Almost exactly one year from the day I had first gone to get Bonnie “evaluated”, I stopped at that same coastal ranch again, this time to watch an American Kennel Club trial there, on my way to sheep practice at Gwen’s. This time it was full of clean minivans. Not a single pickup. It could have been a minivan sale lot. Instead of just Aussies and Border Collies, as at the ASCA trial, there were all kinds of breeds there. Shelties, German Shepherds, show Collies, Corgis, Belgian Tervurens, Rottweilers, Samoyeds, even a Standard Poodle.

After observing for a while, however, I saw that despite the radical differences in appearance, the dogs actually had a lot in common. For example, none of them appeared to have any deep urge to herd livestock. At the ASCA trial, some of the dogs might have lacked finesse, but they gathered and moved the stock with passionate intensity. They put their whole souls into it. It hadn’t occurred to me that someone would enter a dog in a herding competition who had only a rather vague interest in stock work. Yet here were dozens of people who had done just that, and probably even made a habit of it.

So, I guessed another thing those dogs had in common were suburban owners without any need for a stockdog. It was quite strange to watch. Some of the dogs sniffed the ground, nibbled sheep poop, one even took a little roll. They gazed inquiringly at their handlers to see what they were supposed to do. When the stock shifted, the dogs would suddenly alert, and bound after those enticing moving objects, like puppies with the intention of pouncing.

Since an eighty pound German Shepherd is no puppy, it was fortunate most of the dogs were obedience trained to a high degree. So they would get stopped with a command, and would obediently look once again at their handler while the stock wandered away, or stood suspiciously staring. And so forth. The livestock consisted of extremely tame sheep, and geese.

At the ASCA trial, the atmosphere was leisurely, casual, and friendly. Here, things were very reminiscent of the hushed, clenched atmosphere of the AKC Obedience trials I had competed in long ago. When I sat down too close to a woman who had placed her camp chair, dog rug, and small crate with a Sheltie in it, very precisely in accordance with the rigid rules regarding the distance of the spectators from the arena, she said coldly, “my dog doesn’t like strangers.”

So I stood, next to a thin young man who eventually struck up a conversation with me. He too was a newcomer to this kind of event. Apparently he made videos about working dogs, mostly protection and livestock guardian dogs, and he had some interesting things to say about the state of the protection dog industry. We both watched in perplexity the spectacle of an aged Samoyed, being cued to walk three steps and stop, walk four steps and sit down, while some large white geese waddled along in the same general area. This dog, from the applause, did about the best of any of them.

It began to appear that having an interest in controlling livestock would be a positive handicap in this contest, as it would surely interfere with the absolute obedience to the handler which seemed to be the central point.

But then a completely different kind of dog showed up. A sheep-bred Border Collie. This dog had all the instantaneous obedience required, and, it actually controlled the stock too. There was so much contrast between it and the rest of them, it might as well have been a different species. No question it was headed for High In Trial. I wondered how a working-bred Aussie would fare in this environment, but, except for Bonnie, a spectator, there were none.

I was beginning to see that herding trials, once they started to move from a rural event akin to cutting horse competitions and log-rolling contests to a suburban canine sport like agility and flyball, changed entirely in character. The original central idea was to present a level field for practitioners of a craft to test their skills and their products before their peers. Here, the model was the time-tested AKC Obedience contest, in which one attended regular classes with others at the same level, gained competence with one's beloved housepet, and eventually garnered the titles which denoted increasing levels of mastery of the sport. The competition rules were set up so that anyone, with sufficient determination, could eventually succeed with virtually any dog, or at least, have a good time trying.

Unlike the original model, the Dogsport model was not designed to sift for dogs worthy of breeding on. Not at all. It was designed for people to have fun learning new things with their dogs. Nothing wrong with that, surely. Yet there was a loss involved. I reflected upon the ASCA trials I had watched, and felt that they, like so much about Aussies, were betwixt and between, with one foot in the Dogsport model and the other in the Stockman's Weekend model. Yes, a strong attempt was made to distinguish innate talent from mere training, which did not appear to be at all the case with AKC trialing. But when the majority of the entrants were not in the livestock industry, interest in preserving and breeding on excellence in stock work had to acquire a certain artificiality. No trial, no matter how carefully designed, is a complete test of a practical stockdog. That test must be in the field.

After I had had my fill of watching, I continued on to Gwen’s pasture, where Bonnie gathered the sheep out of the quarter-acre corral with her usual slightly insane intensity, and brought them to the gate. There, I saw that one sneaky lamb had been overlooked somehow, and was watching from afar to see what would happen. I said, “look back!” But Bonnie had never been taught that command. Like any good working dog, she had no intention of taking her eyes off her sheep for one eyeblink while on duty. I called her over and physically turned her face with my hand. “See it?” Oh! In an instant she was gone, in two instants the sheep was with the others, and we proceeded through the gate. I made a mental note to ask Sherry how to teach Look Back.