 91 points out of 100 during the afternoon, putting he and his handler in 2nd place.  It's unusual for a championship sheepdog to be brown.  This handler and dog really understood the sheep and did a masterful job.