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

A Desperate Gamble

47 ADesperateGamble L ike William Blake’s Songs of Innocence, the appeal of sheepdog trialing is simplicity: nothing exists outside your run. Debts, sins, bad health, marital difficulties, all those insults life so willingly provides: disappeared. Donald’s ego dies into the intricate, fluid man/dog/ sheep task. Trialing is serial immortalities; each run, eternity in an hour. Alas, there’s nothing simple about simplicity. The National Finals Sheepdog Trials is the North American sheep­ dog Super Bowl. The trial rotates between the East Coast, Midwest, and West Coast, on different fields, under different conditions, with fresh (un­ dogged) sheep. Sheepdog trials are both sport and genetic strategy. Count­ less farm and ranch dogs in dozens of countries descend from dogs proven at sheepdog trials. Moving the Finals to a different venue annually is difficult for a volun­ teer organization, and a couple years back, sheepdoggers considered buying property for the Finals somewhere in the Midwest. Grandstands and park­ ing for handlers and spectators would be permanent and the spectator base would grow. Trials that stay put—like the ones held in Kingston, Ontario; Meeker, Colorado; and Soldier Hollow, Utah—draw tens of thousands of spectators. I favored a permanent location until I asked Alasdair MacRae, who has won the Finals twelve times, for his thinking. “Dogs run differently on different fields,” Alasdair replied. Bingo! There are fields where my dogs usually do well and fields where the Mister and Missus can’t set a paw right. If the National Finals were in the same field every year, we’d all breed to dogs that did well in that single venue and inevitably we’d narrow the sheepdog gene pool, losing dogs that might be toppers on other fields or on other sheep. A fixed venue would 48 mr. and mrs. dog have benefitted the trialing sport but not trialing’s genetic purpose. So we didn’t do it. Qualifying for the Finals is straightforward. The top 20 percent of dogs in any sanctioned open trial earn points. If 50 dogs run, first place earns 10 points, tenth gets 1. As of August 1, the 150 dogs with the most points are qualified to compete in that year’s Finals. The $200 entry fee isn’t prohibitive—the real cost is two weeks off work plus travel. Finals prize money is negligible: only the top three dogs will earn enough to cover ex­ penses. If you live in California, you’d best be confident you’re going to win something before you load up Spot and cross country to this year’s Finals in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Not every owner of a qualified dog makes the sacrifice. I’d calculated it would take 25 points to get in. As the August 1 deadline approached, June had 33 points, but Luke had 11.6. Although the Gettys­ burg Finals weren’t far from the farm, I planned to skip this year. I don’t like entering a trial with one dog. Sheepdog trials demand everything the dog has to give and a bit more. Dogs that can work all day on farm or ranch are utterly spent after fifteen minutes on a trial course. Focus mat­ ters. Focus hurts. Cool as a cuke I’m not, and if I’m running only one dog, I ask too much of him, heaping Donald stress atop trial stress. Naturally I appreciate your advice: “Chill out,” “Act like you don’t care.” Gosh, what swell ideas! Sometimes my dog deserves a better man than I am. My dog Harry ran brilliantly at the 1994 Finals and afterwards Cheryl Williams, who was an emergency room nurse in her day job, congratulated me. “But,” she added, “I was afraid you’d pass out in the shedding ring, you were hyperventilating so bad.” I did notice my vision dimming and getting blurry at the edges but so long as I could see Harry and the sheep . . . Unfortunately, the USBCHA waited until July before announcing how handlers would be picked for the United States Team competing in the World Trials in South Wales the following October. There were several paths to qualification, but my only shot was doing very well at Gettysburg, the qualifying deadline of which was two weeks away. A Desperate Gamble 49 The dogs and I had spent thousands of hours training, traveling, and trialing. I’d sat at the feet of top sheepdog...