sheep + dog = sheep dog

I think I'm getting finished up on telling you about our last Stone Mountain trip. Just this story tonight and one more about Randy and I doing some Geocaching on the mountain.

As I have said, the Scottish Highland games were in town the weekend we were there. This event kinda reminded me of a medieval fair. Most men wore kilts, there were more bagpipes that I could count, and tents selling all sorts of things littered the grounds.

We watched a few bagpipe bands march in the center field. All the bands were fun to watch and we got to hear Amazing Grace seven times. It must be required for every bagpipe band to end with that.

The highlight of out time with the Scottish had to be the sheep dogs. This was quite amazing to me, especially when I compare the intelligence to my dog. For the first demonstration, they let a few ducks out on the field and placed a small wooden bridge in the center. The dog slowly stalked the ducks and actually got them rounded up and had them walk up the bridge.

The trainer talked a little while about how he trains the dogs. It is all whistle commands. Each dog is trained to listen to different whistles. He told one dog to walk ten steps left on the third whistle. Sure enough, the dog did just that. Not only was the dog amazing, but you wouldn't believe the amount of whistles this man could produce.
Next they let some sheep into the field and showed how the dog could control them. Again. Really amazing to watch and see how smart those dogs were.

We walked among the tents before we left. Although the kilts looked very fashionable, I decided to wait until next time. I wasn't sure what clan colors would look best on me.