Soldier Hollow Sheepdog Classic: Labor Day Weekend Part III

It's been awhile since this actually happened, so hopefully I'll be able to remember most of the interesting stuff.  Last year, I heard about the Solider Hollow Classic sheepdog competition on the radio and was very interested in going.  I didn't end up making it in the end, largely because I was still using my grandma's van for transportation and didn't want to put any unnecessary strain on it.  This year, I was determined that I would get to the event.

I knew it was going to be a good day when I heard the bagpipes playing as I walked into the venue.  Soldier Hollow is where biathlon and cross-country skiing were held during the Salt Lake Olympics.  You could tell even from the first walking in.  To get into the main event area, you had to go under a bridge topped with a bunch of fun flags which served as the start or maybe the finish line during the games.  One of the main event areas was right in front of the structure where the targets sat for biathlon.  It was fun to be in this Olympic venue and to picture how things might have looked in those days.

The first thing I did after entering was go right to the main event with the sheepdogs.  It was really very fascinating to watch these dogs in action.  You had a great view from the bleachers of the entire hill where the action occurred, which was actually quite a large space.  The dog and trainer started together at the bottom of the hill and 5 sheep were grouped together at the top of the hill.  As their time started, the trainer sent the dog running up the hill to find the sheep.  It typically took a bit of time for the dog to locate the sheep and get them started moving down the hill.

As they came down, the first task was to herd the sheep through the first of three gates.  There's a couple of important things to know about the gates.  First off, the sheep had to go through them in the right direction.  There was also basically just one shot to get them to go through, because if the sheep strayed beyond  the end of the gate on either side, the points for that gate would be forfeited.  The last important element that I learned later is that the sheep don't want to go through the gate, because the narrow confines of it remind them of entering a cave, which is where all the predators like bears and wolves like to live.  That same logic also makes the sheep resistant to entering the final pen.

You can see one of the gates at the top of this picture

After going through this gate, the dog had to bring all the sheep to the bottom of the hill where the trainer was and turn them around in a designated ring space.  Then the dog would herd them through two other gates on opposite ends of the hill.  After the gates were all completed, the sheep were brought back to the bottom with the trainer.  This time, the task was to "shed" the sheep.  This means to line them all up and split them into two groups.  To be specific, the group of 5 had to be broken into a group of 3 and 2.  This is a lot harder than it sounds, because the sheep instinctively want to be all together and when they do break up, most often it is one sheep getting separated from the other 4.

When the shedding was properly completed, it was time to put the sheep into the pen.  The trainer and dog worked together very closely do to this, with the trainer holding a rope attached to the gate and using the gate in one hand and his or her crook in the other to create a bit of enclosure on the back end of the sheep while the dog put gentle pressure on them from the front to encourage them to go into the pen.  The penning was usually the most tense moment of any run, as it seemed the most complicated to achieve.  Pretty much everyone took their time to accomplish this task, and there were more than a few times that after several tense minutes, the sheep would entirely break away.  It was always exciting to see them gradually creeping into the pen and trying to guess when things were going to be entirely safe.

All these tasks had to be completed within a certain time-frame.  I think it was 15 minutes to get everything done.  Obviously, more points were possible for getting done faster.  There were quite a few, though, who weren't able to get the sheep penned before time ran out.  There was a clock on the field as well as a ranking board to keep track of rankings.  These helped to make the proceedings more exciting for sure.  It was really interesting to see how well the trainers and dogs worked together.  Some teams were pretty clearly more in tune with each other than others.  The trainers all used a series of whistles to give commands to their dogs.  This was the only way to effectively communicate across the long distances usually involved.

After watching several competitors do their runs, I decided I should probably go and check out what else was going on.  I started to wander around the rest of the space, most of which was covered by a wide variety of food trucks.  There were also a few other vendors too, but nothing that was terribly interesting to me.  I went over to the splash dogs arena next, which was basically a big tank of water dogs would jump into.  This event was kind of fun, but not terribly interesting to me.  I mean, it was cute enough, but I've seen plenty of dogs jump into water in my time, and these ones weren't doing anything especially impressive in that regard.

I knew there was a wild animal show coming up, so I wandered over that direction, checking out a few things on my way.  One of the interesting sights was the raptor van.  I'd seen they were going to do a show, but they were also out showing off some of the birds in the meantime.  I got to see some beautiful hawks and an owl up very close this way.  As I've probably mentioned before, I have an unusually fascination with birds, and raptors especially have always interested me.  In fact, my perfect Middle Ages profession probably would have been a falconer, though of course I wouldn't have been allowed to do it then!  This latent interest made getting to see these birds up close very fun for me.

This was a rare albino red fox that this group had because it couldn't survive well in the wild with this coloration.

I settled down for the animal show next.  This part was also very interesting to me.  While some of the animals she showed were familiar enough, like a skunk and a fox, It was still cool to get to see them quite close.  She also had a hedgehog, python, and chinchilla among other things.  As each animal was shown, the handler related interesting facts about each one.

Of all the animals shown, the most interesting to me was a strange, lemur-like creature I've never seen before.  It looked to me like something from Africa, but she talked about how it uses it's tail to mimic a skunk and scare off predators.  I knew that skunks are pretty much native to North America, so when she asked us where we thought the critter was from, I was thinking it must live somewhere like the rain forests of Central America, but was surprised to learn that it lives right here in Utah, as well as other parts of the American Southwest.

It's nocturnal creature that lives in slot canyons as well as high desert areas.  One lady by me mentioned that her family had seen one run across a parking lot at dusk in Zion National Park, which would be pretty cool.  Apparently, they aren't seen in the wild much.  The handler called the critter a Ringtailed Cakamus, but I couldn't find any reference to it under that name.  I found just ringtail, ringtailed cat, and miner's cat because apparently the Southwestern miners used to keep them as pets back in the day.  He was a cool little critter, and I hope sometime I will get to see one in the wild!

After the show ended, I moseyed over to one of the other event locations to watch a flyball exhibition.  This is basically a dog sport that kind of reminded me of steeplechase.  The dogs run over a series of hurtles to grab a tennis ball from a spring-loaded box on which they'd turn and run back down the course.  This wasn't terribly complicated, but the dogs were cute, and it was pretty fun to watch for awhile.

I wandered back over to the sheepdog event after this and was lucky enough to catch a really great team.  In fact, they came in 2nd place overall on the day I attended and 3rd in the championship round.  I didn't get to stay long enough to see the team that beat them, but it was pretty cool to see one of the major players in action.

I watched a few other teams, then started wandering back to where there was going to be a Q&A with some of the trainers.  On the way, I stopped by the tent where they were doing a Navajo rug weaving demonstration.  They were selling a lot of really beautiful rugs, jewelry, and other interesting items there.  They also had a group of about 6 grandmothers hard at work weaving more rugs, which was quite interesting to see.  One of the folks helping at the booth told me that none of the grandmothers speak any English, only Navajo.  I didn't think those people really existed anymore, but maybe they were just saying that to sell more to the tourists!  It was interesting to see them at work in the traditional ways.  Their work really was gorgeous, but unfortunately, way to expensive for me.

The Q&A was very interesting.  I got to learn more about how the dogs are trained as they demonstrated working with two dogs that are still young and learning.  As people wandered off more, I got the opportunity to ask a lot of questions myself.  I found out that there was one non-Border Collie that was competing this year.  It's the first new breed to ever be featured at Soldier Hollow.  Border Collies are just instinctively much better at shepherding than other dogs, thanks at least in part to a long history of breeding.

I also learned more about the competition in general.  Everything that is done had roots in work that the dogs actually perform on the ranches.  On a working farm, the dogs will typically run an average of about 10 miles a day as they round up sheep and do other work.  The shedding is part of how the farmer will separate out the sheep that he wants to take for branding, shearing, breeding, and other purposes throughout the year.  I also learned that the sheepdogs have a dominant side much as humans have a dominant hand.  This means that they always go either right or left as they run to search for the sheep and favor this side as they herd them.  I also learned that the judge for the competition was from Gordonsville, VA, near where I'm from, though he is originally from Scotland, where shepherding has deep roots.  That was fun to learn I had a semi-neighbor involved in the event!  I really enjoyed this part of the day because I got to learn a lot of interesting things and have my questions directly answered.

I also got to see a bit of a police dog demonstration and a dog agility demonstration where the dogs ran through tunnels, wove through stakes, etc.  Both of these were reasonably interesting, but less thrilling to me than some of the other events.  I would have stayed longer, but I had a ward temple night to get back for, so after watching a few more herding competitors. I left.  I really had a great time at the festival and would highly recommend it to anyone.  It was very entertaining and educational in many ways, and I think it would be a perfect family event.  I was so glad that I made the time to go and look forward to returning next year.  Perhaps next time I will spring for the extra fee and go on Labor Day itself when they run the final rounds with the best qualifiers and a much larger group of sheep is herded.

On Labor Day itself, I actually didn't do much this year.  Basically, I caught up on the weekly chores and errands that I normally would have done on Saturday.  Even though Labor Day was pretty low-key, that week leading up to it was filled with interesting adventures for me.