Love me, love my dogs: Shepherdess Emma had no trouble finding lost lambs on her remote Northumberland farm - but finding love was rather harder

By Emma Gray

Published: 19:07 EDT, 13 April 2012 | Updated: 19:07 EDT, 13 April 2012

Flock star: Emma, cradling one of her lambs, watched by sheepdog Alfie, found it difficult to meet someone as like-minded

At the far end of the field a white lamb lies prone, the mother not far away. The lamb is dead, cloudy-eyed. The ewe looks fit and well, though, and will make a good mother to an orphan lamb, so I open the trailer and make pathetic-sounding ‘meh-meh’ noises to lure her inside.

She is not fooled. But thankfully, I have Roy with me, my best working dog. Sheep always know who’s the boss when he’s around.

At a word he shoots off to gather her in and as he backs her towards me, I take the opportunity to grab a handful of wool and pull her into the trailer.

Back at the sheds, Alfie, my youngest collie, then plays his part in the drama. After skinning the dead lamb, I slip the fleece jacket over an orphan of a similar size and introduce the ‘reincarnated’ lamb to the mother.

She perks up right away at the sight of the fluffy bundle. But it’s only when I ask Alfie to stand and ‘watch her’ that the urge to protect her offspring suddenly kicks in.

By now the little lamb has cottoned on to its surrogate mum, has found her teat and the precious bond is made.

Later, when I set off on a quad bike to check the rest of the flock, I pass through fields dotted with other happy families.

It is moments like this that make me love my job as a shepherdess.

The work may not be glamorous and I may spend my life in a weather-beaten jacket and wellies, but there is no job I would rather do.

I often wonder what my life might have been like if I’d had a brother (I’m the eldest of three daughters). Would I have left him to get on with the farm work and chosen a different profession? I might at least have had neat nails, nice hair and not developed a corned-beef complexion. But the truth is, I’d always wanted to follow my father and grandfather into the business.

It was my grandpa, who worked the family farm on the Scottish borders right up until his death, who gave me my first dog, Bess. We spent hours in each other’s company and after teaching her the basics, we graduated to sheep-gathering when Bess was six months old.

Loves her job: Emma is one of the UK's few female shepherdesses, and she plans to continue her career

Our first attempt to bring the sheep in was a disaster. I was 14 and so convinced I could do it, I told my parents they could have a lie-in. An hour later, I was back, red-faced and calling the sheep all the names under the sun.

They had come out of the gate easily enough, but after that they had split three ways and headed off in all directions, so I had to admit defeat and come home to get help.Within a year, though, I was the only one Bess would work for, so when foot-and-mouth disease struck our farm in March 2001, it was down to the two of us to round up our herd.

Gathering in the ewes and lambs for slaughter was devastating. Our entire stock had to be culled — a task made particularly tough as we were right in the middle of the lambing season.

The farm was empty for nearly a full year afterwards. The tracks worn into the hills by generations of grazing sheep became overgrown for the first time anyone could remember. It sounds like a cliché, but a silence fell hard not just over the land but over my entire family after that and we bore it as best we could.

We were all grateful when new sheep arrived from a disease-free island in Scotland. They started to revive the fields. They gave the farm a reason to resume its familiar routine, getting us back to something that felt ‘normal’.

Emma Gray reveals all in her new book...

By the time I was 17, I knew I wanted to work with dogs and with my faithful border collie Bill in tow, I got a place on a residential course in Northumberland which specialised in sheep management — the only one of its kind in the country.

Then, after six months in New Zealand, and a brief period back at my parents’ house, I got a job at Fairspring Farm in Northumberland, looking after 900 sheep.

It wasn’t easy finding a place to stay with four dogs. So many landlords turned me down, it started to feel like a curse when I had to mention I had dogs. It took a while, but I found a house to rent half-an-hour’s drive from Fairspring.

Shepherding can be a solitary occupation — particularly when you are a 23-year-old singleton.

Most days, I find I’ve spoken more to the dogs and the sheep than to my fellow humans, but at least when I have animals for company I know that I am wanted.

My dogs are my life. Not only are they the tools of my trade, they are my loyal friends and each of them has a rich, rounded character.

The oldest is Bill, a black, shaggy collie with a solid frame and honest dark eyes. I found him tethered to a dilapidated old kennel on a neighbouring farm when I was 16.

The farmer planned to drown him saying he was too heavy to ever be fast on his feet. But I wouldn’t hear of it and took him home. Fly, who is black and white, lives up to her name. She jumps for joy the moment she sees me — she can reach my full height and will easily clear a 6ft fence.

Roy is my best work dog, a real powerhouse. He is very intelligent and I can trust him to do anything — whether it’s bringing in the big aggressive male sheep (known as ‘tups’) or gently catching a baby lamb who’s become separated from its mother.

Alfie, who is six months Roy’s junior and built like a lurcher, is the goon in the team: think Scooby Doo with the brains of Homer Simpson. He is obedient to the last, though ‘obedient’ can be another word for ‘stupid’. If I ask him to lie down and then get side-tracked, he will stay glued to the very spot until I come looking for him.

Sometimes I think my dogs understand me better than any human can — they know instinctively when I am sad and in need of an affectionate nuzzle, or when a little fooling around is just what is required to distract me from my troubles.

At Fairspring, I did sometimes catch myself wondering if I would ever meet a boyfriend. When I wasn’t rounding up sheep, the other workers on the farm would tease me about my love life.

Challenge: The picturesque Fairspring Farm in Northumberland where Emma Gray went in on her own

My friends, meanwhile, tried their best to pair me up. I was often in the company of Archie, a retired farmer in his mid-70s whom I met at a dog trial. There was nothing he didn’t know about sheep and I always turned to him for advice.

We must have made quite a sight — the slightly built girl, the OAP and a great woolly ball of sheep.

But I drew the line when it came to Archie’s attempts at playing Cupid. He was constantly trying to find me a husband — it became our long-standing joke.

‘I’ve found you a man,’ he’d say, ‘Got loads of money, too.’ Then he’d add: ‘And he’s only 55.’

Life on a farm didn’t offer many opportunities for meeting people. Another friend, Nikki, set me up on date with a tractor driver called Chris but the guy was an idiot.

After boring me to tears talking about his car, I told him I was a shepherd by profession and he pulled a face: ‘Must drive you nuts working with sheep all day. Aren’t they a bit stupid?’

I had a sudden urge to defend my fleecy charges. But I decided Chris wasn’t worth it and when I got home, I was just grateful the dogs were there to greet me.

A lot of farmers have strong views about their working dogs and don’t allow them in the house, but mine have always been allowed to come in and potter about like members of the family.

Whenever I came home after a disastrous date, they were there with a warm welcome and a look as if to say: ‘Why do you need a man when you have us?’

‘Oh, Roy, how am I ever supposed to get a man with you in my bedroom?’ I would sigh before clambering into bed.

While I was happy at Fairspring, I’d always wanted to run a farm of my own. In 2009, I set my heart on winning the tenancy of Fallowlees — a remote 120-acre farm near Harwood, Northumberland, a National Trust property with no mains electricity, water or phone line.

My mother wasn’t keen at first. She worried the place was far too remote for a single girl. I was worried, too. I would need another source of income as the farm itself wouldn’t make me much of a living.

In late January 2010, my parents helped move my meagre belongings to my new home. The ground was covered with a slippery slush that sat like frogspawn on top of the compacted ice.

After negotiating the deep ruts of the track leading up to the farm, I turned the key in the lock and found myself in a hallway awash with dirty, slushy water — a pipe had burst.

That night, when my parents left, I felt alone. Really alone. I looked out across the fields and the moor.

No distant streetlights, no bobbing headlights of cars on roads — only the scrabbling of the dogs and the cry of a bird in the trees to cut through the silence.

The dogs loved their new home, but it wasn’t long before my dream farm faced its first disaster. My beloved Fly lost a litter of puppies, and with them, a terrifying amount of blood. She was rushed to the vet for a transfusion and the bill came to £1,200.

The only way I could afford to pay was to think the unthinkable — I would have to sell Fly. Much as I hated the thought of being parted from her, life as a shepherd sometimes involves making tough choices and I had no other way of clearing the debt.

Reluctantly, I wrote an advert and one evening I got the phone call I’d been dreading. Bob, a shepherd from Scotland, had a collie who was getting too old for the job and he’d seen the ad about Fly.

A few days later he arrived at Fallowlees in his pick-up. My heart did a somersault when he asked to see what Fly could do. It helped that I liked Bob instantly and it was obvious Fly felt the same.

Bob was so impressed with her, he didn’t even quibble with the price but handed over an envelope with the asking price of £1,500. He then asked me to put Fly in his pick-up where she jumped into the front seat with little encouragement.

I stole a last look at her. Those dark, wise eyes looked back at me, reading me. I wanted to explain everything to her but I knew I couldn’t make her understand. I had to sacrifice my love for her for the farm and for my future.

I watched tearfully as the dog who had taught me so much drove away to a new life without me.
There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think about her. But the pain of losing Fly was softened, when, not long after her departure, I met someone. A shepherd called Daniel Walton. He’s tall, handsome and best of all he loves dogs — and sheep! I couldn’t have asked for a better match.

Dan and I want to build up our own flock. I already have six Sussex — a heavy-framed breed with a dark brown or black face and floppy eyes. They escaped into the woods for a while when I first moved to Fallowlees, but the dogs and I managed to round them up.

Lambing is still my favourite time of year. It’s hard work but lambing our own sheep on our own farm is going to be magical. I can’t wait.

Adapted from One Girl And Her Dogs by Emma Gray, to be published by Sphere on April 26, £7.99. © 2012 Emma Gray. To order a copy for £7.49 (including p&p), call 0843 382 0000.