on trial

At three years old Fly has become my most depended upon sheepdog. Not because she is necessarily the best dog in the team, that title still belongs to Mist, but she is full of energy and running and never gives up. Fly’s biggest problem has been her excessive speed and reluctance to listen to her ‘lay down’ command when she’s working a long way away. You can  imagine how dangerous it  can be if she chases the sheep too fast when she’s working on the cliffs, so her work on the coastal ground has so far been limited to what I would describe as the ‘easy jobs’.

But over the last few weeks I’ve believed that she’s finally ready to listen to me, so I decided that it was time to test her at a sheepdog trial. Sheepdogs frequently behave differently when taken to work in a new environment, and when you add in a long car journey, and the excitement of watching the other dogs at work it’s not surprising that the most commonly used excuse for a badly behaved dog at a trial is ’she never does that at home!’

So when our turn came to compete I walked onto the field with some trepidation. We started well, with Fly running 500 yards to the other end of the field to collect the sheep as fast as the wind. Unfortunately, she also returned the sheep to me at break-neck speed!  I spent the next five minutes bellowing ‘lay down’ as Fly decided that the art of sheepdog trialling was to get everything done as quickly s possible. We eventually walked off the course together with Fly appearing to grin from ear to ear, she’d really enjoyed her little outing. I, on the other hand had to face the fellow competitors. There were plenty of little laughs and comments about Fly’s speed, but the most telling comment of all came from a friend of mine ‘What do you call that dog? asked Roderick with a rye smile as I put her back in the Land rover. ‘Fly’ I replied  ’Funny’ he said ‘I could have sworn her name was ‘Lay Down!!’