Aled Owen and this year's newly crowned World Champion.
Normal trial run - this is the BC "standard" - fetching sheep from about 500 yards away, pushing them another 250 yards through a 9 minute course, then doing a couple of "up close" tasks.
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Second test - championship round. Sheep are twice are far away (1000 yards), and the dog gets twice as many the first time, then leaves them and goes back and gets a second set, so ends up with a flock of twenty sheep before starting the 450 yard driving course which takes about 7 minutes to complete. Then the dog helps the shepherd divide off sheep wearing collars from the group (no gates or touching the sheep to help), the marked sheep are penned and unpenned, and then a single sheep is divided from the penned sheep. The whole course is about 15 to twenty minutes of constant running for the dog.
When they get to the part where they are dividing up the big flock, the rules are that neither dog nor person can touch the sheep, sheep with the collars are the ones that must stay in the ring marked on the ground, and they have to regroup and start over if sheep with collars leave the ring. There's a time limit too. There's also a dress code, but that's only an amusing side note. They used to do this in full dress attire - women had to wear skirts!
Just an interesting note: This dog would be culled from conformation lines because it's a smooth coat. Smooths are "allowed" in the US standard but no smooth has finished in about five years. Pretty soon they will, I am sure, change the standard to justify culling smooths entirely as they do in Australia and NZ right now.
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