Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 17, 1990 TAG: 9005170339
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LEESBURG LENGTH: Medium
Punctuated by the short pips of dog whistles from their handlers, each dog will herd the sheep between gates and into a pen on a course at Oatlands Plantation.
Oatlands' Sheep Dog Trials, in its sixth year, is the third leg of the nationally sanctioned Virginia Triple Crown.
"You have 10 minutes out there," said Candice Terry of Leesburg, who is in charge of the competition.
"Years ago, some little shepherd said `My dog is better than your dog,' " Terry said. "This is a trial to show you what your dog can do.
The dogs are judged on how straight they herd the sheep, not on speed, she said.
John Templeton, a dog handler from Scotland, is judging the event. Templeton, 56, who runs a dairy and raises sheep in Fenwick, Scotland, said he also looks at how well-controlled the dogs are and how they run out and gather the sheep.
Templeton said he has been entering border collies in competitions for 40 years and competed for the first time in this country in 1973. At that first competition in Maryland, only five or six dogs had a chance of winning, he said. Now any of the 60 to 65 dogs competing has a shot at first prize.
"The handlers are getting a lot more experience," Templeton said. They're also going to Great Britain to "see how it's done," and to buy dogs, he said.
"It's come a long way in these last few years," he said.
The top 30 dogs from Saturday's competition will compete Sunday. The winner's owner gets $1,000, and nine other prizes are awarded, Terry said.
The sport is growing in popularity as sponsorships for prizes picks up, she said. Ten years ago, there were 12 trials in the United States. Last year there were 226, she said.
"It's a circuit just like the race car circuit," she said. "For a while there were only a very few people who knew how to handle border collies."
People are seeing more border collies competing at state and local fairs, said Marsha Ward, editor of American Border Collie News, in King City, Calif.
"We are getting a lot more visibility," she said. The Oatlands trials has had 1,000 to 1,200 spectators, she said.
Ward said the six-year-old magazine had 200 subscribers in 1986 when she took over and now has about 800 across the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Zimbabwe.
"They [the dogs] have this natural instinct for herding," she said. "It's fairly easy to train them to do that. But you have to do a bit of fine-tuning.
"When you're out there working your dog, it's kind of like you're a team. When you send them out, the sheep all are different," she said. "The sheep do not know whether the dog is a herding dog or a potential predator, and it takes skill from the dog and handler to herd the sheep."
Terry, who has a sheep farm, said about half the dogs that regularly compete are farm dogs, the rest are professional show dogs.
"Some of these people are professional handlers. This is their living," she said. "It's nothing for them to be here this weekend and drive to Oregon the next weekend."
by CNB