A Scottish shepherd is sharing jaw-dropping footage of his highly trained border collies herding and penning the hundreds of sheep he tends to. Theirs is a symbiotic relationship; the dogs love what they do, and the shepherd could not tend his flock without them.
Former dairy farmhand Sean Hannah, 27, moved away from his hometown on the west coast of Scotland six years ago to become a shepherd in the north, where he is employed at a large estate. He was mentored by the Campbell family of Loch Lomond, including their son, a dog trainer, in the fine art of commanding sheepdogs.
Sean shepherds their flock of 700 sheep and has nine of his own. Helping him are three working dogs: Kate, almost 6 years old, Storm, 3, and her puppy, 18-month-old Echo.
“There’s been shepherds with dogs in the hills for hundreds of years here. ... Even with all these advances in technology, you still wouldn’t be able to do this job as well without a dog as you can with a dog,” Sean told The Epoch Times. “They help us move the sheep around, help us catch sheep, if there’s one that’s injured or needing medical attention. ... We couldn’t do this type of farming without them.”
The relationship between the dogs and the sheep is one of mutual respect, Sean said; the dog is the predator, the sheep the prey. The shepherd provides vital mediation, and that’s where training comes in.
A good shepherd, Sean says, should be responsible and outdoorsy, and needs some variation on the four most basic shepherding commands: “Come by” to signal moving left, “Away” to signal moving right, “Lie down” to signal stop, and “That'll do” to recall the dogs when the flock is securely contained.
Sean also has a set of corresponding whistles. It’s not failsafe; every now and again, something will go wrong. But Sean says it’s not the mistakes but the recovery that matters most.
For this shepherd, border collies are the smartest and most resilient herding dogs for the sometimes harsh Scottish climate. Any herding dog needs to have good instincts as much as good training. “If a dog doesn’t have any instinct, you can train as much as you want but it won’t be a good sheepdog,” he said.
Besides instinct, Sean needs his dogs to have intelligence, good listening skills, and the stamina to run and herd for up to 12 hours without tiring. Today, Sean is in perfect sync with his trio of border collies, but it wasn’t always so easy.
“When I started out as a shepherd I really had to work on my own confidence, because when you’re working with a dog they pick up on your energy and it affects how they work,” Sean said. “Another big thing for me was I used to mumble a lot; mumble when you’re talking to a working dog, [and they] won’t understand what you’re saying!
“It probably took me a year or two,” he added. “The dog that I had was pretty hard-headed at the time, so it was a sort of trial by fire; I either had to get confident, or wouldn’t be able to control them.”
During lockdown mandates in Scotland, Sean began making and sharing videos of his herding dogs on social media and gained an audience. “Originally it started off as a TikTok,” he said. “It was just a bit of fun, making videos. ... [They] brought a smile to a lot of people’s faces, and we just decided that was a good thing to keep going.”
“You’re spending most of your time with your dogs, and you have to rely on them for a pay check, so it’s more of a partnership than anything else,” he said. “Also, you get to know them as dogs; each one has their own personality and you do get really close.”
The shepherd says that while his dogs get treats at home, herding is a reward in and of itself. Kate, Storm, and Echo are not coerced; they live to work.
“I just give them access to that,” Sean said. “Farming gets a bad rap from some people these days. ... The dogs, they absolutely love what they do. This is what they were bred to do and they have absolutely amazing lives.”
