The open season builds through the summer and peaks in August. Counted from the public trials diary for 2025, the month carried about 140 listed trials against 107 in July and 87 in September, in a year of roughly 805 in total. Nursery trials, which fill the winter, are effectively absent.
The four Nationals, in three weeks
Each of the four nations runs a National trial in high summer. In 2026 the English National ran at Macclesfield in Cheshire from 6 to 9 August, the Welsh National at Heol Senni from 13 to 15 August, the Scottish National at Glenfarg from 19 to 22 August, and the Irish National in County Tyrone from 26 to 29 August. The International Supreme Championship follows at Stow-on-the-Wold from 11 to 13 September, and a World Trial is scheduled in the Scottish Borders from 16 to 20 September.
The pattern repeats from year to year: Nationals from late July to late August, the International in mid September. Over three days of a National, around 150 dogs run the course, and each national team has fifteen places plus one travelling reserve.
What a competitor has to have done first
Points, membership and registration. Points come from placing first to sixth in qualifying open trials, six down to one, and may be won in any nation. A qualifying trial is one that is not run within a novice or nursery event, is open to all without unreasonable restriction, has at least twenty-five dogs entered, uses a National style course including a drive, and was advertised on the society diary at least five days beforehand; it must also include a shed or a single, and its pen must be a means of containment. The handler and owner must be society members resident in their chosen nation for at least six months, and the dog must be registered in the society’s Stud Book in the competitor’s name before 1 June of the trial year. Nobody may run more than two dogs in singles.
The course at full size
The National and International qualifying course is run on five sheep, three unmarked and two collared, over a 400 yard gather, a fetch through seven yard gates at 150 yards, a 450 yard triangular drive through two more gates, a 40 yard shedding ring, and a pen nine feet by eight. Fifteen minutes, no extension. The scale of points runs outrun 20, lift 10, fetch 20, drive 30, shed 10, pen 10 and single 10, for 110.
The Supreme is a different animal. Twenty sheep are gathered in two packets of ten from about 800 yards each, joined by the dog before the fetch is finished, in thirty minutes with no extension. Gathering alone is worth 100 of the 170 points on offer. There is no single: the shed separates the fifteen unmarked sheep and the pen takes the five marked ones. The Supreme is not decided on raw points but on merit points, each of the four judges ranking the fifteen dogs from fifteen down, with ties on merit points broken first on total points and then on the fewest points lost on the outwork.
Who runs the day
Two judges officiate at a National, four at the International, one from each nation. The course director is the pivot: one of them must stay in visual contact with the judges throughout so that their instructions, particularly their deliberations on the shed and the single, reach the competitor without delay. The course director calls the competitors in the programme order, explains the course beforehand if asked, and does not communicate with a competitor once the run has begun except on the judges’ instruction. He or she must also see that the sheep are correctly presented at the top of the field in good time so that every competitor gets a fair and equal chance, and may put it to the judges that a competitor was disadvantaged by the let out. A re-run can be ordered where the wrong number of sheep was released, sheep were wrongly marked, or one or more was unsound for working.
Two rules that decide close results
No points are awarded for any phase not completed inside the time limit, so an unfinished pen scores nothing rather than something partial. And a competitor who retires or leaves the field without the judges’ permission forfeits all points, whereas a competitor called off at time keeps the points earned up to that moment. Those two sentences settle more results than any judging opinion.
A written standard fixes type, not work: it sets out points of the dog that a judge can see on the day, and leaves the rest to the eye. At the ground, height at the withers, length of back and bite are measurable; movement and stock sense are not. A French breed reference is read alongside the British one line by line, and where the two part, the ground decides. The desk has taken this up in how a breed standard is written, filed after the August page.
The entry form asks for the dog’s name, its age, and the class entered; colour is not among the boxes. In the pen, a judge reads the work: outrun, lift, fetch, drive, pen. Colour is not judged there because the standard is the dog’s work, not its coat. A coat colour reference records what a dog actually shows, black, merle, red or brindle, and the colour names at the ground are the ones used when the form is filled in.
One question comes back at every August trial: what separates a working line or show line collie? The entry filed at the end of this page sets out the breeding split, then the naming, since the same breed is described differently in the Netherlands and in Britain. For the dog at the post it comes down to what the judge asks: a gather on hill ground, a line held at 400 metres, a pen. The regulation is silent on line; custom is not. The entry is dated and kept under its year.
The season runs on the dog’s body, and the veterinary surgeon is not the only pair of hands on it. Owners ask three things of the German training path: whether it can be begun without the Abitur, what is actually taught, and whether distance study or attendance suits a working life. The answers sit in a new entry, who treats a working dog, filed after this page. It sets physiotherapy, massage and complementary methods beside the veterinary work, and marks where that work stops.
One question keeps returning at the rope in August: what does a livestock guardian do that a sheepdog must never do? The guardian lives with the stock and drives nothing; the sheepdog must never settle among the sheep it moves. A Swiss breed portal describes the Kuvasz as a guardian of flock and homestead, not a herding breed, and on the ground the difference is plain: one stays, one goes. The desk has set out the guardian dog and the sheepdog as two opposite jobs done by dogs of a similar size.
The August card closes with the National and International runs, and the record asks the same of every dog: an outrun, a lift, a drive, a pen. A Belgian shepherd entered there is judged on those points, not on breed. Which of the four Belgian shepherd varieties are seen at which discipline, and how breeders in Germany and the Saarland describe the Tervueren, is set out in the new entry, filed after this page: the four Belgian shepherd varieties. What a British trial record asks of the breed is answered there, mark by mark.
One word in the spaniel world carries more than it seems. Cocker, in Britain, names a size and a type of work rather than a single dog: the smallest of the land spaniels, bred to push cover and flush game within gunshot. In a spaniel stake the working dog is judged on quartering, steadiness and retrieval, not on coat. The show and working lines separated because those two demands pulled apart, and the Cocker spaniel at a stake sets out what the name covers and how an American breed reference describes the same dog.
The same question arrives from two directions in August: a handler with a young retriever at the water’s edge, and a parent at a poolside in Fife. Neither wants pressure applied. Short, unhurried sessions, ended while the dog or the child is still willing, do more than one long attempt. Front crawl and breaststroke differ in timing and breath, and clubs in Fife teach children and adults by the same progression, one length at a time. The desk has set out introducing a dog to water alongside that same ladder for a child.
The August field is not only sheep. Between the National runs the same ground carries tracks, droppings, burrows and calls that name an animal without a sighting, and the method travels: a grey kangaroo from a wallaby on a trail, wombat burrows and koala signs, the calls and colours of kookaburras, rosellas and black cockatoos. The desk has filed a new entry on reading animals by their signs, added at the close of this page, and it sets that reading beside a coastal guide where none of the animals are British.
Where this comes from
The course, time limits, judging, course director duties, let out and re-run provisions and the conditions a qualifying trial must meet are in the International Sheep Dog Society Rules For Trials, 2026 edition, rules 2 to 6. The points attached to each placing are not in that document: they are published separately on the society’s qualifying criteria page, six for a first down to one for a sixth. The 2026 National and International dates and venues are on the society’s trials information page, and the fifteen place teams and three day format on what we do. The monthly counts come from the public trials diary. All read on 5 September 2026.