‘Taking the Place of Three Men’

Idaho Business Journal - Nov. 13, 2023 - Under a baby-blue cloudless sky in central Idaho, the black and white dog crouched low behind the herd of sheep, its eyes fixed unwaveringly on the half-dozen nervous little ewes. Although the animals trotted in a tight-knit clique within a pen, the sleek Border collie was stiff with attention as Robin Brown blew a series of different sounds through the custom-made tin whistle around her neck.

She blew a short, loud noise, and the dog darted to move the sheep in one wide arc. Another whistle and the herd suddenly headed in the opposite direction. Brown blew again, and the dog dropped low on its belly to stare intently at its bleating wards.

“This whistle is essential to what I do,” she said. “The dogs can hear that whistle a mile away, so I don’t have to yell or scream, I can just whistle. It’s a whole language.”

In Idaho’s Indian Valley, where Brown and her husband Rocky operate the Broken Circle Ranch near Cambridge, raising and training Border Collies for real working ranches across America is serious business.

According to Brown, the value of a well-trained stock dog is equal to three men on horseback, though her husband insists a good dog is equal to the value of six men on horseback. Besides herding cattle and sheep from one pasture to the next and keeping them out of the creek-bottoms, the dogs play a valuable role in keeping the animals safe as well.

It’s a lucrative business, too. A well-trained herding or ranch dog can sell for sometimes up to $25,000 to $30,000 each (though usually in the $5,000 to $7,000 range), but  their value to ranchers and livestock owners is priceless.

And business is still booming. The newest breed of dog trainers also has a woman’s touch.

Debra Buckner of The Elkhorn Bed and Breakfast works with her Anatolian Shepherds daily to train them to protect livestock from predators. (PHOTO: Heide Brandes)

The lifestyle of ranch dogs

For cattle dog breeders and trainers, ranching is a lifestyle. Life revolves around raising puppies, training dogs to become team members and keeping the investment happy and healthy. Ranching and training can be backbreaking work too, with both people and dogs facing dangers like extreme temperatures, treacherous and unforgiving mountains, rattlesnakes, aggressive predators and injury.

The work is challenging for even the most hardened cowboys but can be even tougher for the women who are increasingly joining the ranks of the cattle dog industry. Some women come into the business as dog enthusiasts, but living the tough life is something Brown was born into.

“I grew up on three cattle ranches here in Idaho, and I did that my whole life,” she said. “I’ve had dogs since I was a little girl on the cattle drive. We had a camp cook, we had cowboys, we had horses and we had dogs.”

From the age of 5, Brown joined her family on the weeks-long cattle drives moving the herd from one ranch to another. From her earliest memory, dogs were by her side.

“The old cowboys we were with couldn’t do anything without them,” Brown said. “We went west from high desert to pine forests to mountains along dirt roads, and the dogs had to keep all that cattle in check so they wouldn’t get lost in the forest. Every cowboy had a working dog, and those dogs were tools.”

Brown studied architecture in college but marrying a cowboy before graduation meant returning to the ranch. Ranch life was as hard as she remembered, but stumbling upon a sheep dog trial at a local winery changed her life.

“I was blown away at what those dogs were capable of doing,” she said. “They were on whistle commands and were gathering sheep and were trained so well. I wanted my cow dogs to do that. So, I figured it out.”

Within a year, Brown learned all she could about training herding dogs, squeezing in sessions with her own dogs in between the seven-day-a-week, “28-hours-a-day” ranch work for her family. One day, her father asked to use one of her dogs. Soon, a neighbor wanted to buy her other trained dog.

“I made $1,500 off that first dog, but it was a 2-year-old dog, so I had a lot of time invested,” Brown said. “Then another rancher bought a dog, and my prices went up a little bit. Word of mouth spread, and I became known as the girl who trains working ranch dogs.”

Sheep dog trials and competitions were common, but cattle dog trials were not. Most cattle dog trials were held in southern states like Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas, so she began traveling and competing. Many times, she was the only young woman competing on the circuit.

“It was frustrating to say the least,” she said. “There weren’t very many women doing this. Then I started winning the cattle dog trials, and people started taking me more seriously.”

Soon after, she bought her first registered Border Collie, and in 2008, Brown started breeding and training her dogs exclusively. Brown’s Broken Circle Ranch now provides trained cattle dogs to ranches throughout the U.S. and to nine different countries. She’s sending two to Chile next month.

“Cowboys don’t have a lot of money, but they’re still buying these dogs to make their job easier,” Brown said. “Dogs can go where no man can, and they are a valuable tool, like a tractor. A well-trained dog is an investment so these cowboys will take good care of that investment that they just bought for anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000.”

Brown’s Border Collie “Lass” herds a clique of sheep at the Broken Circle Ranch. (PHOTO: Heide Brandes)

Women changing the face of the industry

Not more than three miles up the road from the Broken Circle Ranch, Debra Buckner raises another kind of working dog at her Elkhorn ASD and the Elkhorn Bed and Breakfast.

While Border Collies are used to herd livestock, Buckner’s Anatolian Shepherds are trained to keep them safe. With over two dozen dogs on her ranch at any given time, the 70-ish-year old Buckner relies on them to protect her own livestock while providing additional income to her one-woman show.

“I felt like I was a sitting duck because I kept hearing about wolf kills on either side of the hill here,” Buckner said. “I was raising goats and sheep. I was cruising the internet and found the Anatolian shepherd. I had to fly to Texas in 2015 to buy my first one.”

According to Buckner, Anatolians have a strong predator drive and are territorial, making them perfect for guarding livestock against hungry interlopers. Since buying her first guard dog, she hasn’t lost any animals to predators, and she now trains Anatolians to protect other herds worldwide.

Predation of livestock is still a costly problem for ranchers. In Idaho alone, predators caused an estimated $1.34 million in losses in 2018 and losses due to predators accounted for 26% of all sheep and lamb deaths, according to a survey conducted by USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service, Northwest Regional Field Office. Coyotes were responsible for 74% of the predator-caused livestock deaths in Idaho, racking up $981,000 in losses.

The protecting instinct of Anatolians has been revered for centuries in Turkey, and Buckner is one of the few Anatolian breeders and trainers in the west to train the pure-bred guard animal.

Not as easy as it looks

Creating a well-trained ranch dog isn’t easy. Both Buckner and Brown work for hours daily to train their animals to do the job and learn to listen to commands. Even after selling, both offer continued support to their clients.

“There is definitely a learning curve,” Buckner said. “You just can’t buy an Anatolian and know what you’re doing. You need help from the breeder to guide you. Anatolians are highly intelligent and stubborn because they’re bred to be self-thinkers. They need to be able to discern if an intruder is a predator that’s endangering the herd versus someone walking their dog “

Both women say they’ve seen a new generation of females enter the industry. After Brown, a three-time national cow dog champion herself, earned the honor of Master Dog Trainer in the recent Art of the Cow Girl competition in Phoenix, she began offering retreats and apprenticeships to women who want to learn the ropes.

People from Idaho and beyond visit the Broken Circle Ranch for a week to learn how to use cow and sheep dogs. She also offers a six-week master training program for those serious about making a business out of it.

Mariah Galindo, 25, of Colorado was one of those women. She saw Brown’s work with cattle dogs on a YouTube video and enrolled in her course. Today, she interns on the Broken Circle Ranch with the goal of following in her mentor’s footsteps.

“I work for a goat grazing business right now, so I get to train my dogs and work my dogs at the same time,” Galindo said. “I just got back from a month-long job up in the mountains of northern Idaho where it was just me and my dogs and the goats. I want to train dogs full time and have a business like Robin’s.”

She’s not alone. When Brown started her business, she was hard-pressed to think of any other women making a living raising cow dogs. Now, she can rattle at least 10 names off the top of her head.

“It is a business, and we’re in it to be a business,” Brown said. “But it takes a lot of love, too. In order to be successful, you’ve got to maintain a really good relationship with the dogs. The puppies must trust you and love you. And you must really love them too.”