A top call of £5,600, plus a trio of joint £5,100 second top calls, were among the highlights at Skipton Auction Mart’s timed online-only summer sale of working sheep dogs.
Welsh handlers and trialists Kevin Evans and Dewi Jenkins were again to the fore, joined by Scotswoman Matilda Young, who sold for the first time at the venue.
Kevin Evans, of Llwynfedwen, near Brecon, in Powys, had four entries in the sale, a brace going to buyers in the United States and Germany.
He was top dog on price at £5,600 with a fully broken two-year-old red and white dog, Foxridge Flynn, another well-bred son of his red Spot, a German import increasingly proving his worth as a stud dog.
Out of David Edwards’ Tanhill Lilly, bred by Kirkby Stephen’s Alec Baines, Flynn returned to Wales with Merthyr Tidfil’s Rory Parker, who runs some 500 Welsh Mountain sheep, plus a small flock of Valais Blacknose.
He had earlier seen Flynn at work on the farm, before bagging him online as a work dog only.
Another fully broken and fully home-bred Evans dog, this time a black and white bitch, Kemi Nan, was one of the £5,100 performers.
The June 2021 daughter of European Nursery Champion and dual Welsh and International Brace Champion, Derwen Doug, out of Scalpsie Joy, herself a daughter of fellow Welsh handler Ross Games’ accomplished trials dog Roy, joined US buyer Dr Karen Thompson.
Over the years, Dr Thompson has imported a number of top-class working dogs from the legendary Welsh handler for her Thompson’s Border Collies Farms, also home to Dorper hair wool sheep and percentage Boer goats.
Back in July 2020, and again at a Skipton online sale, she paid £10,200 for another well-bred Evans dog, Kemi Floss.
A retired theologian who has been working, training and breeding Border Collies for some 40 years, Dr Thompson was herself a well-known trialist in the 1970s and 1980s.
She served on the board of directors of the North American Sheepdogs, which later became the American International Sheepdog Society and now the American Border Collie Association.
“I’ve been importing steadily from Kevin Evans since 2012 and he’s never failed,” she commented.
Of the 41 fully broken, part-broken and unbroken entry, a total of 21 dogs successfully found new homes.
Skipton’s next working sheep dog sale, a live fixture with field trials, is scheduled for 21 July.
