A shepherd and his dogs

LeRoy d’Entremont instructs the dog with a series of short chirps and peeps on a triangular whistle and the galloping animals draw into a tight pack, closer, closer, until I find myself surrounded by sheep. They’re pressing up against my legs as the dog circles constantly to hold them in place.

This is an example of the teamwork that earned d’Entremont and 10-year old Hirk, 5th place out of 80 entrants in the World Stock Dog Competition at the Calgary Stampede last month.

“He can handle sheep like a walk in the park. You tell him where you want the sheep to go and he just makes it happen,” said d’Entremont, who owns a small farm in West Pubnico.

Although d’Entremont has competed for several years at the provincial exhibition in Truro this was his first time at the Stampede.

“Nobody knew who I was when I showed up, but everybody knew who I was when I left,” he laughed.

Hirk’s ecomony of movement is indicative of good herding.

“You look and you say he doesn’t do much, but everything he does is right on. He doesn’t have to chase back and forth wide open,” said d’Entremont.

Border collies handle sheep so that the shepherd can put them where he needs for various purposes – to catch them for shearing, to administer medication or to bring them home in the fall.

Training is a matter of refining the hunting instinct, explains d’Entremont.

“Everything they do is connected with the wolf background. We breed to try to make it stronger, except for the kill. We try to keep that one down,” he said.

“The dog should listen to what I say and treat me like a coach. He’s like a quarterback and the sheep are like the team. He tells the team what the play is.”

D’Entremont’s line is descended from dogs owned by a British veterinarian assistant referred to as Calum Buchanan in James Herriot books.

“In one of Herriot’s book’s Calum got married and moved to Nova Scotia. He imported and bred dogs from England and Scotland and mine are descended from those,” said d’Entremont.

Although his dogs are not registered and don’t have papers, that doesn’t bother this shepherd a bit.

“There’s two things I’ve learned. Sheep can’t read, and the breeding’s not in the papers, it’s in the genes. A lot of my best dogs have no papers,” he said.

D’Entremont takes his eight border collies on the Tusket islands to herd semi-wild sheep. He helps others with their herds on Cape Sable, McNutts, Jordan Bay, and Upper and Lower Paul’s and says three dogs can often accomplish what it would take 200 people to do.