Crossing Borders Isobel King rounds up the charms of collies
Where England ends and Scotland begins, the Border Collie was born. Isobel King talks to award-winning trainer Emma Gray
IT darts, black and white, against open moorland and purple heather – the sheepdog, expertly guiding a flock down from the fields. Across the air will come the commands, “Away” (meaning go right) and “Come by” (left), the dog moving intuitively across an unmanicured landscape. Such an archetypal sight of farming life in this country, but never more so than in Northumberland. It’s here, where England ends and Scotland begins, that the aptly named Border Collie breed was born.
Used to keeping a weather eye on proceedings is shepherdess Emma Gray, also one of the UK’s top Border Collie breeders and trainers, for both trials and farm work. An award-winning competitor in trials herself, she holds the world record in sheepdog sales, too: an eyewatering £18,900 for Megan at Skipton Auction Mart last year.
Born into a farming family (her parents still run a farm in Hawick in the Scottish Borders where she grew up), Emma’s solo farming career began 11 years ago when she took on the tenancy for Fallowlees, a National Trust farm not far from Rothbury. For Emma, this little stone farmhouse with its handful of outbuildings and fields framed by a drystone wall was nothing less than “a vision of a dream made real”, promising not only a flock of her own, but space to train and kennel her future champions. “At 120 acres it wasn’t big, but it was enough for me,” she reflects. She moved in with just her dogs and a suitcase.
“Learning should be fun so I try and make training as fun as possible for the dogs,” says Emma. “In reality, they can only tolerate 10 minutes of proper training a day. It’s like doing algebra while sprinting on a treadmill – it’s hard. They’re doing a physical workout while using their brain.”
One foundation exercise is training the dogs to stay on the opposite side of the sheep to the farmer. “Imagine the >
sheep are in the centre of a clock face and you’re standing at six o’clock, and the dog at twelve o’ clock. Then if you move to three o’clock, they’ll be at nine o’clock so all the sheep are sandwiched in. It’s pretty straightforward – only it’s not!”
The rest of the time the pups’ lives are best described as “free range”; they enjoy everything normal puppies should experience, from playing with each other to going on walks. “It’s an important part of their upbringing.”
Emma keeps her favourite pups into adulthood for trials while others go off to work on farms. How on earth to pick a future champion between them, all hungry eyes, black noses and soft paws?
“To be honest, you can’t pick a genius from a pup, so all you have to do is pick one you really like and can bond with,” admits Emma. “There are different pups for different people, too, so the right pup for me wouldn’t be the right pup for you. It’s like choosing a partner, isn’t it? You’re going to have a long relationship together so you want it to be right.”
She certainly has a knack for it. As well as regular success at professional sheepdogs trials, such as those held at Wallington Hall, near Morpeth, Emma even mentored Strictly’s Brendan Cole to victory in ITV’s Flockstars ,in
2015, where stars had to learn to flock sheep and compete.
It was chaos at first: the sheepdog, used to Emma’s calm commands, was baffled by Brendan’s urgency. “I really have to change my personality to try and control the dog,” he realised – some indication of the scale of the challenge. Emma is kinder: “He was amazing. He was really natural, and very competitive, which was handy.”
Trials are all about practicalities, designed to show off a working dog’s skills rather than celebrate a perfect nose. “It’s purely on ability; it doesn’t matter how ugly the dog is!” confirms Emma. Dog and trainer are judged on bringing the sheep from the top of a field to the bottom, around obstacles and then into a pen, before demonstrating shedding one sheep from the others.
Unlike farming, Emma’s success in trials isn’t known to run in the family. “Most sheep farmers have a sheep dog so I like to think it’s universal. My grandfather was a dog handler so maybe, but certainly in terms of trials I don’t know of any ancestry.”
A stone’s throw away from Fallowlees is where the first Border Collie, from which all collies today are descended, was born. “It’s incredible that such a foundation dog came from Northumberland. You feel like you’re really part of something,” says Emma. According to Sheila Grew, author of Key Dogs from the Border Collie Family, it was all down to one Northumbrian farmer, Adam Telfer, who, like Emma, took a keen interest in breeding and training sheepdogs.
“A century ago many of the [working collies] were hard, powerful, rather unfriendly dogs, difficult to control and rough with the stock, but their keen handling instinct, their concentration and great power over the sheep or cattle were such useful assets that it seemed worth trying to find a milder natured type of working collie to cross with these hard dogs,” Grew wrote. Telfer succeeded in finding the right cross which resulted in a canine genius, Old Hemp.
Journalist Eric Halsall wrote in Sheepdogs: My Faithful Friends: “None who saw [Old Hemp] ever forgot him . . . he was born with such knowledge . . . he never required training and went to his work naturally. He ambled after sheep when only six weeks old.” Old Hemp died in 1903 having sired over 200 puppies and founding the modern breed.
A memorial to Telfer and his dog stands in West Woburn where the duo lived, thanks to a campaign begun by Simon Fella that drew support from around the world. Emma took part in the unveiling in 2015, along with Telfer’s great-granddaughter, Caroline Chater. The event was also attended by local schoolchildren.
“It’s funny, my old Roy looked just like Old Hemp, even though there could have been 100 years between them,” says Emma. “Isn’t it strange how their blood comes through after all that time?”
The sheepdog’s importance to flock and farm goes back even further. “They’re crucial,” Emma emphasises. “I don’t think you would manage a farm without them. They’re more than an extra person, they’re an extra two or three people and they’re so in tune with you. Sometimes I get annoyed if I’m working with someone because they’re not telepathic.” She laughs. “I’m like: ‘Why didn’t you know what I was thinking? He knew what I was thinking!’”
It’s not just gathering in the sheep
either. With the dogs twice as fast as a human, they can help locate a lost lamb or speedily catch a sheep in distress. “They make everything so much easier. It goes for the sheep as well – they know if you haven’t got a dog and run rings around you!”
The bond runs deeper than a dog’s working worth, though. “It’s probably one of the most solid connections I’ve had in my whole life,” Emma shares candidly. “Come boyfriends, or farms, or anything at all, the dogs have been there. It’s been reassuring to always know that somebody loves you.”
You can’t escape how young Emma was when she moved, alone, to the isolation of Fallowlees at just 23. For all its romance, farming is a harsh way of life. Beyond the crack of dawn starts and hard graft, Emma details in her book tribulations such as a quad bike accident that nearly left her unable to walk. Money was also a problem in securing Fallowlees and forced tough decisions, the most difficult being selling loyal and loving Fly, her favourite dog, something still “almost too painful to remember.”
After 10 years at Fallowlees, where she eventually met firefighter husband Ewan and had son Len, the family have now moved to a 680-acre holding on the Isle of Bute. When we speak they’ve only been there seven weeks.
“It’s all been bonkers!” says Emma. “It was such a wrench. Sometimes these things happen and you have to keep moving on. But I felt a bit like I was betraying her,” she says of her old farm. Oddly enough, relocating to an island was so they could be somewhere less remote while Len was growing up. It paints a picture of how far off the beaten track they were.
“Oh, there were no houses at all, it just went on and on. We were so high, nearly 1,000 feet – you could see the sea even though it was miles away.”
From the book’s early chapters, it’s clear Emma’s helpless when it comes to adopting waifs and strays – heart over head no matter how impractical the animal. Take thoroughbred bay Delphi, an ex-racehorse who forms an unlikely friendship with Mr Tumnus, an abandoned pet goat. The pair are soon inseparable in their new lives on the farm, goat never happier than when standing under horse’s belly. Did any of the animals move with them?
“All of them,” comes the reply. Forget the removal van – they must have needed an ark! Emma adds she’s off to pick up some peacocks at the weekend.
In recent times it seems farming has become almost fashionable, a fair number of people sharing the rugged romanticism of their lifestyles on social media. Emma is encouraging, against the old adage that it’s “in your blood”. “I’ve seen all sorts of people come into it, from hairdressers and beauticians to accountants. One of my best friends was an accountant and now she lives full time on the farm and does everything we do . . .
“We’re probably all descended from farmers in some way. I think it’s just in us to nurture and grow things, and want to look after animals. That’s what makes us successful as a species.”
People don’t only choose this way of life for the open air, she stresses. Farming is the best leveller. “Be you lord or labourer, if you’ve farmed you’ll have lots of common ground. Sheep, in particular, have little regard for your station in life – they’ll do something reckless regardless!”
Emma perhaps underestimates her own resilience. It’s certainly been required to get her this far. “Maybe that’s the secret in life? If you try hard enough, things will work out. I don’t know if it’s true for everybody but I stuck with it through thick and thin, and it worked out in the end.”
One thing is for sure – her Northumbrian competitors had better not rest on their laurels. Emma plans to return regularly for trials, the county forever home to her own story, and that of the Border Collie breed, too. “It’s my passion. All I want to do all the time is train my dogs.” She smiles. “I’m just going to continue to try and do the best I can with them.”
Read about Emma’s adventures in her heart-warming book My Farming Life (Little Brown, £16.99).