Alanna Leach brought her border collie Kyrie with her to the Rotary Club of Lloydminster on Monday to talk about her passion for training dogs for sheep herding and trial competitions. She has six collies on her acreage. Geoff Lee Meridian Source
The Rotary Club of Lloydminster has gone to the dogs.
Local hobby farmer Alanna Leach brought her eight-year-old border collie, Kyrie, to the club’s Monday luncheon to talk about her new passion for sheepdog herding.
“Alanna has been a great person in Lloydminster and area in promoting different types of dog shows,” said Glenys Reeves-Gibbs, who introduced her to the audience.
“She and her husband, Gary, bought an acreage four years ago. So this city girl who came from down east and moved to Lloydminster is now becoming a farm person.”
Leach has six border collies on her acreage that she trains to work with about 35 head of sheep.
“We have quite a few ranchers who use dogs on their stock on a regular basis,” she said.
“They do the work of about three men. When I have a dog, I usually don’t have to use my side-by-side. It’s very intuitive for the animals. They work together, it’s very historic.”
Leach uses whistles for distance commands and talks to her dogs when they are within earshot.
“Dogs also start off with lots of natural instinct of their own and it’s our job to guide that instinct so they can do the work we need them to do on the farm,” said Leach.
She says it’s not tough to train them, but you have to put the time in.
“It doesn’t happen really quickly,” she said.
Leach says she’s actually “been that crazy dog lady in this community for 40 some years,” starting with training bull terriers and moving to border collies.
She calls the breed the “Cadillac” of working stock.
She’s been training dogs in various things such as obedience, agility and all sorts of dog sports over the years.
“Sheep herding is kind of the ultimate one,” she said, noting there are sheep trials all over North America.
“I have sheep and I have dogs that I can trial. I compete with them in trials.”
She fine-tunes them for trials with the help of her herding mentor Scott Glen from Lethbridge who recently finished third in the world trials in the U.K.
“My dogs do pretty good. We haven’t won any of the big trials yet, but we’re working towards it,” said Leach who is a member of the Lloydminster Stockdog Club.
