A fierce competition took place in Huntersville this past weekend that had nothing at all to do with politics: The contestants had four legs, furry coats and long tails — and they leapt, swam and herded sheep for top prizes.
At the 30th annual Rural Hill Sheepdog Trials and Dog Festival on Sunday, about 100 people sat on metal bleachers or folding chairs before a long, grassy field.
Standing by a post, a woman held a metal whistle to her lips as a border collie dashed back and forth behind a herd of sheep.
The small herd was about to enter a small, metal pen — one of the last challenges in the sheep-herding obstacle course — when suddenly one broke from the group, and the others scattered. A moment later, the judge called "time."
The woman, Dee Bailes, of Sanford, shook her head and walked to a fence.
"Well, it wasn’t a stellar run, but she tried hard," Bailes said, with a laugh.
Her 2-year-old black and white pup, Bell, jumped into a big bucket of water next to her, out of breath.
"She worked hard. I still love her," Bailes added.
Bailes was the lead organizer of this year's event, and she's been competing in sheep-herding contests since Huntersville’s first sheepdog trials in 1995. She describes the sport as "addictive."
Last year’s champion dog handler, Alasdair MacRae, of Abbeville County, S.C., put it this way:
"To watch a dog work sheep, it’s just like magic," MacRae said. "It’s like a video game. It’s like romance. It’s like a choreographed dance. The way the sheep react to the dog and the dog react to the sheep ... it gives you such a thrill."
While the sheep-herding contest is open to any breed, it's dominated by border collies, which were bred in the 1700s to herd sheep near the border of England and Scotland.
They weren’t the only breeds competing in Huntersville on Sunday, however. In another field, poodles, doodles and German Shepherds chased and caught Frisbees before an audience of humans and fellow canines, who watched in awe.
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In yet another field, dogs leapt from a raised platform into a 40-foot, 27,000-gallon pool.
One 2-year-old Dutch Shepherd, Quincy, made a huge splash when he landed in the water. He swam furiously across the pool to retrieve a toy, then swam back to his owner, Catherine White of Concord.
He snatched the toy in 8.6 seconds, making him not the fastest swimmer of the pack, but also not the slowest. Quincy didn’t seem to mind either way.
"What you just saw him doing was his absolute favorite discipline of all the things we do here," White said after Quincy shook himself dry.
The dog owners were competing for cash prizes in the sheep-herding competition and the swimming and jumping contests held by Carolina DockDogs. The sheep-herding dogs also earned points to qualify for the national 2025 Sheepdog Trials in Alturas, California.
But for most of the four-legged competitors, the real prize was getting out of the house and, perhaps, eating a special treat later on, like the one White planned to get for her pup.
"For him tonight, it’ll probably be a McDonald's hamburger. That’s what he likes," White said. "Either that, or a Pup Cup, or a little ice cream."
Every dog has its day after all — and for White's furry young athlete, that day had finally arrived.
