No 18 - World Trials

Sheepdog trialling has come a long way. The dream of the worldwide community of sheepdog handlers coming together for a celebration of trialling, of people from all over the world talking together, competing together and enjoying their mutual interest together seemed for many years to be impossible. The changes in the rabies laws, with quarantine being replaced by vaccination, paved the way for making the dream a reality, and the ISDS played a vital part in those changes. The three World Trials, two in Wales and one in Ireland, have all been a great success, and in 2008 for the first time, a competitor from outside the four home countries, Ron Snoek from the Netherlands, shown above penning with Nell to complete his run, came within a whisker of taking the World title. Whose turn will it be when the World Trial comes to England in 2011?

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Photo: Suzy Woolston