They Rent Sheep, Don’t They?

Bored collie, rented sheep

Further evidence that my common refrain (sheep sport is growing, sheep work is dying) is true, the New York Times reports about “bored collies” getting just what they want for Christmas: to play with rented sheep.

In a Tale That Wags Dog Owners, They Rent Flocks for Bored Collies
Compulsive Sheep Herders Need a ‘Job’ to Entertain Them; ‘That’ll Do’
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
BATTLE GROUND, Wash.—Sue Foster knew what she needed to do when her border collie, Taff, was expelled from puppy school for herding the black Labs into a corner.
She rented some sheep.
Then she bought another border collie and rented some grazing land. Then she bought some sheep of her own. And a third border collie. Now, like the old lady who swallowed the fly, Ms. Foster keeps a llama to chase off the coyotes that threaten the lambs that go to market to finance the sheep that entertain her dogs.
Once upon a time, Americans got dogs for their sheep. Now they get sheep for their dogs.
“I never dreamed it would go this far,” says Ms. Foster, 56 years old.
Border collies, first bred along the frontier between England and Scotland, are compulsive herders, with instincts so intense they sometimes search for livestock behind the television when sheep appear on screen, says Geri Byrne, owner of the Border Collie Training Center, in Tulelake, Calif. Left unoccupied, they’ll dig up the garden, chew up the doggie bed or persecute the cat.
Herding experts—yes, there is such a thing—say it’s increasingly common for people who get border collies as pets to wind up renting or buying sheep just to keep their dogs busy. “It’s something that’s snowballing all the time,” says Jack Knox, a Scottish-born shepherd who travels the U.S. giving herding clinics.

Of note: Jack Knox is one of several UK shepherds who, failing to make a good living working sheep in their native land have found a lucrative calling winning US Sheep Trials and teaching the bored collies and the bored people who handle them the basics of “herding.”

Read more and be sure not to miss the video.

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About Christopher

Christopher Landauer is a fifth generation Colorado native and second generation Border Collie enthusiast. Border Collies have been the Landauer family dogs since the 1960s and Christopher got his first one as a toddler. He began his own modest breeding program with the purchase of Dublin and Celeste in 2006 and currently shares his home with their children Mercury and Gemma as well. His interest in genetics began in AP Chemistry and AP Biology and was honed at Stanford University.