Return to the High Country by Tony Parsons

Author:Tony Parsons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2009-10-28T04:00:00+00:00

That night David rang from Queensland and Catriona told him that her father was on equal top score with ninety-three and had run a ninety with Jamie.

‘Give Angus a big well done from me, Cat. Tell him not to forget to talk softly and encouragingly to Rob. He’ll know what I mean,’ David said.

David had taken Rob Roy and handled him for Angus. The dog had a lot of ability but lacked confidence. By urging, encouraging and praising him with lots of ‘good dog, Rob’, David had got him responding very well. Rob would cast half a mile and he had great distance off his sheep. He had the knack of adjusting his distance to the pace of the sheep he worked – a valuable attribute in a trial dog, especially in the face of touchy sheep.

It was touchy sheep that put paid to most of the dogs in the Open final. The dogs worked too close, frightening the sheep, and the sheep ran all over the ground. Catriona sat with her brother and father and watched as the three first finalist dogs foundered. Catriona had picked up a lot about sheepdogs from David. He had taught her how to work a dog and she had watched him at work with Rob Roy.

‘You’ll have to keep him right off, Daddy. These sheep are very touchy. As soon as a dog gets close to them they run.’

Angus nodded. He knew what he had to do but anything could happen on the trial ground.

Catriona watched anxiously as her father walked through the gate onto the oval. Angus was in his eighties and white-haired and this was the last time he would ever walk onto this oval. Ever since he took over Inverlochy from his father, Old Angus, her father had been the leading man of the district, but he had never won an Open sheepdog trial. David had to convince him that it wasn’t the size of the property or the number of sheep that mattered but the keenness and expertise of the handler. You didn’t need a lot of sheep and tons of work if you had the right strains of border collies. Kelpies needed more work and it was harder to get trial dogs from them unless you had certain key traits in your dogs. What David had done was blend the best traits of both breeds. And while a lot of Australian border collies had kelpie in them, not many people had kelpies like Nap and Clancy. That was what Rob Roy had going for him today. He had the blood of two great kelpies mixed with some of the best available border collie strains.

As Angus Campbell walked out to the peg it was David MacLeod’s injunctions that were uppermost in his mind. ‘If you’re faced with touchy sheep keep your dog well out and well off them. If he casts narrow, he’ll spook them straight off.’ It had been David’s insistence on keeping Rob Roy until he was satisfied he would ‘run the fence’ that would help to make the difference now.

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