Samara Thurston-Paris holds the dogs at the long head pen before one of the runs on a hot opening day of the sheep dog trial season. Photo / Warren Buckland
Samara Thurston-Paris holds the dogs at the long head pen before one of the runs on a hot opening day of the sheep dog trial season. Photo / Warren Buckland
At 30 degrees Celsius or more out in the hot sun of the pre-Christmas Hawke's Bay summer, it's kind of stinking hot.
But for more than 200 farmers at the first club sheepdog trials of the new season, the flats and hillsides of Ahuriri Lagoon Farm near Hawke's Bay Airporthave become fields of passion as they put behind them what, in anyone's language, has not been the best of years.
"It's addictive," says James Hemopo, who's brought five dogs up from where he manages a block at Bullock Hills, off Tiraumea Rd, near Pahiatua, to compete at the Petane Sheep Dog Trials which started on Friday and finish on Saturday.
Held almost every year for more than a century, the Petane trials are normally held in March but for a variety of reasons have been brought forward this year to be the first anywhere in New Zealand this season, and more than a month before the traditional start of the Hawke's Bay Sheep Dog Trial Centre season at the end of January.
Club president Jeremy Berry, almost before it starts, was sure the club would want to do it again. There are record entries, trialists and their dogs come from across the North Island, up and down the east coast, and, a few, from the South Island, lusting for both the competition and the camaraderie.
There were 144 entries in the hunts, and 132 in headers, each running in the two classes – short head and yard and long head, and zig-zag and straight hunts. "We usually get about 90 in each," he said.
There were so many entries one of the classes had to start at 6.30am on Friday to make sure all the runs could be completed, a close call if all of them across the four classes were to be completed in time.
Sheepdog trialists spend the season qualifying dogs for the island and national championships in May and June each year, but last summer saw all the good work disappear in an abrupt and premature end to the season last March, including cancellation of seven of the Hawke's Bay season's 13 club trials because of either the drought or the Covid-19 lockdown.
The prospect of a busy hot day was no issue for Hemopo, who had already run the team of kennels-star Kahn, intermediate dog Frankie, Ruby "two", and maidens Rogue and Abbo by morning smoko, and would run them, all again on the "other" course later in the day.
Ruby "two" was stepping up after Ruby "one", one of four dogs he had qualified for the never-to-happen 2020 nationals, passed away during the lockdown.
Rogue and Abbo weren't being particularly co-operative on the hill and exited well before the usual time was up – "that's the nerves done and dusted" - but such things as Abbo's "walkabout" off the course weren't an issue to Hemopo, happy to make "the donation" which along with the time and travel doesn't make the sport the cheapest in which to take part.
WB111220DOGTRIALS9.JPG Pahiatua farm manager James Hemopo and his team of five at the Petane sheep dog trials. Photo / Warren Buckland
He'd have $80 in entry fees for the day, plus a membership fee to the Petane club to help them along, something he'll repeat at each of what could be 12 to 13 trials over the season, before the island and national championships which have been brought forward to April and May.
While he concedes he'd have pig-hunting over sheepdog trialling any day, both are "very addictive", he says, the appeal clearly already rubbing-off on 14-year-old son and Tararua College student Blake, who is aiming to have his first dog on the trials courses next season.
On average, club trials need about 30 people to make things tick over, from liberators and judges on the courses to the canteen, often run fundraiser-fashion by a local school or kindergarten.
Over the two days Tutira Early Childhood Centre, which currently has 23 children, will have eight volunteers on the job from its staff and parents, including parent and senior teacher Letitia Nicholls, who started with a group from Putere about 13 years ago.
Another stayer is Troy, a 9-year-old canine servant of farmer and dog trialist Sheena Martin, a dog in the twilight of a career toughened by working the steep faces around the hills of Cricklewood.
