Forget Football — It's Sheepdog Trial Season in Northern California

Football season might be in full swing and baseball is hitting the home stretch, but there's another sport capturing the attention of people in Northern California: sheepdog trials. Earlier this month, hundreds of people gathered at the Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show in Boonville to watch the annual sheepdog trials. The herding event is a competitive dog sport that dates back to the mid-19th century in Europe, New Zealand and Australia, in which highly trained herding dogs move sheep around a field, fences, gates or enclosures as directed by their handlers. The sheepdog trials in Boonville took place in a field at the county fairgrounds where the local high school plays football games and the rodeo takes place every year. There are four obstacles on the 100-yard-long grassy arena: a square pen, two gates side by side with a 6-foot-gap between them and a plywood chute that looks like a large funnel. The sheepdogs have to get the sheep to enter the funnel and squeeze through the dark chute, which is only 18 inches wide for most of its length. The chute is often many-a-sheepdog’s Waterloo. “That’s the most difficult obstacle. It's also the one that's closest to the stands and closest to the crowds of people," says Alice Woelfle, program director at KZYX, Mendocino County’s small public radio station, and a sheep rancher herself. "The crowds of people definitely affect the behavior of the dogs and the sheep.”...MORE