Although producing videos on Border Collies began for me in the early 1980s, my work with the Border Collie breed and with working sheepdogs began more than a decade before that. In the early 1970s I took a job working on the Black Mountains in South Wales, sheep country and sheepdog country. Without a good Border Collie the days would have been long. The wonderful writing of David Rees have been coloring the pages of the Working Border Collie magazine for the past few years. David’s country was also the hill country where I learnt about the wonders of the Border Collie breed.
We’ve landed
After picking up the rental car, exchanging my left side brain for my right side, so that I could negotiate the British driving habits, then found my way back to the car rental depot after driving in completely the wrong direction, and around in circles, for about an hour, I eventually came across the M4 and my road to Wales and to my first stop in Brecon.
A Detour
Wales is a beautiful country and as I drove down through the hills and mountains, I wondered how I could ever have left this inspiring landscape some 29 years earlier. I took a left, off the A40, at Sennybridge and a drove through the small market village, on through Libanus, and on up onto the Black Mountains, over looking the Crai Valley and Aberhyddnant, the farm of my younger days. The road over the mountains to Ystradgynlais was much busier than when I lived there and the valley itself had changed greatly. Wealthy, retired English folk had taken over many of the farms, selling their homes in the Home Counties for great financial gain enabling them to buy a hill farm in Wales with the proceeds.

The ISDS International Sheep Dog Trials 2004 DVD

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