Sheepdog News

BevLive: Day Five

Late so short. Long, cold, wet day. We wore most of our clothes during a windy morning. A heavy morning mist became an afternoon rain. By the time the last dogs had run the weather had improved enormously, to everyone’s relief.

All our dogs ran much better except Joe who ended up DQing at the turn when a particularly recalcitrant group didn’t believe he meant go. They believed him in the end, but such a strong projection of American might left the judge unimpressed.

The only prize so far is Sue’s skillful winning of a bottle of scotch in the raffle. We are making friends though and having a great time, bad weather not withstanding.

Sue: Hebrides, Day Four

Where are we now?

Up early to take hedgehog pictures (they snuffle when you point a flash in their face to get cute photos, which I cant seem to upload,
And tuck in a heap so even peat loses interest).

Hedgehogs can move!!! We encountered the one from the garden 200 yards down the hill and by the time I’d closed the garden gate she/he was under our car.

Protected they are. So don’t harass a hedgehog, you paparazzi!!

We has a lovely drive to Uist where the ferry left at 9:40 for Lochmoddy on North Uist

We tried to book an evening passage, as no shopping on sundays on Uist. Blue law kind of place, but no luck. Waiting in line we met another cute trio of guys off for a fishing tippling jaunt on North Uist

We played the six degrees of separation game and one guy knew Andrew Carnegie.

They were a hoot. Their windshield wipers broke in a downpour and they were able to rig the wipers with fishing line. One guy on each side of the car pulling in sync with the other. I loved them. Also when they found out I would tipple we were immediately offered homemade sloe gin from a handy little flask. These scots are so resourceful.

We toured North Uist today. Walked on a huge mud flat, saw the signs for standing stones and stone circles and walked through a peat bog. This is a sparse rugged island dotted with tiny lochs and peat bogs. A few thousand foot peaks and some high rocky pasture land on the northwest coast. A fine sunny day to sightsee and make the dogs happy on many walks.

9:30 at night still plenty light out.

This the view from my seat outside the lochmoddy hotel.



And tomorrow to Berneray to our second trial of the circuit

Btw. I did most of the driving today. Bev seemed to volunteer to sit in the passenger seat. Once again i did awesome. Driving on the left is not rocket science. You just have to get the timing if single track roads passing places and on coming cars. No doubt Bev let me drive to enjoy my failings. Anything i can do to make her happy. She is a lot of fun to travel with. Witty observant knowledgable about the history of UK/American relations.

It was also a lot of fun to watch her handle the tricky course and sheep yesterday. Nan crossed and Joe did not shed first off but her skill was evident throughout her runs.

Weather may turn wet tomorrow. But we’ll hope for the best.

Sue: Hebrides, Day Three

I love this already. Good long sleep, brought my own coffee, another trip to the loch to try out the cute little camera that Amanda lent me.

Sheep everywhere. Scotties with lambs and what seem to be North Country Texel crosses.

After a delicious vegetarian breakfast at our b and b we headed for Waternish and the trial. Not knowing either time or exact location did not matter. We kept driving till we found it, and after awhile people showed up and the trial started.

We knew Arthur Mawhinney and Jim and Shirley Cropper.

The field was gorgeous. Right on the loch. Weather cool and overcast with rain to come in the pm.

We cowered in the car long enough to avoid running first but drew up 6 & 7 with Joe and Flo (our choice of first dogs).

A lot of dogs did not find their sheep, Flo included. Her outrun was not what i might have hoped for and though she took all my stops and redirects it was not a success.

Sigh. Should i have brought Rue? Too late.

Bev however had a good go with joe and her ears perked up at the thought of her score

The sheep are feisty little Cheviots. Not lambs but they have an inclination to drop about every fifth or sixth run.

Afternoon report.

An education it has been.

Today both dogs crashed. Peat said I want right. And i overrode him. He uncharacteristically tried to cross–did not, but had a heavy lift and shall we say a strong fetch. Tight turn round the post, lovely straight soft driveaway and looking like a very neat turn onto the crossdrive. Sheep split, stalled, faced him and he gripped off.

Bummer. Especially when Bev has tallied how much each run costs if you add up the cost if the trip and divided it by the number of runs.

Now that is no fun. At least not today. But I really learned a lot today.

Also ended the day with a Guinesss on draft and a lobster dinner at a pub with Jim and Shirley cropper and some friends of theirs from England and Scotland, Rhubarb crumble and custard to boot.

And i saw two hedgehogs tonight. Another reason to live here. I love hedgehogs.

BevLive: Hebrides, Day Three

Our B&B was hospitable but very English, a bit of a disappointment in northern Skye. Went to bed in the rain and woke up in the fog. Looks just like all the photos of Skye.

We drove about half an hour on a single-track road toward Waternish, worried we’d never find the dog trial since we had no directions. No fear. There it sat on the side of the road, covered exhaust and wood pallets for the gates all surrounded by stone walls and the Atlantic. Beautiful. Perfect.

I ran Joe first and he did pretty well. A bit strong on the top but since the fetch was about three hundred yards I got hold of him by the fetch gates. The rest was fairly good except a ewe cut around behind me on the shed and we had to do it. Then he had to grab a sheep on the exhaust job.
Not so good.

The running was very tough in the morning–only two sheds and many bad outruns, crossovers, and sheep not found. The field isn’t awfully large but the dogs don’t seem to be able to see the sheep once they start the outrun, causing much confusion for some of them. The afternoon went much better, with a couple of really nice goes. Since there was no run order and we knew no one it was hard to tell who was doing well.

Sue and Flo had trouble with the outrun and Sue ended up walking up the field. Jim and Shirley Cropper are here. Jim’s first run was a bit rough with no chute. Sheep were very resistant to going through it. Shirley did better but timed out before the shed.

Afternoon didn’t improve much. Began to rain with more enthusiasm and the sheep continued to win. Nan in a moment of monumental stupidity crossed over. I finished the run, as most everyone was doing, as opportunities to work are going to be very limited. Needless to say, she never put a foot wrong. Sue and Peat didn’t fare any better with another cross over. Did I say the outrun was very tricky?

Had a great dinner at a local pub with several other handlers and the Croppers. Then back to the B&B after a moderately foggy drive.

Sue: Hebrides, Day Two

Ah. Where did day 1 become day 2?

When Peat began barking below my feet in the hold, i knew our flight was at an end. We extracted ourselves from tortured sleeping positions and deplaned. We had to make our way to the car rental and the dog shipper who would clear dogs through customs and hand them over. Thank God Peat barked on the trip as I only spotted three crates on the tarmac on our way to customs.

For me the first stop was Costa for a mocha latte (very acceptable) and then I caught up to Bev on the ten-minute walk to the car rental.

Everyone we met was so friendly. No one was in any kind of hurry. We chatted at customs, we chatted at the car rental, we chatted at the dog broker with the agents and a cute guy just back from Afghanistan with his bomb-sniffing border collie. Emily and Andrew the extraordinaire dog agents could not have been nicer. They even cleaned a peed-in crate.

Peat and Flo were deliriously happy to see me. Did not even have to show ID to claim them

At that moment our trip became fun. Safe dogs, all officialdom and paperwork completed. Most of the big money already spent. Of course, the fun really began when we began to navigate away from the airport. Driving on the left, we threaded our way through roundabouts in and out of a housing development We were sternly warned about traffic through Perth because of the music festival. Ha. We scoffed. We had travelled across the George Washington Bridge in mid afternoon to Neward yesterday. We had flown across the Atlantic in a plane with a bum engine. Perth did not scare us.

Bev drove ably through Perth to Pitlochry as I gawked at the view. Lush fields, steep hills, forest. Gorgeous well-fed cattle and sheep and horses dotting the countryside.

I had been longing to return to this country for 20 years and it was as I remembered. Charming magnificent. In full growing season.

And we had brought dogs!!

I began to plot my move to Scotland.

Lunch in Pitlochry with our dogs tied to our table outside. The waitress brought the dogs water. I heard American accents everywhere. People loved our dogs and were supportive of our journey to run in the Hebridean trials.

I did not feel tired

The trip to Skye, however, became a feat of endurance after poor sleep and the time change. The grandeur of the Highlands was a constant encouragement, but it was a long trip.

Bev was a happier driver than passenger, so I was only able to wrest the wheel from her once we had reached the bridge to Skye at Kyle of Lochalsh. I had my shot at left-hand driving on the last hour of windy single-track roads with sheep everywhere and passing places for oncoming cars. Despite Bev’s occasional complaints, I did awesome. I had to remind her that I too had had some hair-raising moments as a passenger. Occasionally sucking it up is a good thing.

Our B&B. was a little bit out of the way but charming. Sheep everywhere. Fabulous vegetation and gardens by the sea. It seems a fairly temperate climate, kind of like home on Cape Cod but grand, stunning and sparsely settled

I found the landscape much like the west and very soothing to the eye and mind.

An early night will set us up for tomorrow.

BevLive: Hebrides, Day One

Editor’s Note: Bev Lambert and Sue Schoen are traveling with their dogs from the northeastern United States to the Hebrides islands off the coast of mainland Scotland. I asked them both to blog about their experiences with the dog trials over there, so we can all live vicariously. Wifi might sometimes be difficult to come by, but they’re going to do their best tto tell us about their adventures. Thanks, Bev and Sue, and good luck!

Sue did all the work on this trip. She made reservations at the B&Bs and for our many ferry rides and completed all the lengthy paperwork. Since we decided to each bring two dogs, it was volumes. Can’t help but think the British don’t really want our dogs there.

We met at my house at noon for our 8:00 flight from Newark, NJ, thinking we would spend hours hanging around the airport. We were concerned traffic might hold us up, since we needed to drive through NYC to get to Newark from my home in central Connecticut.

Turned out traffic was no problem. On our second pass through the airport we parked next to the United Airlines Pet Safe office and spent 45 minutes in the hot sun putting our crates together (we’d needed to take them apart to fit them into Sue’s car).

We then spent two hours with the very nice people at Pet Safe doing paperwork. That was with everything in perfect order, no problems.

Took the car to long term parking, checked our luggage, had a quick bite to eat and our flight was called. Who would have guessed it would take almost four hours to check four dogs and two suitcases?

Then we sat. Three hours at the gate while they decided one of our engines wouldn’t make it to Scotland. Glad they figured it out in New Jersey!

Finally gone at 10:30. Poor dogs–what a long time in their crates. Flight was six hours of torture trapped in those awful seats but we were on our way to ten days to dog trials in the Hebrides.

Amanda: back to the salt mines

My runs at Meeker.


Well. Dorey’s was going good. Very good. A little tight on her second outrun, but no cross. Her shed was twenty pointer, with good control. I considered driving away the fifteen further, but everything seemed so settled and Dorey had been penning the tough stuff for three weeks like a pro. I took them straight to the pen with the winning run on my hands. I don’t know if it was a step I took, or Dorey making a slip. I can’t remember what precipitated it. But one bolted. Dorey ran to cover it, zigged when she should have zagged and that was the end. The sheep rejoined and there was insufficient time to do it all again.

Monty drew up second from the end which cannot be considered an advantage. But without making excuses for him, he let me down on two critical flanks, on both his fetches. Once I got mad, he sulked. The drive was all right. Not like Dorey’s. And the shed was en exercise in anger management. It didn’t come off.

Meeker is a big wonderful trial to win with remarkably difficult conditions. Sheep, altitude, heat, all combine to challenge deeply. It was nice to get two on the final day, but underperforming makes one hunger for next year.

I left on Sunday night, trying to get some hours into the long road ride ahead.

The drive was more oppressive than usual due to the angry oven heat over the midwest. All of Nebraska, normally a drag to cross, was out of sight. I stopped somewhere to let the dogs out at noon. Blistering wind swept around dust devils. The dogs wanted back into the truck instantly–a first for them. Since the heat was too extreme for stopping, I kept driving for a twenty hour stretch, that got me to Davenport, Iowa. I plugged in the generator and turned on the AC–37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) at 10:30 at night.

Back at it in the early morning, I crossed the Mississippi, bathed in morning light. It was Rock Island. There were twin spans of bridge over the lazy river; one for the traffic bound for Illinois; one for the traffic bound for Iowa. They were pretty. People had boats out in what was left of the water that must have been swept away by yesterday’s hot wind. So many things to hold back that river, but it keeps going. The Mississippi.

I got to my darlin home town this morning. Kevin Gallagher had my place all spruced up. It was a joy to see him and my home and my dogs left behind. I had been gone for such a long, intense time.

Amanda: Meeker (Semi-Finals)

The wait for Dorey’s run was long. The time had been extended from the usual fifteen minutes (two marked sheds) to seventeen. So every run was twenty minutes or so. The heat became oppressive in the afternoon, as it had been daily all week. A thunderstorm rolled through, just to our north, so no rain but lots of noise and flashing skies. Dorey doesn’t like thunder. Not at all, is understating it. She quaked on the couch here, while I hoped it would pass by before her run. I took her out midway through Dennis Gelling’s run, who ran just before her. She dug deep and put in a great run, to get herself qualified for tomorrow.

She is up second. Monty is less well endowed by the draw, running eleventh. I hope it is not too hot.

Amanda: Cowboy Up!

My qualifying run with Monty was nothing to write home about, leave off the blog. However, at the handler’s dinner last night, he was awarded the cowboy lift belt buckle, chosen by the cowboys who spot sheep all day everyday. They liked the way he came in deep, lay down and walked directly in, for a great lift. I have a fondness for one of those cowboys, so good and good.

Monty made up for the ordinary qualifying run with a good one today in the semifinals, where it really counts. Second, at 95.5 so far.

At noon today we really mixed it up. Michael Gallagher and i took on the two cowboys from up top, in a shootout for a timed trial. The cowboys lost the toss and went first. They were funny. Things got western. For their shed, one of them grabbed two sheep and held them while the other chased down the third collared sheep. They had all three for a moment, but let them go, only to have them get back together.



Michael and I made it happen. The announcer announced that Michael had come all the way here from Ireland, just for this jackpot.





Dorey runs late this afternoon, third from the last. Number 28 on the order.

Amanda: Meeker, Days 1-2

I started for MeekerOn Monday night, overnighting in Vernal. In the morning, I grabbed a delicious coffee at one of the little cuppa houses and saw the work behind the petunia planters. Two miles of pink, purple and white wave petunias in gigantic tubs. Imagine the potting soil required and greenhouse time. They have always been a wonder. The big tanker truck with a long watering arm driving up main street at six a.m. I am sure they had to be watered twice a day in such arid hot climes. A lot of water. They lined the street, a defiance of what comes naturally.

I stopped at the Kenny reservoir. No else is ever there, as though it is its own Rattlesnake Point. The dogs love it.



Meeker was its usual warm -hearted, welcoming, hat-hanging place. They start with a pizza night. People I have known for twenty-five years are there, our annual get-together.

The very difficult running began the next morning. The scores will attest to the harshness of the conditions and the challenge of the fabulous sheep. The high was a three way tie at 70. I didn’t run the first day. Just watched. Mich Ferraro and Kak Weathers have now joined the dogging, happily for me. We all went to the White River for a recreational dog swim. And the Hallandras’ entertained us in style in the evening. All the while I was thinking of running Dorey, the next morning.



She didn’t let me down on the outrun and lift. Things were going well until I over flanked her. You could see her. I was unaware I had done it until the sheep turned up the field on the fetch, for not only a blow to my score but made the sheep pissy. And Dorey I am sure wondered where in the hell we were headed with this. She recovered sort of, for a good finish, very strong at the pen and a score of 72 that puts her in second for the the semifinals, second to Scot Glen and Don.

Tomorrow I run Monty.