Working Border Collies like "Jen" are an extra hired hand to people like Campbell Forsysth and his daughter, Kaeleen, who use them to move large herds of cattle or separate out one animal from a herd. They have sold Border Collies to people across Canada and the United States as far away as California. They both enjoy going to dog trials across Manitoba and Saskatchewan in their spare time. Hours of work goes into training a good cattle dog.
Fifteen years ago Campbell Forsyth started using border collies to move cattle on his farm near Eriksdale. Kaeleen, his daughter took an interest in the dogs. At eight years old she owned her own dog and at ten years of age she showed stock dogs at trials.
At Agribrition 2008, Campbell’s second run with his dog Nan, a 2 year-old female, had a time of 1.5 minutes which placed them in the top five and when the trials were completed they placed fourth overall. Kaeleen placed second with 7-year-old Jike.
“Kaeleen would have been the first woman to win first place at Agribrition trails if Jike had only been one second faster. She loves to work with dogs. During her school years she had trained a team of dogs to pull her home on a sleigh at the end of each school day. Now, in her spare time, she likes to train dogs to work with cattle,” said Campbell.
The Manitoba Stock Dog Association has a very strong stock dog club which puts on venues across Manitoba. The Forsyth’s showed in 15 venues across Manitoba and Saskatchewan in the past year which began at the Lundar Fair 2-day trial, then at the Oak Point Ranch Rodeo, Selkirk, the Melville team cattle penning and the Fisherton Ranch Rodeo, the Western Canadian field trial finals held in Eriksdale, a triple venue which is cattle penning, sheep arena trials, and field trial–then on to the Woodlands Ranch Rodeo.
“At Arborg we showed after torrential rain. Now that was fun! Next we showed at Arden Ranch Rodeo cattle penning, and the last show of the season was at Brandon Rodeo in November, the cattle penning,” said Campbell.
Presently Campbell is in the midst of training a dog for a cattleman in South Dakota. They will have no new pups until spring but they do have trained dogs for sale.
Early December Kaeleen and her mother Molly traveled to Wales where they purchased three dogs with new blood lines. Wales is rabies-free but there was a lot of paper work to obtain health passports to allow the dogs into Canada. Dave Reese, a dog trial judge, showed them Wales and helped them find the bloodlines they were seeking.
“We plan to breed Nan and Sadie when they come in season to one of the imported Welsh males. With a large herd of cattle our dogs make work easier,” said Campbell.
