My kingdom for a barking dog: A critical history of sheepdog trialling with Border Collies, and why it matters to sheep

Abstract

According to Raymond and Lorna Coppinger, experts in canine behaviour, sheepdog trialling with Border Collies is mostly for fun. The British International Sheep Dog Society (ISDS), however, contends that trialling has the practical aim of improving the collie as a working dog. So who is right? I take a historical approach to answer this question, using the wealth of data contained in The Field, a magazine established in 1853, to investigate the sport’s history and relation to practical shepherding. Trialling in Britain started in 1873, and in the following decades, the dogs and shepherds’ trialling behaviour underwent a stylization that has clear overtones of genteel notions of manliness. Soon after the first trials, however, critics pointed out that the collies’ specific working style made them less, rather than more suitable for practical shepherding. Other critics objected that the course design did not reflect daily farm work and that training for the trials placed an unacceptable burden on the sheep. In response, the ISDS, established in 1906, restructured the trials to make them more ‘workmanlike.’ This did not end the discussion of their usefulness, however, which continued unabated. Today, in Britain and other sheep farming countries, many shepherds are critical of the trial collie and prefer a different type of dog. The trial collie, I conclude, is to be seen as a sporting dog, bred specifically for trialling. Their use is indeed mostly for fun. In the final section, I raise questions with respect to trialling and sheep welfare. I will discuss an alternative approach to shepherding in which the sheep are not driven but led by the shepherd. This alternative has practical merits and benefits sheep welfare.