STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Fiona McMillan was but a wee lass growing up on a thousand-acre farm near the small village of Moniaive, Dumfriesshire, Scottland, when her father gave her a little border collie  to train to herd sheep.

“It was one of my proudest moments,” she recounted. “Toss was a happy dog, a clever dog. You couldn’t give him enough to do—he was always begging for more.”

But one day McMillan came home from school ready to work with her little charge. “Where was Toss? Toss was not there!” she said.

It turned out her father had sold the little dog. Fiona protested that he wasn’t for sale only to be told the money her father got for him was good. She answered by packing her suitcase.

McMillan never did get Toss back but she watched with pride as he won the Welsh National Sheep Dog Trials. And the bond she formed with that dog planted in her a passion that remains unchecked. After a career with the Post Office and Police Scotland took her from the farm, making it difficult to provide a dog with a good working environment to develop its skills, she began organizing and judging trials.

She comes to Sun Valley for the Trailing of the Sheep Festival this weekend where she is judging the National Point Qualifying Championship Sheep Dog Trials running today through Sunday, Oct. 6, in a field along Buttercup Road north of Hailey.

“It is an honor to be asked to come from Scotland to judge these trials,” said McMillan. “This will be the first time I’ve judged dogs working sheep that have just come out of the mountains. Sheep raised on farms are laid back and easier to handle because they’re used to the dogs. The sheep at this festival are not used to seeing dogs or people so they’re going to be more difficult to pen.”

In fact, Idaho has some of the last bands of sheep that are fed on the range and rarely, if ever, handled so they don’t care what the dogs want them to do.

Border collies and sheep are in McMillan’s DNA. Her family raised 200-plus crossbred sheep and 800 blackface sheep on the farm near the Scottish-English border. And McMillan, who was considered the boy her father never had, followed her father around the farm learning to shepherd sheep and work with the family border collies.

Her father still holds the record for winning the Queens Cup for Best in Show with the Galloway breed at the Royal Highland Show. And Fiona ran her first trial at 14. She won the Young Handlers competition at the International, which pits the top 150 dogs from Scotland, Britain, Ireland and Wales, in 1986.

“Scotland at that time in the 1990s had some great handlers so I was really up against it,” said McMillan who also demonstrated her skills on the popular Scottish TV show “One Man and his Dog.”

McMillan has been involved with the International Sheep Dog Society for more than 30 years, as director for most of that time. She will become the first lady president in the history of the Society in November 2024.

“In Scotland the men handlers still outnumber the females so that’s a big deal,” she said. “Here in the Untied States the female handlers outnumber the males.”

McMillan was asked to judge a trial in Seattle in 2010 and since has judged trials from Oregon to New York, as well as trials in Scotland, England, Ireland and Canada. She was invited to judge the Trailing of the Sheep Festival trials by Kelly Ware, the Trailing of the Sheep Festival’s USBCHA Trials’ coordinator, after Ware met her in Portland, Ore.

“Fiona is widely respected throughout the stock dog community,” said Ware.

Here, McMillan will assign points for how well dogs peel off the sheep and how controlled they move the sheep.

The Outrun, Lift and Fetch taking the sheep from here to there can fetch 50 points. The Drive Away and Cross Drive carry 30 points, and the Shed Pen 30 points.

The Outrun involves the dog leaving the handler and making an arc behind the sheep, working 12 to 20 yards behind the sheep. It introduces itself to the sheep in the Lift, gathering the sheep into a tight group using eye contact, and walking them down the field to the handler.

In a Double Lift, a dog runs to one of two groups of sheep. It lifts and fetches them to a central point. Then it goes back and gets the second group.

“We have what we call strong dogs and weak dogs,” said McMillan. “The strong dogs will bite the sheep to get them to move, which disqualifies them at the trials. And the weak dogs back up when confronted with sheep. You want something in between—a dog that can move sheep with the pale of the eye, walking up quietly and slowly and staring them in the eye.”

Border collies, which originated near the Anglo-Scottish border, are considered one of the smartest dog breeds, but things don’t always go according to plan.

“I watched one dog miss the sheep completely. The handler was saying, ‘Where is he?’ Next thing you knew the dog had landed back at his feet,” McMillan said.

McMillan said dog trials started out as a hobby.

“Now they’re really very competitive,” she added.

IF YOU GO:

The National Point Qualifying Championship Sheepdog Trials will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and Saturday, Oct. 4-5, and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, oct. 6, at Buttercup Road between the Valley Club and Indian Creek Road.

The trials will feature 80 border collies and their handlers from Idaho, Utah, Montana, California, Oregon, Washington and Canada trying to corral sheep belonging to Denis and Laurie Kowitz of Declo. They have been in the mountains all summer.

Onsite are 30 vendors hawking border collie and other merchandise. The Gooding Basque Association will have paella and other Basque food for sale. Bring lawn chairs as there is no seating provided. Leashed dogs are permitted.

Cost is $10 for bikers and pedestrians on Friday and Saturday and $5 on Sunday. Vehicles with single occupancy are $10; two-plus passengers, $20. Three-day passes are available for $25 and $45 respectively. If you wish to purchase passes online, go to https://trailingofthesheep.org/sheepdogs/dogs/?blm_aid=21638