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Herding Demonstation this weekend


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Here in South Bend IN, there is a celtic festival going on this Sunday and there is

a border collie herding demonstration scheduled. I'm told there will be ducks, as

well as sheep. It will be the first time that I have be able to see this first hand.

I was wondering if anyone here had heard of Jim McEwen, the man who is putting

on the demonstrations? The flyers say he's out of Dunkirk, IN. I have absolutely

no idea of who's who in the herding world. I looked at his website and there seems

to be no affiliation with AKC, so I'm hoping that the dogs he brings, show the variation

of what working border collies look like, instead of what everyone assumes they're

supposed to look like. I will be taking alot of pictures and hopefully some will turn

out well enough to post here.

Mike

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I know Jim Bob very well, I used to travel with him. Trialers would have to be at least in their late 40's to have even heard of him. I also used to train some of his young dogs. I can't believe he's still doing demos, he has to be well over 75 by now. If you talk to him tell him Dick Bruner says hi.

 

As far as his dogs are concerned they are probably imported, he used to buy a lot of dogs from Raymond McPherson, they WON'T be AKC. Probably ISDS registered.

He is quite a showman, at one time traveling with two yokes of oxen. He once bought 1000 whistles from me just to hand out to kids at Demo's. He did the Indiana state Fair for years.

If his health is ok you should see quite a show.

 

Have fun at the games.

 

Dick

 

PS

This brings back a lot of memories. He is quite a character. When traveling he would look at the map and say "I've been on that road before let's take a different one"

Or, swerving the truck back and forth to try to get that last drop of fuel because he forgot to buy some.(had a trailer full of sheep)

We were on our way to Virginia to judge a trial and he said "While we're out there lets take the trailer with us and pick up a yoke of oxen" I said "Jim Bob, it's closer to Maine

from your house than where we are going" So we hitched his trailer to my truck and off we went. While we were in Maine, he got on the phone and found some dutch belt cows

going back to Indiana, so I even made money on the deal. Trials at Jim Bob's farm were interesting to say the least. He almost always used Barbados which can get pretty wild.

He always used a set out pen to hold them at the top. Once a ewe had a lamb in the pen. Many of the fields he and many others at the time didn't have a fence around it.

 

I could go on.

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