Trialling

I recently attended a sheep dog trial, unfortunately I was not competing. I provided a demonstration before the trial to explain to the audience how sheep dogs are trained. Most of the audience were either town folks who new very little about stock dogs, or those farm folks that did not use dogs in there daily farm work.

I have found over the years when participating in trials that there was NEVER an explanation as to what was actually happening. Some times, very rarely, a diagram of the course was put up where folks could see it but for all intents and purposes it was for the competitors. The exception to this is the Calgary Stampede World stock dog competition. An other problem was that the competitors kept to themselves and away from the limited viewing area. It was almost as if the competitors did not want to talk to non-competitors. It's almost like this is a private club and spectators are only tolerated.

The trial I attended was a fall fair held at Burns Lake British Columbia, the announcer gave a running commentary of what was going on, explaining the whys and wherefores of each run as well a little about each competitor. Not only that, the announcer sat in stands so what he was explaining was what everyone was seeing. With really tough sheep it was amazing to see how long spectators stayed, yes even the open competitors were not doing well. There was a lot of good feed back and with the competitors making themselves available to anyone who had questions the overall interest was high and made for an enjoyable experience for all.

I believe that this approach to this “sport” promotes it, as well as interest in stock dogs in general. Who knows, this may even bring more people into the world of trialling.

Be who you are and say what you feel....
Because those that matter...
don't mind...
And those that mind... don't
matter."