From Deseret News archives:
Sheep thrills: Dogs to display herding skills at Utah classic
Her eyes, one translucent blue, the other bright gold, are locked on the bleating ewes, and she keeps her focus on their movement. She's hungry to begin work, anxious to hear when her handler Mark Petersen will give the command to begin.
"Away Ruth!" he shouts.
And she's off. She darts counter-clockwise around the sheep, gathering the stray creatures munching on grass, and she guides them north along an unpaved road in rural Silver Creek Junction.
"You can see how much work is the reward," Petersen said. "Nobody uses treats to get a dog to herd sheep. All it wants is a little attention and dog food. It will do it seven days a week, and it will thank you for it."
Founder and director of the Soldier Hollow Sheepdog Classic, Petersen is entering his fourth year of running the internationally renowned event that begins today and ends Monday. It has gained high accolades with the International Sheepdog Society and this year will host 40 handlers and 60 dogs from eight different countries for the 2006 invitation-only championship.
Although Petersen doesn't enter his sheepdogs, he had an idea 12 years ago to host such a classic in Utah. Sheepdog tournaments have been popular in Great Britain for centuries, but only recently have they started to pick up steam in the United States.
"There's a whole country out there waiting to discover this sport," he said.
Petersen fell in love with the sport in 1994 after a trip to Scotland, where he saw the British Internationals. "It changed my life," he said.
He brought home a young border collie pup and six weeks later sold his home in the Harvard-Yale area of Salt Lake City and bought a 2 1/2 acre lot in Silver Creek.
"As soon as I saw that event over there, I thought Americans would love this, and there's got to be a beautiful place to host this in Utah," Petersen said.
A year after the 2002 Winter Olympics, Petersen met with Howard Peterson, the general manager of Soldier Hollow, and presented his proposal for the trials. A month later, the first Soldier Hollow Classic began. It drew 10,000 spectators.
For Howard Peterson, the Sheepdog Classic presented the ideal summer event the cross country skiing hot spot was hoping to put its name on.
"Before the trails were out here, this was a grazing area for sheep," he said. "The Heber Valley historic railroad was actually built to transport sheep. So there are a tremendous amount of sheep people here."
