Fall Foliage Championship

The Fall Foliage Trial
Caora Farm
235 Sharon Rd,
Millerton NY 12546

October 11-13, 2019

The Fall Foliage Championship is a regional finals competition for open class. Each year the teams competing in the Northeast have the opportunity to earn a place in the competition based on their performance at NEBCA sanctioned open trials during the past year. The “Fall Foliage Rules” page provides the requirements to qualify and the format for the competition. .

The Fall Foliage trial begins with two rounds. Each of these courses will resemble the standard Open course, with the dogs gathering the sheep from a distance of several hundred yards from the handler, bringing them to the handler's feet, then driving them along a proscribed path marked by panels that the sheep must pass through for another several hundred yards. During this time the handler must stay at the post at the foot of the field, commanding the dog with whistle and voice. The sheep will be brought back to the handler and put in a small freestanding pen, then removed from the pen and one or more sheep will be split off from the group as directed by the judge.

The top 15 dogs that qualify based on the scores in the first two rounds proceed to the Double Lift Finals. In this round the dog will again be sent for sheep several hundred yards from the handler. The dog will pick up those sheep and bring them towards the handler to a specified place on the field. Then the handler will direct the dog to leave that group of sheep, and turn back to gather a second group of sheep on the other side of the field and gather them back to the same place the first group was brought to, put the two groups together and bring the entire set (up to 20 sheep) to the handler. Then the dog will drive all the sheep through the course, much like the first two round except now with more sheep. Some of the sheep in the group will be wearing collars. Finally the dog will bring the sheep back to the handler, where the dog and handler will work together to separate out the collared sheep from the group and allow the other sheep to leave while keeping the collared sheep with the handler. Once the handler and dog have separated the sheep so that all the collared sheep are held together in a smaller group with no uncollared sheep, the dog and handler put the collared sheep in the small freestanding pen.