Amanda Milliken - Bart and Meg

            My mother was the first to get sheep in our family.  It was hard to believe she was breaking with her suburban traditions and raising fresh lamb. But she did.   A neighbour had a single sheep that flocked with his cows and had not been shorn in two years.  He asked if it could join our flock and while we said yes, we could not catch it at shearing time, so it slipped by. 

            My sister Cathy got a Border Collie from Bill Wyatt of Tennessee.  We all thought it was a singularly clever dog to bring all those horses in, and wished we could get our setters to do that trick.  Once, she stopped up at mothers and watched the sheep and cattle from outside the fence in a meditative way, (which I now know to be showing us some eye.)  I said "Hey, Meg.  Get that sheep." and in five minutes, she put that uncatchable single in the barn.  I rushed to the house and told Mother we had to get one of these dogs and we did.  From a Kemptville horse vet, Cal Kobluk.  Cal's came from a Schaeffer guy from University of Pennsylvania.  Bart was my first Border Collie.  Interestingly, Cal Kobluk called a few weeks ago to get a Border Collie from me.

            He was a smart, engaging pet dog with his black belt in fetch.  We violated every good training principle in training him, but how were we to know what to do?  There was no one around to teach us anything.  No internet.  No books. An annual sheep expo in Toronto advertised a sheepdog training clinic with Glyn Jones (Bodfari).  I went to figure out how to train my dog.  Bear in mind I had no understanding of the outcome of training, so I didn't even know where I was headed.  Bart was the cleverest of the lot at the clinic and Glyn used him all day, to show everyone how to start  a dog.  I went home and did everything he said to do.  Bart's training generated a lot of community interest.  Mother's riding pals came over to watch him progress every week and he came along very well, becoming a useful dog. 

            The next year, I went back to Sheep Focus to do the next level of clinic.  At the registration, the money takers said I should enter the trial.  I asked what you had to do.  When they told me, I said OK.  Bart and I won our first open trial.  I meandered around after that with the dogs, for a year or two.   Cathy's Meg moved to our place.  When I got a bitch called Hazel, a granddaughter of Bart and Meg, I settled on sheepdogging as the sport I would do.  Thirty years later, I would still do it, if I could.