<\/p>\n
Del set off at a tear, turning on a dime as he corralled three sheep around the field. His white socks and the flash of white across his nose were nothing but a blur.<\/p>\n
Nearby, his trainer stood with a whistle between his pursed lips. The 5-year-old border collie stopped, sank low to the ground and waited. On cue, he took off again.<\/p>\n
This ballet between sheepdog and flock continued for a few minutes in front of the roughly 200 people who\u2019d gathered on a mild July morning in Skipton, a town near Leeds in northern England. Several dozen others watched via webcam. Then\u00a0the bidding began.<\/p>\n
Over the past three decades, Skipton\u2019s Craven Cattle Mart has grown into an international hub for some of the world\u2019s best working sheepdogs. Some of them end up in the US and Europe, even as far as Japan, where one dog now herds sheep in the shadow of Mount Fuji.<\/p>\n
Dogs sold here have fetched as much as $30,000, putting them among the most expensive sheepdogs ever sold.<\/p>\n
Among the pickup trucks and farm vehicles in the parking lot were high-end SUVs adorned with personalised license plates. Most of those in the crowd appeared to be locals.<\/p>\n
But watching from the edge of the field was Toru Takei, who, among the work boots and fleece vests, stood out in his Los Angeles Dodgers cap and sneakers.<\/p>\n
Takei had read about the Skipton sheepdog sales from his home in Japan, where he farms 23 sheep as a hobby and has a keen interest in herding competitions known as sheepdog trials, a sport that\u2019s taking off abroad.<\/p>\n
He already has two \u2013 one from the Netherlands and another from Wales, where he had plans to visit during his trip to the UK.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are less dogs in Japan. I have no selection,\u201d Takei says, noting that the quality of the training they undergo here makes the arduous task of getting them back home worth it. He hopes to buy another one day, this time from Skipton, but today, he tells me, he\u2019s just here to watch.<\/p>\n
Border collies have been bred for generations to herd sheep, their natural instincts moulded further by trainers and farmers to respond to voice commands or a whistle. They\u2019re sold as puppies or fully trained, or \u201cbroken\u201d.<\/p>\n
Unsung to outsiders, sheepdogs are vitally important to operations of commercial farms \u2014 and adored by devout trialists, some of whom travel the world competing.<\/p>\n
On 20 September, thousands of spectators and competitors from 34 countries converged on Scotland for \u201cthe biggest World Trial ever,\u201d according to the president of the International Sheep Dog Society.<\/p>\n
Christine Ryder, who manages about a thousand sheep and a herd of cows with her husband at their farm in nearby Blubberhouses, tells me the signs of a good worker.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir ears are up, and they\u2019re watching everything. They\u2019re ready to go,\u201d she says, explaining that dogs must be confident enough to stand up to sheep, which are often many times bigger. \u201cIf a sheep turns and starts coming towards it, if they turn and run away, well, that\u2019s no good to anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Del caught their eye. \u201cYou could see the concentration on his job,\u201d Ryder\u00a0says, speaking of\u00a0the handsome pooch moving\u00a0effortlessly across the grass. It would be their first time buying a broken dog.<\/p>\n
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They placed their bids as auctioneer Jeremy Eaton whipped up interest among the crowd, his voice booming over the crackly loudspeaker.<\/p>\n
At a crossroads\u00a0<\/p>\n
Skipton has long been synonymous with sheep farming \u2013 the name comes from the Old English words sc\u0113ap, meaning sheep, and t\u016bn for town. References to a \u201csheep town\u201d on this site date to as early as the 11th century.<\/p>\n
It sits at the southern edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, with valleys and moors carved into fields by drystone walls stretching for miles to the north. The area is dotted with old, quaint villages, the type you might have seen on the PBS series All Creatures Great and Small, which is filmed locally.<\/p>\n
A charter granted by King John in 1204 first allowed Skipton to start a market selling sheep and wool. The town\u2019s importance as a market hub grew when the Leeds & Liverpool Canal was built during the Industrial Revolution more than 500 years later.<\/p>\n
The first official Skipton auction took place in 1886 not far from the town centre, on the site of what\u2019s now a grocery store.<\/p>\n
Today, Craven Cattle Mart (CCM) sits just outside of town. It\u2019s become a place farmers go not only to buy and sell but also to socialise.<\/p>\n
The sheepdog sales \u2013 with their record-setting prices and international clientele \u2013 now attract many who simply come out to watch.<\/p>\n
A good sheepdog is often more useful than a human employee, able to cover huge distances quickly, gliding over rough and rutted land. It\u2019s part of why some buyers will travel so far to buy one. Some dogs can also work cattle.<\/p>\n
And while drones and robots have been touted for more than a decade as potential replacements for sheepdogs, sheep grow used to and start to ignore drones. A dog\u2019s natural instincts for herding is a hard thing to replicate.<\/p>\n
Neil Winton had set off at 4:45 a.m. that summer morning on the five-hour drive from Perthshire, Scotland, with his wife and son.<\/p>\n
Their 5 000-acre farm is home to 900 sheep and is \u201call hills,\u201d he says. When I ask him what it would be like working without a dog, he replies: \u201cTotally impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another sheep farmer at the sale, Craig Procter, tells me he was \u201cdesperate\u201d for a dog after the unexpected death of his previous one: \u201cIt\u2019s 70% of the work, really.\u201d<\/p>\n
Going international<\/p>\n
CCM started sheepdog sales in 1996. At that time\u00a0there were only a couple of other places selling dogs in Britain. In those early days, many sold at auction were \u201crejects,\u201d says\u00a0Eaton, the auctioneer, meaning\u00a0surplus to a farm\u2019s needs rather than quality.<\/p>\n
But shepherds and trialists who\u00a0trained dogs saw an opportunity to start intentionally breeding, finding and training the sheepdogs, specifically for the auctions.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt opened up almost a new cottage industry,\u201d Eaton says. Interest grew in lockstep with the quality of the dogs on offer, particularly among sheepdog trialists who were competing at an international level for their countries.<\/p>\n
Over the next two decades, Skipton grew into a premier sheepdog trading destination, and the dogs themselves became headline-making luxury investments.<\/p>\n
In February 2020, Megan, a 2\u00bd-year-old border collie, was sold at CCM to a farm in Oklahoma for \u00a318 900 ($25 215), at the time a record price for a sheepdog.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to ring the auction and just make sure it wasn\u2019t a hoax and that I wasn\u2019t dreaming,\u201d Megan\u2019s trainer, Emma Gray, told the BBC after the sale. The 2021 online auction of 1-year-old Kim, organised by Farmers Marts in Dolgellau, Wales, holds the Guinness World Record at \u00a328,455.<\/p>\n
Despite these figures, Brexit has made it significantly more difficult for trainers and farmers from Northern Ireland and Ireland, which had been a crucial market, to sell their dogs because of complex and costly export processes \u2014 not to mention repatriating them if they go unsold.<\/p>\n
Crowds have thinned, and Eaton went from selling as many as 150 sheepdogs in a single day to the couple dozen he had on the books for the July sale.<\/p>\n
But online-only sales, a vestige of the pandemic, are filling the gap. Also in 2021, a 9-week-old puppy sold at CCM for \u00a37 600, still a record for an untrained sheepdog. And in the years since, sales of the top-priced dogs at each of the Skipton auctions have frequently reached five figures.<\/p>\n
Trainer Eric Jacques says times have changed from when you \u201cused to put a bit of an advert in [the Farmers Guardian], and somebody would come and buy one.\u201d<\/p>\n
He tells me about how several years ago his children uploaded videos of his dogs online. \u201cI got a message one day on my phone saying this person had seen my dogs on YouTube and wanted to know if they were for sale,\u201d Jacques\u00a0says.<\/p>\n
The caller asked him if he could organise getting the dog a pet passport, prompting him to ask her where it would be going. To his surprise, she told him Denmark.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey sent the money, and a lady came over \u2013 she drove over from Sweden \u2013 picked the dog up, took it back to Denmark. It was then flown out from Denmark to the Faroe Islands,\u201d Jacques says. \u201cIt just shows the difference from 15 years ago. You\u2019ve got a bigger market now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the hammer<\/p>\n
These days, CCM runs several sheepdog sales a year. Some are entirely online, such as the one on 23 September, where trainers uploaded recorded videos of their dogs.<\/p>\n
Over the past 12 months, multiple dogs sold online have made five figures, heading to southern England, Ireland and the south of France. They can have resale value too: A 5-year-old dog previously bought by a now-retired shepherd, and whose father was one of Gray\u2019s dogs, was sold to an anonymous buyer in Germany for \u00a34 200.<\/p>\n
In-person \u201cfield sales\u201d like the one in July have started accepting online bids too. A webcam shows a live feed of the dogs herding sheep before the bidding starts; as many as\u00a0100 additional buyers typically log on.<\/p>\n
Eaton says many potential buyers still\u00a0prefer seeing\u00a0the dogs in the flesh,\u00a0to watching videos, which can be edited and reshot.<\/p>\n
American Samantha Furman got her first border collie 30 years ago. At the time, she had planned to become an accountant. But she started doing lessons with a highly regarded handler, for whom she ended up working for several years.<\/p>\n
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Then she got a few sheep of her own to train her dogs with\u00a0and became art of the then-fledgling US sheepdog trial circuit, which has since boomed in popularity.\u00a0Farming followed.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomewhere in there, I really just got pretty passionate about the sheep and wanted to do the best I could,\u201d says Furman, who lives appropriately enough in Farmville, Virginia.\u00a0She now has a flock of 600.<\/p>\n
But like Takei, Furman recognised how difficult it is to find high-quality sheepdogs at home. \u201cThe inability maybe to find as good a sheepdog here as I\u2019d had when I got my first dog 30 years ago, it inspired me to want to import dogs,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd with Covid and the livestock market, it allowed me to shop for dogs all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Furman had already bought a dog from Dewi\u00a0Jenkins, a prominent Welsh sheepdog trainer, and they\u2019d been in touch about Jen, a 19-month-old border collie, before the dog\u00a0went on sale at CCM last October.<\/p>\n
\u201cI talked to him, and I really like the looks of her,\u201d even though she \u201cwasn\u2019t really in the market for a dog,\u201d Furman says.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe says, \u2018Well, what\u2019s the top you can go?\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Well, I\u2019m probably a buyer at 15 [thousand pounds].\u2019 So that was the last word to my husband.\u201d The bidding began at 5 a.m. Virginia time, as she sat in bed in her pyjamas.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kept hitting the button, and I was about to have heart failure\u201d as the figure grew higher and higher, Furman says. When the gavel dropped she\u2019d bid \u00a324,550, a record at CCM.<\/p>\n
Extra expenses, including\u00a0the cost of transporting Jen to Virginia, meant Furman was in\u00a0for an estimated $40,000. \u201cTo watch it back, I almost threw up,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
In July, when Eaton hammered his gavel to end the bidding for Del, the Ryders came out on top at 3 600 guineas, which works out to be \u00a33,780 (a guinea is worth \u00a31.05; the auction takes the 5 pence as its commission).<\/p>\n
As much as the auction mart and the trainers have embraced new technology, nothing can oust tradition, like using the old British currency that was officially demonetised more than 200 years ago.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s part of what\u2019s kept CCM a centre for the local agricultural community \u2013 protecting \u201cthe principal of the auction,\u201d Eaton says \u2014 even as buyers have arrived from around the world.<\/p>\n
A few weeks after the sale, I texted Christine Ryder to see how Del had\u00a0settled into his new home and job.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe runs like the wind, never grabs at the sheep and he\u2019s totally under control,\u201d she texted back.\u00a0\u201cWe love him. He positively bounces with excitement at the prospect of going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2026 Bloomberg<\/p>\n
#global #market #elite #sheepdogs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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