
23/03/2022
I love this.....I had to share A Champion on the Ranch and in the Show Ring
As a 1,500-pound cow charged her in the middle of a 500-acre field with no place to hide, Rollins Wykle ran until she was knocked down, then curled up in a ball and tried to protect her face from the cow’s head butts and sharp hooves.
The next thing she knew, Gator, her 140-pound Anatolian Shepherd, had launched himself at the cow’s head and neck, biting and snarling.
“Once the cow focused on protecting herself from Gator, I was able to run to the other side of the barbed-wire fence,” says Wykle, who with her husband, J.G. Schwarz, has been raising cattle for the past decade on a 29,000-acre ranch in Payette, Idaho. “I saw the cow catapult Gator in the air with her head, but he kept going after her. That’s when I yelled to him.”
Only then did Gator scramble under the fence to safety, diving into Wykle’s lap and licking her face. Both walked away with only bruises and scrapes.
Literally and figuratively, the scene in the cattle field was thousands of miles from the show rings where Gator, otherwise known as GCh. Carpe Diem’s Old School, won Best of Breed at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show and the AKC/Eukanuba National Championship.
Katie Emanuel, President the Anatolian Shepherd Dog Club of America, says Gator's versatility is a hallmark of the breed. “Most of our show dogs are right out of the field. The dog who just won our National Specialty in October is a full-time working dog. He only spends time on the sofa as a treat. Preserving the Anatolian's temperament is our number-one priority.”
And that’s what earned Gator another plaque to put beside his Best of Breed wins: the Top Hero Award from the Anatolian Shepherd club. The award is given to a dog who saves a person’s life or saves a person from harm “without input and acting independent of owner’s direction.”
Independent thinking is an integral aspect of the breed, given its history. Livestock guardians that originated in Turkey, Anatolian Shepherd Dogs must display physical soundness (stamina and endurance to travel long distances with the herds they protect), as well as mental soundness (often out of sight of shepherds, they must analyze dangers and decide how to handle them on their own).