WITH MAUD GONE and Pearl becoming older, slower and more deaf, it became apparent that I really needed a fit, young replacement. So I went in search of a new border collie. I knew that my requirements were going to be tough to satisfy. As I was now away from home quite regularly working on Countryfile I knew I would not have time to train a puppy, which would be my usual method of taking on a new dog, and is something I have always enjoyed in the past. I was looking for a middle-aged bitch – so about five or six years old – who was well trained, but who would also work for other members of my team when I was away. As we run Cotswold Farm Park and have lots of visitors, it was very important that she would be kind natured, good with children and definitely didn’t nip like old Carlo. I also wanted to be able to take her away filming with me when the opportunity arose, so I wanted a dog that was happy to travel and stay away overnight, and who would not be fazed by a variety of different situations. Yes, I know, this was a big ask.
The first time I saw Peg was in photographs and I have to say she was quite an unusually marked border collie, and I was unsure about her. But if you are a working farmer like me, you don’t judge a sheepdog on its looks, and when I met her, I realised what a beautiful dog she is.
Peg was a highly trained, successful trialling dog whose life had been overtaken by tragedy. Her owner, a dedicated sheepdog trialler called Steve Barry, had died of a sudden, unexpected heart attack while he was out walking his dogs. He was living alone and nobody in his family wanted to take on a sheepdog, so a very good friend of Steve’s, Meryl Fox, became temporary custodian of his two dogs, a puppy and a trained trialling bitch, Peg, who was just beginning to win prizes. Meryl set about finding permanent homes for them.
This was in 2014, and at roughly the same time, I asked my great friend and the expert I always turn to, Dick Roper, if he knew of any sheepdogs that matched my difficult requirements. I knew it was a long shot, as fully trained dogs rarely come up for sale – if they are good the farmer or shepherd wants to keep them, and if they are getting rid of them there may well be a problem with them.
Of course, top breeders do sell trained dogs, and at the sheepdog auctions really good dogs can command high prices. The record is just under £15,000, but that’s exceptional, with a good dog costing £2,000–£3,000. I wasn’t in the market at those kind of prices and, besides, I wanted a working dog to help on my farm, not a top trialling dog. Although that’s exactly what I now have in Peg …
Dick looked at a couple of collies for me but felt they weren’t right. Then he heard about the plight of Peg. He suggested we might be a perfect match, but first of all I had to be carefully vetted by Meryl. She was very keen to make sure that Peg went to a really good home, and so she wanted to see me with Peg, to see how we reacted to each other. She brought Peg to the farm to meet me, and we immediately hit it off. There was something in the set of her head, the intelligent, inquisitive eyes and the good nature that brought her straight up to me, even though I was a stranger. Dogs, as I have said, have a sense that tells them which human beings are going to be their friends and which to be wary about: I always find when I’m visiting someone’s house that their dog will make a beeline for me and settle down pressed against my leg. But there was something a bit extra about Peg, as if she recognised a kindred spirit in me. I knew without hesitation that I wanted her, and I crossed my fingers that Meryl, who took the vetting process very seriously, would think I was a suitable new owner for her.
With Meryl’s agreement, and after a two-week probation, I bought Peg and she came to live at Bemborough. She and Steve had been very close; apparently she sat on his lap while he was driving his quad bike. She would also run towards him and then jump up into his arms for a cuddle when he asked her to. When she lived with Meryl she slept inside the house, but as she is a working dog I wanted to kennel her outside. So I bought a new, roomy kennel from Timberbuild and installed it by the farm back door, so that I could let her out and spend time with her with ease. The right kennel is very important: it needs to have a good-size run to give plenty of fresh air and a warm, dry area to sleep in at night. At the end of Peg’s kennel there is an insulated boxed area where she can curl up in the straw, snug against frosty nights. On a hot summer’s day she can sit on the top of it, in the shade, to keep cool.
I spent quite a bit of time for the first few days sitting with her in her kennel, letting her build confidence and trust in me. I was aware that she’d been through major changes in her life, losing Steve and then settling with Meryl before coming to me, so I gave her extra attention to help her settle in.
She’s now very happy in her kennel – collies love having their own space. She also likes to wander into our kitchen, which most sheepdogs don’t do, but which she was allowed to do when she lived with Steve and so we let her continue (there’s an old saying that when a sheepdog is brought into the house to lie in front of the fire, it knows its days are numbered). She gets on with our house dogs, and the kids and Charlie love her.
There was only one big problem with Peg when she first arrived. Every sheepdog is trained to the voice commands and whistles of its owner, and although there are some standard ones, with perhaps a few variations on each, the whistles in particular are very individual. Although plenty of people had seen Steve running Peg at trials, there wasn’t any video of him and nobody could be exactly sure of Steve’s whistles and commands. Steve was a very good whistler, with his fingers not a metal whistle, and I’m OK at whistling, but I’m not in his league. As for voice commands, Steve had a loud, booming Welsh voice, and I admit I have tried to imitate it when I’m out with her in a field far away from anyone hearing me …
Meryl had discovered how to make Peg go left, right and stop, but she wasn’t performing as well as she could, because she clearly was a bit hazy about the commands. We tried out the standard ones, with mixed success.
OK, so here are the basics. Stop, walk-on, left and right. For stop you can use the verbal command ‘sit’ or ‘lie down’ or ‘down’, or even ‘stop’. After a few goes, I discovered ‘lie down’ was what she reacted to best and for the whistle a straight blast and she would drop to the ground. For walk-on she responded well to what I have used with my other dogs; simply saying ‘on’ or two short, sharp whistles. Run to the left was the standard ‘come by’. My other dogs just go on ‘by’. Right is usually ‘away’, and an extra command when you want to pick up some sheep that have been left behind is ‘look back’. These were my usual verbal commands, and Peg generally reacted well to them.
But the trouble is, when a dog is working at the far side of a field and there’s a wind blowing, you need the whistle command because they won’t hear you shouting. With my sheepdogs I’ve trained from puppyhood, like Fenn, Maud and Pearl, I have simply made up my own whistles, and all three worked to the same ones. But these improvised whistles didn’t work with Peg.
Apparently Steve had a very strong whistle, using his teeth rather than the plastic mouth whistle that many shepherds use. I can whistle with my mouth but my whistle is not that strong. What I had to do was try and work out the whistles that Peg understood for ‘come by’ and ‘away’. Despite standing in the field with her trying various different pitches and tones, I wasn’t really getting anywhere.
So Meryl and I took Peg to see Dick.
Dick whistles brilliantly with his mouth, like Steve did. He claims it is due to his slightly crooked front tooth that got knocked about when he played rugby. Dick experimented with various whistles until he found the ones that worked for her. They are fairly standard whistles, although not ones that Dick himself normally uses. As soon as she heard whistles she recognised, you could almost see her relief, and she was very keen to get out in the field, working the sheep.
When Dick had her running well, I took out my phone and recorded him whistling. He and Meryl thought it was very funny that it took me a few minutes to work out how to use my phone to record: they teased me that, as I make TV programmes, I really ought to understand the technology better. But in the end I had a good recording, which I played to myself in the car and practised as I was driving for several weeks until I knew them. Duncan, my business partner, thought it was really bizarre when he rang me one day and after we finished chatting I somehow left the phone line open, and all he could hear at the other end was me whistling the commands …
I got there in the end but it hasn’t been easy. Under pressure, when something dramatic is happening with the sheep, I sometimes automatically revert to the whistles I used for the other dogs. For instance, to send them right my usual whistle is low and up, with a tail, but for Peg it has to be low and high. So in a crisis I make matters worse by giving a whistle she doesn’t understand.
Dick’s advice to me, and the problems of taking on a ready-trained dog, made a good feature for Countryfile, and we filmed Dick putting me though my paces with Peg. He told me off for gesticulating so much: sheepdogs should not be looking at the shepherd, but using their ear to hear the commands. So me flapping my arms about was at best pointless, and at worst a distraction. I’m a person who naturally uses my arms when I am talking, and I have also been taught to use my arms to give commands to gundogs. So it went against nature for me to stick my hands in my pockets while controlling Peg, but that’s what Dick made me do.
Luckily for me, my dogs have always obeyed the voice and whistle commands and taken no notice of my arms. But there’s a danger that a dog can become ‘hand trained’ rather than voice trained. Dick had one young lad who came to him for training and every time he told the dog what to do, the dog did a full pirouette before setting off. Dick realised that he was taking no notice of the voice command and was watching for the hand signal. When Dick told the lad to put his hands in his pockets the dog could not perform at all. As he was a mature dog, it was probably too late to retrain him, and he worked well enough if he got a clear hand signal. But that limits the distance at which he could work, as he always had to have a clear sight of his master, and meant there was inevitably a delay while he twizzled round, plus he wouldn’t be able to work for anyone else.
Dick also taught me that the strength of my whistle or my voice command is another way of communicating with the dog. A strong command or whistle means ‘Do it now, fast’. A softer one means ‘Let it happen more moderately’. For example, the ‘stop’ command can change from a flat out ‘drop down NOW’ to ‘slow down, canter, trot, then down’. I had been struggling to get Peg to go down quickly, and that was because my command was too weak.
I haven’t got these new whistles off to perfection: sometimes my right hand whistle makes Peg look back over her shoulder, as if to make sure of what I meant. She doesn’t ping off immediately, as she would have to in trialling, but that’s not what I’m trying to achieve, and we are working well enough together.
Dick can fine tune the commands he uses with his own dogs. For instance, if the dog is going wide he can put an accent into his whistle which tells it to go wider. He has so many little additions, and seeing him work his dogs is like watching a masterclass, which is why he’s the best in the country.
You need a very good, brainy dog to be able to work at that level. It’s also a question of personality. A schoolboy who hates exams will go into a funk in the exam room and fail the exam even though he has done all the revision and knows all the answers. In the same way, some dogs are sensitive and can’t cope with too many commands. They have done all the training, know all the commands, but they will only ever be good working dogs, not top level trial dogs, because they can’t cope with working in different environments and with strange sheep. Like the rest of us, dogs have their limits. Dick knows dogs that have been brilliant in training, learnt all the commands well, have the speed, the fitness and everything a great trialling dog needs, but their temperament is just not quite right, and they blow up under pressure.
‘Another dog will seem at first to be a very basic sort of character, but he’ll train and train and turn out to be a top dog. I’m always wary of dogs who are too brilliant too soon,’ he says. ‘There’s a fine line between brilliance and madness in a collie.’
I know that Peg is good enough to get back to trialling, which she did with her first owner Steve. If she spent three or four weeks with Dick she’d be up to that standard again; she’s a brilliant dog. But I’m not that skilful and my understanding of dog psychology is not at that level. I recognise my own abilities and limitations. I was a good rugby player and always managed to get into the first team for the local clubs wherever I was in the country, but at the same time I always knew I was not international standard. It’s the same with dog training: I know my limits, and I also know what I want and need my dogs to do.
Peg is very happy working on the farm. She gets enough stimulation and satisfaction from what she has to do, and she loves doing it. If there is a day when no work with the sheep is needed, she’ll happily go out for a walk with Charlie and the other dogs. She’s got her own eccentric little habit: she loves jumping into the water trough. She has a very thick coat, and she clearly loves cooling down in the water, but she’ll do it even on a day when the weather is bitterly cold, and you would think a soggy wet coat is the last thing you’d want. If there isn’t a water trough around, she’ll lie down in a puddle, and when there’s ice on the ground she pulls herself along on her tummy, like a seal. She clearly doesn’t feel the cold at all, but you need to stand clear when she leaps out of the trough, if you don’t want an icy cold shower when she shakes herself.
Many of the jobs for a dog on a farm like ours are routine, rounding up the ewes and their lambs, bringing them to me. But Peg is well up to doing anything out of the ordinary, and when she’s working, the sheep know who’s in command. It’s the slightly unusual tasks that test a working dog, and often result in the shepherd shouting ‘Damned dog, stupid sheep!’
When you are working a sheepdog you have to be in the dog’s head, but also in the head of the sheep. You have to be able to look at a sheep and understand why she has stopped. Is she ill? Is she being awkward? Or is there an obstacle she doesn’t like, like a puddle of water? Water will always stop sheep. If there is a puddle at a gateway they won’t go through, or an obstacle they won’t go past, or you are trying to load them into a lorry when they don’t want to go, the best way to deal with it is catch one and pull it in front of the rest of the flock and they will usually follow. Shepherds have always found it very useful that they follow each other – just like sheep in fact …
Dad always said: ‘A farmer who calls a sheep stupid is a farmer who has been outwitted by a sheep.’ Sheep are definitely not brainless, and they have their own personalities. As a dog handler, I have to be aware which sheep is the leader, which one is likely to break away. A really good collie shares the ability to suss out where the problems are without help, but the shepherd should never rely solely on the dog, instead anticipating the problem and giving the right command.
I was lucky enough to go to Australia with Countryfile, and I was asked to help round up some cattle on horseback, which isn’t my favourite mode of transport, and I was quite nervous about the prospect. I don’t regard myself as a good rider and this horse was a spirited animal, so I wasn’t completely confident. The farmer agreed to take the horse round the cattle to ‘knock the sting out of her’, as he put it. He galloped flat out downhill with the kelpies barking, cracking his whip, and the noise was enough to keep the herd of cattle running in front of him, with dust everywhere. It was an amazing sight, like something out of the movies. I always fancied being a cowboy as a child and now was my chance. The farmer pulled the horse up next to me, jumped off and said: ‘Right, it’s your turn.’
I replied: ‘Crikey, what if she bolts under me?’
He said, ‘Just head for the fence and hopefully she’ll stop.’
The fence was huge and topped with barbed wire, which didn’t make me feel any happier …
I managed reasonably well and the horse was surprisingly well behaved. As we moved the cattle to the corner of the field, trying to get them into the pens, I could see that one of the calves was going to make a break for it. I could tell from the way she was moving and looking to the side, which is a sense you acquire after years of working with stock. A good dog would have acted to head the calf off as soon as I gave the command, and a very good dog would have spotted it before me. In the seconds that I was thinking about the problem, the horse took off, heading in exactly the right direction to turn the calf back to the herd. I’ve wondered about it since: did the horse feel the slight pressure of my knees as I looked at the breaking calf? Or did it have the same instinct as a good dog– did it understand the cattle in the same way a collie understands sheep? A horse isn’t a natural predator of cattle, with the instinct to chase that a dog has. But having worked with cattle for years, perhaps it had simply assimilated a deep knowledge of what they do, and how to recognise the signs. Just as I, as a stockman, could see what was going to happen, perhaps the horse also recognised it. Thankfully I was ready for the sudden move, otherwise I could have ended up in a heap on the floor and looked a right buffoon, especially with the cameras running.
Importantly, Peg works for anyone else on the farm who needs a sheepdog. I’m away a lot, so I don’t get to work her as much as I would like to, but she still gets out to the sheep most days.
She’s also a brilliant dog to take on location for Countryfile. She’s happy being filmed, and when we have to repeat the same scene over and over again, she’s up for it and never complains.
I’m hoping to breed from Peg soon. She’s got a good pedigree, and she’s such a great worker that I’d really like to keep her genes going. I’ll take her to one of Dick’s dogs when the time is right. Peg is now not only part of the farm workforce, but also part of the family, and I love her to bits. I feel hugely grateful to Meryl for having trusted me to take her on and also to Dick for recommending me and for helping me out with her. I can certainly reassure Steve’s family that Peg is well cared for and very happy, and I like to think that Steve would approve of her new owner. She has become well known due to her appearances on Countryfile, and has pride of place on the front cover of this book.