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Jake and Mist in print
added by David on Wednesday October 6, 2010 at 9:33 pmLast May I spent an interesting day in the company of photographer Tim Flach. He was looking for a picture of working sheepdogs to feature in his forthcoming book. Jake and Mist, being used to posing for the camera duly obliged and after many hours spent working the sheep to and fro past Tim’s camera, he had an image that he was happy with and departed with some haste as the deadline for the book to be finished was drawing near. The result Dogs Gods was published this month and contains some of the most remarkable images of dogs (of every shape and size) that I have ever seen.
Tim had spent over a year traveling the world to collect the pictures and this book provides an amazing insight into the lengths that people will go to for the appearance of their dogs. However, in the sheepdog world the phrase ‘brains before beauty’ has always been the motto, and the working Border Collie has great strength in its genetic diversity. So none of the sheepdogs in the Borough farm pack look alike, I judge them only by their working ability.
But when it comes to both brains and beauty, I have to admit that Jake is loaded with both!!!
Jake at work on Morte Point in Tim Flach’s ‘Dogs Gods’
Eddie gets lost in the fog!
added by David on Wednesday September 22, 2010 at 10:14 pmEddie has always been a highly functional sheepdog, he’s good at working in the sheep pens, rounding up big flocks and he works very hard. But there are some things that Eddie is not so good at, like remembering his left and right!
But this week Eddie had a problem of a completely unexpected sort. on Tuesday morning we had set off to check on the sheep on a hilly bit of ground in Mortehoe. It had been foggy for most of the morning, and as I drove up the hill on the quad bike the fog got thicker, and I had only gone a few hundred yards when I noticed that Eddie had gone missing! I didn’t think much of it, as even in thick fog a sheepdog should easily be able to find his way back to the starting point (in this case the land-rover) So when I returned to the land rover ten minutes later and found he wasn’t there, I was a little surprised. I retraced the route that I had taken, but still no Eddie, so after a bit of calling and whistling I decided that I’d better check that he hadn’t tried to walk the mile and a half back along the road to the farm.
But there was no sign of him on the road and when I returned to Mortehoe fifteen minutes later, I was beginning to get a little worried. Just then Heidi from the village came running over ” have you lost a dog?” Somewhat relieved I said that I had, and was told the story of Eddie’s morning wander. Once lost in the fog, he must have wandered back to the land rover, but instead of waiting there he jumped the gate into the car park. Then smelling the morning bake of croissants in the village shop decided to pay a visit. Once inside Mel, the shop owner thought that she recognized him as another dog in the village. so put a lead on him and shut him in the stairwell of the next door flat. However, once Mel had locked him in, Eddie spotted an open window on the first floor landing and jumped through it, landing on the flat roof of the kitchen next door! Here he was completely marooned until another neighbor was summoned to rescue him with a ladder. The rescue which was just in progress when I arrived.
He didn’t seem at all embarrassed at being passed back through the window into my arms, I put him on a lead and he walked, presumably putting it down to ‘just one of those things that happens when you are an Eddie!’
Thank you to Mel at Mortehoe Village stores and to Heidi at Town farm house b&b for their help in the rescue of Eddie
Alfie’s new best friend
added by David on Thursday August 19, 2010 at 12:46 pmIf you have followed ‘Mist Sheepdog tales’ on Channel Five, you might well have spotted that Fern is far and away the grumpiest sheepdog on Borough Farm. She does what she pleases when she pleases and now that she’s almost eleven years old, she has decided that she wants to retire to the kitchen. However, Alfie has been living in the kitchen for the past month or so, and we’ve been a bit worried about the grumpiest dog on the farm joining him…… but perhaps we’ve been worrying unnecessarily.
Fern seems to have decided that she will take on the role of ‘Great Aunt’ and spends her time playing with the young pup, allowing him to pull her tail and bite her ears!
So we’re not quite sure at the moment if Fern has really turned over a new leaf, or whether she has just decided that the only way to achieve her ambition of retirement in the kitchen, is to pretend to be a great babysitter!
fly’s first outing
added by David on Thursday August 19, 2010 at 12:26 pmLast week it was time to wean the lambs away from the ewes on Morte Point, and with Fern nearly eleven years old, it was time to give Fly her first taste of gathering the sheep on the coastal ground.
I’m always a little worried when working a young dog amongst gorse and bracken and near the cliffs for the first time. Up until now Fly has been trained and worked in fenced fields, and would have no understanding of sheep grazing near the cliff edge. So I kept her close at hand for most of the time and didn’t let her go any where that I couldn’t see her. She did try to run through a patch of solid gorse and seemed surprised that she just bounced off! But for the most part she did pretty well, and I was particularly pleased that she was beginning to run wide through thick patches of scrub, in order to head off the sheep. It’s a long way to go before she’s up to the standard of Jake and Mist, but it was certainly another positive step on the path to becoming one of my top sheepdogs.
fly’s surprise
added by David on Sunday July 25, 2010 at 10:23 pmWe have lots of arrivals on Borough farm, mainly expected, some unexpected, like the lamb that was born on Morte Point this week (in the middle of July!) but when I opened the kennels one morning a few weeks ago I had a surprise to beat most…..
Fly failed to materialise so I poked my head inside the door to be greeted by the unexpected whimper of a single tiny black and white pup (the result of a brief dalliance with Jake when he’d been returned to the wrong kennel for ten minutes). I admit that I did groan a bit, as Fly having a puppy in the middle of the summer wasn’t really part of my plans. Fly wagged her tail and seemed unsure as to whether she was to be a working or stay-at-home mother. Jake wagged his tail, tried to look innocent and gave me that “wasn’t me” look that he usually saved for a when he’d been told off for barking.
My wife and children quickly arrived at the scene and whisked puppy ‘Alfie’ and his mother off to the post-natal ward in the kitchen. Leaving me to contemplate how long it would be before my youngest member of the team would return to work.
I needn’t have worried, by lunchtime Fly had decided that Alfie was in good human hands and wouldn’t miss her if she popped out to work for an hour…. such is the life of a working mother!!
Alfie
the old timers
added by David on Wednesday June 30, 2010 at 1:05 pmAs I always seem to write about the younger members of the sheepdog team, I thought it was about time that the old timers got a mention!
Gail is now over 11 years old and moved into the kitchen several years ago. She spends most of her time sleeping, and eating just about anything that she can find, but still can’t resist the opportunity to come and lend a hand at work. She often arrives half way through a job, sometimes even deciding to gather the sheep in a distant field. The problem is that she now runs at not much more than a walking pace, so for some of her more ambitious outings she needs her overnight bag! Ernie is over ten, and is still quite active despite his poorly front leg. He loves to come on every outing riding on the quod bike, and helps with the work as and when he pleases. His real forte is still helping with the training of the young dogs, and he will appear whenever I take one of the youngsters from the kennel, heading off to the field on front of us.
They have both been feeling the heat this summer, and with the ponds drying up in the recent dry spell, Gail in particular has been prone to taking a bath in the sludge at the bottom of the pond. This makes her most unpopular when she returns to roost under the kitchen table! I’ve provided a shallow water bath in the yard for the pair of them, which they both retire to after any brief attempt at work, it may not keep them completely clean but at least Gail doesn’t leave a trail of mud across the kitchen floor!
the joy of Roy!
added by David on Tuesday June 8, 2010 at 2:22 pmIt seems a long time ago that I last wrote about Roy, and I guess that the reason that I haven’t felt the need to update for so long, is that his progress has been so very slow!
He’s now over 2 years old and some but not all of his puppyish over enthusiasm has gone. He can now perform simple jobs of work, he’s good in the sheep pens and in the evenings he has his training sessions. He knows his left and right, his stop and go, so he’s a long way down the road to becoming a proper working sheepdog, but whether he will ever be up to the standard of the rest of the Borough Farm pack remains to be seen!
The end of an era
added by David on Tuesday June 8, 2010 at 2:09 pmIt was with the greatest of sadness that we said goodbye to Swift a few weeks ago. She was over 14 years old and had spent the last few years living in the farmhouse kitchen, where she loved to be fussed by us all.
Swift has been a very special dog for me, in her prime she featured in my first diversification project,’The Year of the Working Sheepdog’. Together with her working partner Greg, she represented England in the International sheepdog trials of 1999, and of course was a major part of the displays at Borough Farm. More recently she was the matriacal figure in Mist’s adventures on Channel Five.
For many years she accompanied me when giving evening talks on travels far and wide. She would sit on a chair studying the slides on the screen, before rounding up the pictures of sheep, or any other sheep substitute that she came across. On one occasion, with no pictures to focus on, she demonstrated her working abilities by rounding up a suit of armour to command.
But above all I’ll miss her fearless working abilities, utter devotion to duty and perfect character, qualities that live on in her grand-daughter Mist.
Swift 1996-2010
Fly
added by David on Friday April 30, 2010 at 11:54 amThis March Fly reached her second birthday, and it’s an age by which I usually hope that a sheepdog is ready to take on it’s responsibilities as a working member of the pack. So this spring Fly has been with me on the daily rounds, gathering and moving flocks and helping to catch the odd lamb. She’s not quite fully trained, she can still be a bit too keen to hold up a sheep, and sometimes forgets to stop when she’s told, but overall I’m pretty please that I can now call her a working dog rather than just a pup in training.
roy of the rovers
added by David on Monday October 19, 2009 at 11:20 amYou may have read about ‘Roy’, my recent recruit to the pack. He arrived at Borough farm back in January and although he show great potential, he’s certainly a challenge! Roy is never unhappy, even when he’s being told off for gross misbehaviour during a training session, he just wags his tail. To look at him you would think that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth
He gets frustrated when he’s not the one out and working, sometimes he just barks to show his frustration, but on one occasion during the summer he showed his dis-pleasure at being left behind by eating my crook! However, worse was to come….
A few weeks ago he was left in the truck while I was out training with Fly, I heard a crash and a bang coming from the direction of the Land rover, and looked around to see Roy looking out of the hole where one of the back windows should be. He’d ripped the rubber mounting from the window, the glass had dropped out and there he was with his head through the hole, wagging his tail!
