Mr. and Mrs. Dog: Our Travels, Trials, Adventures, and Epiphanies

The Double Lift

188 TheDoubleLift S unday was clear; no fog and the light was incandescent. The dogs and I drove to Llandielo for the finals of the World Sheepdog Trials. At important trials, the ultimate competition is the “double lift,” and the World Trials would be no exception. The double lift is the most difficult test of a sheepdog. We ask the dogs to do more than they can and those that manage are asked to do the nearly impossible. Dinefwr Park had dried out. Luke, June, and I were parked by pleasant volunteers wearing vests with “Steward” on the front and “Sorry for the Delay” on the back. A zillion cars were pouring in and more concessions and diversions had appeared. The four­hundred­seat restaurant would be open until five o’clock. Trick riders, search and rescue teams, and celebrity chefs did demos. Hooded raptors perched silently waiting for their show. I left the dogs in the car and beelined to the grandstand. My back and knees couldn’t tolerate one more day on my feet. My new friend, the Hafod Bridge trial secretary, cried, “Ah, Donald. I have a crook for you. When I thought you’d be here I went to the river­ bank and cut it.” It was a thick stem of crook wood, with a branch at the top where my thumb could rest. I thanked him and asked if I could buy a grandstand pass. “Oh, no. No,” he said cheerfully. “Sold out weeks ago. Go ’round up the hill. You’ll see better from there anyway.” Discouraged, I went for coffee instead. Most mornings I’d got on the road so early I hadn’t used the “breakfast” part of my B&B, and today had been no exception. When I came back to the grandstand my Welsh friend hissed, “Donald, you don’t have a ticket?” The Double Lift 189 “No.” “Here then. But don’t tell anyone I got it for you.” The Reverend Canon W. Roger Hughes, dean of Llangadog/Llandielo, would lead the morning worship service. Roger loves sheepdogs and had come to all the trials. Usually Roger was in waterproofs and wellies but it was black cassock today. This morning, he took the mic to announce that the service would be held in front of the Tesco Pavilion where those who might wish to come could and those who didn’t wish to come probably needed to. He noted that loudspeakers would carry the service throughout the grounds and those who needed to couldn’t escape it anyway. A hundred attended the service. “Welcome! Croeso cynnes,” the dean began. This was Christianity with a crook. Our opening hymn was “Christ our Shepherd, all souls calling . . . ,” and Tony Iley, whose lovely memoir Sheepdogs at Work went through four editions, read the gospel. In his homily, Roger Hughes described the lost sheep in expert detail: “Everyone thinks of that sheep as a fluffy little lamb but she’s not. She’s been in the briars and the thickets, she hasn’t been shorn, and she’s prob­ ably got manure tags. She’s smelly and unpleasant. Quite possibly the flock has cast her out, yet Christ the Shepherd seeks her—whether she wants Him to or not . . .” We sang the twenty­third psalm and an American, John Seraphine, prayed: “Lord, we thank you for our dogs—your simple gift to us. Open us to what they teach. “We thank you for the grateful exuberance of our dogs. We thank you for the way they bound across the hills, splash in the waters, chew on sticks, and roll in the dewy grass. Teach us, every day, to say our own ‘thank you’ with every fiber of our being, for the wondrous works of your creation. “We thank you, Lord, for the honest, direct loyalty of our dogs. We thank you for the wag of their tails and the offer of a cuddle for friend and stranger alike, the way they make people from twenty­two nations into our neighbors, the way they regard not body type, color of hair, or color of skin. We thank you for the easy way they forgive faults—the way they love us, 190 mr. and mrs. dog not because we can love back, but because of our need for love. Teach us, every day, to open our hands and hearts to friend and foreigner, and to...