We saw lots of beautiful towns and churches on our tour of Scotland, and one pretty well know golf course at St. Andrews, but, far and away, one of the most fun side trips was a visit to a sheep farm; make that sheep estate. We met the shepherd (top picture) who grazes sheep over an 11,000 acre estate with the help of his wonderfully trained Scotland sheep dogs. He had nine dogs, each of which responded to its own whistles and verbal signals (all very quiet). One of the dogs was blind but it still did its job guided by the shepherd's voice. Pretty amazing. He had a small flock of sheep pastured near where we stood and the dogs took turns herding the sheep. The dogs obviously loved what they were doing and even the sheep seemed to be getting into the game and having fun. The shepherd also demonstrated shearing a ram the old fashioned way - with hand shears. Turns out when you flip a sheep on its back it just lies there quietly and lets you shear it. A few of our group "helped" with the shearing but I chose to watch. The little boy in the bottom picture is the shepherd's son, six years old, and already learning his dad's profession. Since I've recently been watching "Monarch of the Glen" on Netflix, I was interested to learn what the 'Laird" of this estate was doing to keep the estate financially solid. In addition to running sheep (the shepherd had a free hand with this - reporting in once a year) the owner sells hunting permits (no, not for sheep). For 3,000 pounds a day a hunter can hunt grouse, for more he can hunt deer. Very enterprising, these Scots. Beautiful scenery in the Highlands.
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