A Northern Hawke’s Bay farmer has put some of the Cyclone Gabrielle crisis behind him for a week by winning his first North Island or national sheep dog trials title.
David Scragg won the zig zag hunt runoff with Chook on the fourth day of the North Island championships at Lochinver Station, on the Rangitaiki Plains, between Napier and Taupo, on Thursday.
It was only last year that Scragg reached a runoff at the island or national championships for the first time, finishing runner-up with Flow in the North Island straight hunt championship at King Country station Meringa, where he then finished fifth in the national title runoff won by Wairoa clubmate Ned George and Sprocket.
It was at the Wairoa club trials two years ago that Chook first won a trial for Scragg, as a maiden dog.
Two years earlier, in 2019, wife Rebecca featured in a particularly historic moment in the century-plus history of island and national sheep dog trials championships as one of three women in the South Island zig zag runoff, in which Poverty Bay trialist Jo Waugh became the first woman to win an island or national sheep dog trials championships title.