By Mary Lou Campbell with Kathy Keats

An era has ended at Boywood Border Collies.

On Thursday, Jan 7, 2021, I said goodbye to one of the kindest, most courageous, biggest-hearted dogs I have ever known.

I remember the day I picked her out.

I looked down at the brand new litter of Border Collies, their eyes still closed, saw a tiny little half-white, half-black face and said, “She’s mine!”

Little did I know the adventure she was about to take me on.

I named her Dyna, short for Dynamite.

Dyna was unusual looking, a tiny smooth-coated dog with huge upright ears and a subdued personality that often had people questioning whether she was truly a BC, but then again, Dyna never really fit the Border Collie stereotype.

I could’ve set Dyna on the porch with a ‘Welcome’ sign around her neck like a garden ornament and she wouldn’t have budged. Definitely not typical for a working-bred sheepdog.

Dyna came into my life just as my two older sheepdogs, Boy...

We finally pointed our rental car toward Manchester airport, but not without a few adventures. We suddenly realized one of the crates we had acquired didn't have venting at the back, and would not be accepted at the airline. Thomas had gone off to market and we scrambled around looking for either a substitute crate we could use or a drill to put vent holes into the back. Finally, we phoned Thomas in a panic as our required time of departure was rapidly approaching.

Fortunately, Thomas was on his way back and with his typical friendly and gentlemanly demeanor calmly sorted the situation out for us by drilling some holes into the crate. It was a miracle of packing that got five dogs, five crates and all our luggage for the month into the Hyundai Santa Fe we were driving.

Naturally, because we were now running late the GPS took us on the worst possible route to the airport and we ended up stuck in morning traffic.

When we arrived, the rental company was also running late due to traffic...

Well, if you were going to have a bitch come into season, what better timing than the World Sheepdog Trial. Dogs had been sniffing at Mary Lou's Dyna for a couple of weeks so I took the liberty of enquiring about stud dogs in advance just in case the timing worked out. As it turned out, Bobby Dalziel's amazing Joe, two time winner of the Scottish National and the 2006 Supreme International Champion (won when he was only two years of age), had a free space on his dance card. We crossed our fingers that Dyna would be ready. It was going to be close.

In the meantime, we looked at several other dogs, and decided to bring a few back with us. A daughter of Jim Cropper's Reserve World Champion Sid, another young bitch who is a daughter of Denis Birchall's World Trial finalist Bill, and a pup that goes back to much of the great old Irish breeding were among our choices.

The big date between Joe and Dyna arrived, and the location behind cars in the large field car park felt like some sort of...

The day before the trial started, there was a big parade in the city of Penrith. Mary Lou and I elected to drive to the parade route instead of taking the bus as Dyna was in season.

However, we had no idea where the parade route started. By the time we found parking, we were running late, and since we had the Canadian flag, it was kind of important for us to be in the parade.

We saw a street lined with people, and deduced that was probably the parade route (duh). We ran to the road, but then weren't sure whether to run up the street or down the street. We decided to run in the direction everyone was looking on the assumption that they knew more about it than we did! People started cheering as we ran by. Handlers from several other countries who were in the same boat started to follow us on the mistaken idea that we knew where we were going. After sprinting through half the town we found the throng of handlers milling about waiting to start the parade.

It was quite a spectacular...

There almost wasn't a World Trial.

The remnants of Hurricane Katia's fury tore down tents and fences and left the World Trial site looking like, in Thomas Longton's words, a war zone. You can see the collapsed marquee and toppled fencing in the picture. 

We could only get a quick picture or two as we were directed away, as the site is quite dangerous and no competitors are being allowed on the site for safety reasons. The line of flags you can see on the ground is a line of collapsed tents.

The weather is still poor today, windy and heavy rain and everyone is scrambling to salvage what they can. The vendors and large fair running in conjunction with the trial has been postponed until the weekend, which allows organizers scrambling to get the fields ready for the trials one less thing to have ready for Thursday.

Even so, spirits seem good around the trial site, and on the positive side, no one was hurt and there is enough time to recover. We'll see what tomorrow brings...

We spent the morning with Thomas Longton, who is not only a brilliant sheepdog man, but a gracious host. If you ever want to experience a piece of rural English life in luxury, even if you don't run dogs, check out The Shepherd's Barn at www.longtonsheepdogs.com.

Thomas talked to us about sheep behaviour, picking a dog, judging and lots about handling. It was obvious this man was from a family that was involved with sheepdogs for generations. These people have grown up with sheep and dogs to a degree it is difficult for us to understand, as their culture is so rural. There are large tractors driving down major city roads on a regular basis!

Both Mary Lou and I had a bit of cabin fever from Mary Lou's illness, and since we had lost some time last week, decided to go visit another master sheepdog man and good friend, Gordon Watt.

Naturally, we underestimated the driving time and the sat nav (GPS to you North Americans) took us over hill and dale (or was it a moor?). With Hurricane...

Okay, now we know why the cross of Blue-faced Leicester and Swaledale sheep are called Mules. Saturday's trial was on a nice sized field and as Mary Lou still wasn't feeling 100%, we decided to run early and get back to the barn, even though the sheep would likely be better later in the day when they were rerun.

The mule sheep were hard to gauge...they could run like the wind or turn and fight at the drop of a hat. Talk about touchy... These sheep sized up a dog in seconds. Wee Dyna went out and marched them around the field and other than a bit of trouble at the pen, had a very fair run that put her in the prizes.

Craig came on too strong at the pen and needless to say these shrewd ewes weren't having any of it! Mary Lou held up her end to put Canada in the money.

Thomas also ran his dogs in the trial, and it was a treat to watch such a seasoned competitor work the mules with his different dogs. I learned a few penning tricks in the process, to be applied the next time I see mules!...

It's quite a different lifestyle to get up, do some stuff around the house, and then drive 10 minutes to a trial. Saturday's trial was hosted by Denis in the big field, and is a popular trial - handlers don't get many opportunities to challenge their dogs with that kind of a long outrun. People were coming and going, trying to juggle their schedules and all the things they needed to do before heading to the International in a couple of days. When one lives on an island, one lives by ferry and airline schedules.

Although they had been calling for poor weather all week, the conditions were ideal. Mary Lou finished 7th with Dyna on 93 points, just out of the placings by a point (it is always to 6 placings, no matter the number of competitors and there were a sizable number at the trial), and Craig and I placed 4th with a 94! Talk about tight competition!

Denis won the trial on 98 points, not much room for error around here. Man, these guys (it is almost entirely men) can turn panels!

...

We've decided that it is easier to tow a huge trailer in Chicago traffic during an Oprah Winfrey event than drive on the left hand side of a ridiculously narrow road that has a 100 km speed limit and a stone wall within inches of the side-view mirror. We've now had a few up close and personals with the brush on the "verge" (edge of the road), I hope the rental car isn't scratched. I think one road we were on through the Wicklow mountains was actually a sheep trod in disguise. The trial we were heading to was an hour and a half away which, when it feels like you are about to have a head-on collision at any moment, seems like a four hour drive. No wonder 30 minutes is more the norm.

There were about 35 runners in this local trial. Handlers with multiple dogs went first, and then when everyone is down to a single dog, they do a draw so that all the single dogs run on rerun sheep. The sheep were a mixed flock, and touchy only begins to describe them. It wasn't unusual for there to be a...

We were invited to stay at Denis Birchall's for a few days, and today Denis suggested we go out to "the big field". He loaded up some Scottish Blackface sheep into his small (sized for Irish roads) stock trailer and we headed off.

"The big field" was an understatement. It was a massive field, wide with an 800 yard outrun and young cows bouncing around. Denis shooed the cattle away and trailered the sheep down to the far end of the field, where white sheep looked like bits of rice and darker sheep were pretty much invisible.

Both Mary Lou and I were able to send our dogs the distance, 800 yards being a first for both dogs, and it didn't take long before they were listening well at that distance, if only I had binoculars for eyes so I could give them the correct commands! Driving the sheep back up that length of field was great experience for the dogs.

Another first for me was setting out both groups of sheep for a double lift by myself. Trying to get the second group out in time was...