International Sheepdog Trials: Every sheepdog has its day...
A SOFT, sodden afternoon on the rolling hills of the Roscommon-Galway border, and as the blanket of mist soaks me to the skin, I watch an artist at work.
With the poise and deftness of an orchestral conductor, Con McGarry majestically beckons and controls a flock of 360 sheep.
It is a remarkable sight: a wave of livestock rolling up and down the green fields, like a long, white ribbon undulating in the wet, foggy gloom. If Con is a conductor, his ‘baton’ is his four-year-old collie, Megan, who is no bigger than a large cat, and as thin and wiry as an athlete. There’s an almost telepathic connection between man and dog. Nudged along by the faintest of high-note whistles from Con, Megan sneakily and surreptitiously goes about her tasks.
From Friday, in this remote, beautiful corner of the West, Ireland will host the Devenish Nutrition International Sheepdog Trials for the first time in eight years. 20,000 visitors, including from the UK, Europe, Scandinavia and America, will descend on Hanley’s Farm, in Kilbegnet, Co Roscommon, for three days.
This is the World Cup of the dog and sheep world: not only are RTÉ decamping from Donnybrook to broadcast it, the BBC are sending an 18-strong team, taking over a local hotel, to make a documentary about the event.
This is the first time the trials have been held in Connacht, with 100 competitors and their dogs taking part.
John Hanley, the chairperson, whose family farm is the venue, says: “Genuinely, when it comes to sheepdog competitions around the world, it doesn’t get any bigger than this.” And if this is the World Cup, then Con McGarry is one of its Ronaldos. A man with the charm and patience of farming stock, Con, 60, has been Irish national champion on six occasions, three times champion of the BBC’s iconic farming programme, One Man and His Dog, and twice winner in world trials, in 2002 and 2005.
In the current rankings, Con and Megan are sixth in the world. So if anyone can train me in the fine art of controlling a dog and a large flock of sheep, it’s surely Con.
Because we meet on the day of last week’s historic Dublin-Donegal All-Ireland semi-final, he uses a sporting metaphor. “Like all footballers,” he says, “only the special ones make it to this level and the trick is to make those special dogs work for you.” That is easier said than done. Megan is indifferent to me, her eyes and ears reserved for her master and his voice; and the sheep scatter at the first sight of me, with the terror of children if a Halloween monster were to descend on their school playground. And yet, slowly but surely, again with the subtlety of a classical music conductor, Con shows me the ropes as we squelch through the mud. “For instance, I say to people who come to buy dogs off of me: ‘Just wait and watch.’ So, I leave a gate open for the dog to gather and herd the sheep through, and nearly five times out of 10 the potential new owners will go to close the gate before the dog has done its work, thinking they’re helping the dog, but that’s entirely wrong.
“You have to let the dog gently do its own thing. With a good sheepdog, it’s bred into them, like a champion horse, it’s in their pedigree, in their blood to gather, to be on the look-out, to follow your commands.” And, miraculously, it works. As we stand at the bottom of the hill, Con shows how to let Megan be just the right distance from us, around 150 yards away: too far, and she’ll not properly pick up on our commands; too near, and we’d crowd her as she goes about her genetic ability to control the flock.
“It’s like training any dog,” he says. “To come to heel, to fetch, to sit and to stand. But with sheepdogs, what’s also particularly important is the use of this whistle.”
The crucial, tiny instrument in question is as thin and bent as the lid of an open can of beans. But the magic this wafer of stainless steel conjures up, at least in between Con’s dexterous lips, is pure theatre.
To guide Megan, who is the perfect distance from us by now, to gather the sheep to the right and down into a sharp, narrow gully, Con emits a high-pitched tinkle, like birdsong at dawn; to guide her to the left, he lowers the tone, a touch more muscular in sound, and Megan instantly responds, funnelling and gathering the flock to a small gate where I stand watching in wonderment.
The age at which sheepdogs come into their prime, Con says, is between five and eight years old, which means Megan is a child prodigy. Con worked in England for many years, but moved back home 20 years ago, and he is now the Irish national president of the International Sheepdog Society. He bought his first sheepdog for a small flock on his farm near Tulsk, Co. Roscommon, and hasn’t looked back since. But this weekend’s trials will, once more, push both Con and Megan to the limits of their respective skills. It’s hard to convey the precision required to win at sheepdog trials.
The demands are extraordinary, like ballroom dancing in a wet field. Because in a series of qualifying rounds, the masters and their dogs have to undertake a bewildering, exacting series of manoeuvres: fetching sheep from precisely 400 metres, herding them into a tiny, makeshift, 40-metre ‘pen’, ferreting out one or two particular sheep and guiding them back and forth, and on and on it goes in its complexity and rigour.
“It’s exciting and it’s demanding, but it’s what we love,” says Con. “It might be in the dogs’ blood, in Megan’s blood, but it’s also in our blood: to stand on the hillside and gather, and to be the very best of those who are at it.”
And as I leave that drenched Roscommon hillside, you can’t help but wonder at this ancient, rural endeavour, seen, perhaps, by so many these days as an anachronism, a boring throw-back to the past. Because in an age of iPhones and Twitter, I, for one, will no longer laugh at a man and his dog.
- www.devenishnutrition.com
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