Sweden, Norway and Scotland 2019

After we left Inverness the plan was to drive to Loch Ness to try and snap a pic of the legend that would in turn make us famous.

Sidebar….when researching my Rick Steves book (yes I do occasionally do research that is outside of reality shows) there was a mention of a working sheepdog farm. I read reviews on TripAdvisor all of which were extremely positive. I had mentioned this on the drive earlier in the day and the kids seemed interested in trying to stop here. The problem….despite everything being relatively close here, the roads are super narrow and so the driving times are longer than you would think. After our unintended stop in Portgordon and our longer than anticipated stop in Inverness there was no way we could do both Loch Ness and the farm. Loch Ness was the one thing Greg wanted to do in Scotland this why we stayed in Aberdeen rather than Edinburgh.

As we made our way to Loch Ness one of the kids asked if we were going to see the sheepdogs. I responded no, we don’t have time.

Greg started searching to see if we could find another option (this one only did an event once a day at 4pm) and no other options existed. Sensing the disappointment in the car Greg took on for the team and told me to turn around and head for the farm.

Here is the only pic we got (from the car while driving) of Loch Ness…

After slowing enough to take that pic we made our way at the safest mach speed we could towards the sheep farm. We knew we were going to be late but we were trying to minimize our tardiness. We may have exhibited all the things not to do when driving to the kids. (I was at the wheel though….it could have been so much worse with Greg!)

All the stress was totally worth it. It was an impressive demonstration. He had close to ten border collies and probably ten or so of his sheep. He would give voice commands and have the dogs do specific commands such as bring the sheep between two trees to the crowd. Another time he had the dogs separate one sheep from the flock.

All the dogs wanted to run and herd the sheep but he was calling specific dogs only. The others would try to sneak up to get in the action and he would have to tell them to stay or lie down.

The next part was to watch him sheer a sheep. He explained they use hand shears except for June and July when they use electric. The electric ones shear them too short which I think is ok during the hot summer months. (He was hard to understand.) He gave anyone who wanted the chance to help him sheer the sheep. Logan jumped in to give it a go.

When he was done he had the wool in one long piece that he rolled up. He sells the wool to a place in London for Persian rugs and gets 5 pounds per roll (which doesn’t sound like much.) He takes off the tail portion because he said he can get as much for that piece from a local company in Inverness for the same amount because he sells that as organic.

After the demonstrations it was time to meet the puppies. First he brought out one that was seven weeks old. Everyone went crazy over it. Little did we know he would bring out puppies that were 16 days old. Needless to say, the kids are ready for another puppy.