North Alabama Scottish Festival and Highland Games
Sheep Herding Demonstration
One of the most interesting features of the North Alabama Scottish Festival is the sheep and goose herding demonstrations provided by Stan Moore and his Border Collies.
Border Collies are an amazing breed. Their skills and instincts make them a popular sheepdog across Scotland and around the world. They are still a quite necessary part of today’s modern sheep farming. A Border Collie can separate a ewe from a flock and drive it to the lambing pens better than any other method. It is much more difficult to do the work without them.
Although they are best known by their white and black coats, Border Collies can have many different coat colors. In general, though, the black and white is preferred and shepherds often select black and whites for breeding over merle or tan dogs.
The Border Collie is said to have a "magical eye", i.e. the power to control sheep simply by staring at them. It may be that this ability is a remnant of the Border’s wolf ancestry. If this is true, the Border Collie is an amazing balance between killer and protector. The wolf in him awakens ancient instincts in his sheep, that freeze or flee; the dog in him uses these responses to direct the flock according to the wishes of his owner.
The Border Collie is born with the instinct to "gather" the sheep to the shepherd and this trait makes him most useful on the hills and moors of Scotland. They have the tendency to "clap" or go down and face the sheep with their belly close to the ground. When the dog drops down and fixes its stare on the sheep, he is producing a very predatory profile. The Border Collie’s crouch is almost its signature. Due to the long distances the dogs are required to drive, they are often separated from their handlers. Independence and intelligence are required for a dog to be effective in this situation.
STAN MOORE AND "FRIEND"
Border Collies have a "sixth sense" about sheep. Responding to hand or voice signals from Stan, or whistles if they’re at a distance, these remarkable dogs maneuver a flock of sheep around a pasture, through gates, around obstacles, and into the pen.
The command "Away to me," tells the dog to swing counterclockwise to head off the sheep. "Come bye" sends the dog into a clockwise curve. Decisions — flank left, flank right, slow, stop, come on — are commanded and countermanded in fractions of a second. They are made by Stan, but ratified and then executed by the dog in an exquisite complexity.
And Border collies — famous for their intelligence and workaholic tendencies — apparently know what they're doing at least as well as their handlers. It would be nice if they could simply converse with the sheep, as Pig did in the movie "Babe". But even without the benefit of language, these dogs seem preternaturally able to "read" a sheep's movements and intentions — far better than your average human.
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