Border collie rounds up top auction price

IDAHO FALLS – This herding dog can also fetch – $15,500 to be precise.

Maude, a 2-year-old cattle-herding border collie, in late January won a herding contest and then set a record price at the Red Bluff Bull & Gelding Sale and Trade Show in Northern California, an annual event at which bulls, geldings, heifers and stock dogs compete and then are auctioned.

Maude earned the top score for all three days of competition and then brought in the highest auction price ever recorded for a dog at the event, beating last year’s record of $10,500.

“She’s a super athlete,” Craig Eddins, who raised and trained Maude at his Menan home in southeastern Idaho, told the Post Register. “I had used her a lot, so she knew how to (herd) cattle. I want to be able to turn and ride my horse off and the dog should bring (the cattle) to me.”

Dogs must be invited to compete, and Eddins said he only began getting an invitation for his dogs three years ago when a friend vouched for them. Eddins, who works full time at a feedlot and trains dogs part time, said before this year his dogs sold for $1,800 to $3,600 at the auction. The top finish was a third place.

This year, Maude was a replacement for another dog, Jack, who was scheduled to compete until being injured while herding, Eddins said.

“Working with big cattle is rough business,” Eddins said. “Some get kicked and they’re done.”

Eddins said Maude was a good replacement.

“I knew Maude was the kind of dog that should be able to win,” he said.

Maude competed against 20 other dogs, whose performances qualify them for the auction and gives bidders an idea of what they’re getting for their money. Ross Gosney from Colorado decided he’d seen enough to pay $15,500 for Maude.

“That’s pretty high,” Francis Raley, secretary of the United States Border Collie Handlers Association, told the Associated Press on Thursday. “I haven’t known of any that sold for that much before.”