An Irish Woman and Her Three-Legged Dog Beat Me at My Own Sheepdog Trial. She Said She’d Be Back Next Year to Do It Again

The dog only had three legs.

That’s the first thing everybody noticed when the woman from Ireland walked onto the field at the Meeker sheepdog trial.

The second thing was that she didn’t care.

“She lost the back leg to a car when she was a pup,” she told the judge, in an accent you could pour on pancakes. “She doesn’t know it’s missing. Please don’t tell her.”

People laughed.

I didn’t. I was standing at the handlers’ post with my own dog, Ace, a black-and-white border collie who had won this trial three years in a row. Ace was watching the three-legged dog the way a boxer watches a man walking into the ring.

Ace knew something I didn’t.

I’m Callan Price. I’m 50. I’ve raised sheep in the White River valley of western Colorado my whole life. My wife Anne died four years ago, and since then, the sheep, the dogs and this trial every September are most of what I have.

The woman’s name was Siobhan Keane. She was in Colorado for one month, visiting her sister. She’d entered the open class on a dare.

Her dog’s name was Tess.

The whistle blew.

Tess went out on the outrun like water running downhill. Wide. Quiet. Perfect. Three legs, and I swear she was faster than Ace.

The crowd went silent.

Eleven minutes later, five sheep walked into the pen like they’d been invited to dinner, and Siobhan Keane closed the gate.

The judge read her score.

It beat mine by two points.