Herding dogs prove abilities with sheep

[TribalRats]

Elizabeth Allen
Express-News

Performance is the only standard for a working border collie.

When three hesitant, confused sheep get shoved out the gate at the other end of a long dirt-floor ring, it doesn't matter how the dog that races toward them is formed. The judge doesn't care if it's black and white, rusty brown, speckled, floppy-eared, fluffy or sleek.

What count are cleverness, speed, obedience and an ability to read the livestock that the dog moves hither and yon at its master's command.

Dusty heards sheep during the sheep dog trial.

"That's their work, their play. That's what they do," said Eleno Montemayor of San Antonio, who had four dogs entered Sunday in the sheep dog trials at the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo.

"Normally, you work with the attitude of every dog," he said. "Some of them are stronger. Some of them are workaholics."

The dogs, almost all of which had one-syllable, easy-to-shout names such as Sneak or Crush, had to herd a group of sheep around barrels, through a narrow chute and into a small pen within the ring of Cattle Barn No. 2.

The owners or trainers used a combination of whistles and voice commands to get their dogs to take the sheep where they wanted them to go.

Joy Hall of Hempstead's whistles to Faye swung from melodic to shrill, changing like a mockingbird's song, meant to carry hundreds of yards across rocky pasture.

Their lilts are the codes that make the dogs veer left or right, go faster or slower, or hunker down almost on their bellies, taking pressure off the sheep and watching for the next move.

Nell, a sleek black-and-white dog with one slightly flopping ear, kept her body low and her white-tipped tail curled tightly against her legs as she worked her sheep, running a few steps, freezing, poised to change directions as Montemayor commanded.

Other dogs emanated pure joy. Big, a larger black-and-white dog run by Rodney Long of Center Point, looked as though he were smiling the whole time. Dan, under the command of Red Oliver of Caldwell, rocketed around his sheep in a way that made trial judge Jerry Lynch say, "We're gonna chase sheep, yeah buddy!"

More than one dog was disqualified for "grabbing," or nipping at the sheep. When Lynch spotted this she would call out, "Thank you — got a little anxious there," and send the competitors out.

In this contest, it would be foolish to discount the measure of luck that comes with which sheep happen to enter the ring. Some are easily worked. Some are jumpy, and others balk at the chute. Lynch, of Crawford, called the last type "sticky."

"Sometimes you get these nasty old sticky sheep, and sometimes you get sheep that just move on through," she said as a brown border collie named Bute held back, then leaned forward and seemed to push the sheep on through the chute as his handler, E.B. Raley, stood beside it.

It may not seem that a dog and a trio of sheep can have a relationship, but they do. And if a dog gets too pushy, the sheep will not cooperate.

Lynch muttered as she eagle-eyed the dogs. "Easy, easy, easy, easy," she breathed as Oliver's Luke, a black-headed dog with a white nose and a broad white mantle, worked his sheep, snaking back and forth behind them. "Don't want to go left, now he don't want to go right," she sympathized.