The stock dog competition at the Harvest Showdown brings out some of the best trained dogs in the area to show sheep who's boss and herd them around the course.
This year's big winner was Campbell Forsyth, who had two border collies, the winning 5 year old Meg and 2 year old Craig, in the competition.
A rancher and a breeder of border collies, Forsyth says that a good stock dog begins with breeding. He says from there, he starts training with sheep and eventually on his ranch they go on to herd cattle, and he says they go to cattle trials most often.
It does take a lot of training to get the dogs able to herd effectively, and Forsyth says the younger dog has been trained for about a half hour each day for the past year.
While for an outside observer it might seem like the sheep at the trials were on the stubborn side, Forsyth had no complaints, saying that it was a great trial overall and a good preparation for the upcoming Agribition.
"I've been coming to this trial forever. The sheep today weren't bad, I've seen some bad, bad, bad sheep."
Having sheep on the stubborn side isn't necessarily a bad thing anyway, he notes, because it also gives the dogs an opportunity to show how they can take control of the situation. He was proud of the way his younger dog is able to control animals with his eyes. While dogs might need to bite stock in order to get them to move - they only have their teeth and their eyes as tools, Forsyth explains - the younger dog was able to stare down the sheep to get them to do what he wanted, a rare quality.
"It's magical eye contact."
The dogs really get the credit for the performance, and Forsyth says that they're like a hired man, doing something they love to do, and they love herding stock more than anything else.
He says that they're a great pet for active people, since they're extremely smart animals that are gentle and easy to deal with as part of the family, though he says they need lots of activity or they will try herding everything they see, "from chickens to children."
He says it's the intelligence of the dog that makes them such a vital part of his cattle operation.
"That's why we can train them, they're so smart. It's not that we're smart, they are."
