JACK KNOX: YOUR GATEWAY TO FARM LIFE LITE
Maybe the sheepdogs can round up the Rogue Cow of Metchosin. Having broken out of its Happy Valley Road farm this spring, the black heifer is still on the lam despite all attempts to find and recapture it.
Every so often the cow pops up in public — scaring the bejeepers out of drivers on darkened roads, or slipping out of the forest to preach revolution to domestic livestock — only to vanish again before the Bossy posse arrives.
So, yes, maybe the highly trained canine athletes coming to Metchosin for next week’s sheepdog trial will have better luck reining in the Rogue.
No, no, no, says Brian Domney. Cattle-herding dogs and sheepherding dogs behave differently. The former nip at the hocks of the cows they corral, but if a sheepdog were to do that, it would be automatic disqualification from what is a non-contact sport. “Thank you,” the judge would say, and both dog and human handler would skulk off the field in humiliation, bellies to the ground.
Domney is on the organizing committee of the Metchosin Sheepdog Trial, which takes place next weekend.
It has been a few years since the community has seen the competition, but now it’s back, pleasing farm folk and city folk alike.
The latter might even be happier than the former. Interest in all things agriculture-related has surged recently. Sales of canning supplies are up. Reluctant shoppers whose stomachs knot while approaching Costco beam like Trudeau with a two-beer buzz while braking at roadside produce stands. Country fairs, with their cow-pie bingo, 4-H shows and blue-ribbon rutabagas, draw urbanites keen to reconnect with a past they never had. Call it farm porn. City dwellers romanticize a simpler, more-grounded time when a fellow grew what he ate, built instead of bought and could be relied on to share the burden whenever a neighbour needed a crop harvested, a tractor fixed or an over-enthusiastic government inspector tipped down a well.
“As life gets weirder and weirder and more and more complicated, people have a longing for the good old days,” Domney says.
City slickers driving past the verdant acreages of Metchosin and our various Saaniches (Central, North, West, Classic) dream of trading shiny shoes for gumboots. Of course, their gumboots would be $225 Hunters, mud- and manure-free, probably handpainted by Martha Stewart’s cellmate. Also, they would expect to be compensated far more handsomely (including dental, medical, pension and parental leave) than are those who effectively toil as low-wage wardens of what urbanites regard as unofficial parks. And their livestock would be of the type that don’t need to be milked or fed on weekends or statutory holidays.
Basically, most people are not so much eager to become farmers as they are comforted by the idea of someone else doing it.
Which brings us to the Metchosin Sheepdog Trial, which goes from 7:30 a.m. (farmers get up early) to about 3:30 p.m. on Aug. 5 and 6 at the Swanwick Ranch at the corner of Swanwick and William Head roads. Admission will be by donation. The concession will sell lamb burgers, which can be taken either as A) vaguely dark humour or B) a warning to the slower sheep.
(Actually, organizers are proud that the trial will feature Parry Bay Sheep Farm ewes, which are advertised as being less co-operative than those the dogs might be used to herding; on contrarian, edge-of-the-world Vancouver Island, even our sheep are unwilling to act like, well, sheep.)
Scores of dogs from western North America are registered. Here’s what organizers say you will see: “A sheepdog trial involves highly trained and intelligent dogs (usually border collies) each under the command of a handler, ‘collecting’ four or five sheep from a distance away (up to five hundred metres at this trial), ‘driving’ them through a complicated course of gates, penning them and then ‘shedding’ one of them from the others (an almost impossibly difficult task), all without actually making contact with the sheep.”
As a tiebreaker, the dogs will be asked to round up escaped inmates from nearby William Head prison. OK, not really, but it would be awesome if they did. Also, if a dog were to bring in the Rogue Cow of Metchosin, that should count as an automatic victory.