Their own masters: giant dogs who guard the wildest pastures and forward-thinking ranchers

It is curious how things come in threes. Scouring the archives of Country Life for the second in the series of collectors’ editions I’m editing, I came across an article of 1985 that told the story of the great sheepdogs of the Steppes, that guarded their sheep, owners and valleys in remotest Turkey. Struck by their remarkable independence and dependability in a landscape where they have been invaluable for centuries, I imagined that such beasts had succumbed to the inexorable march of ‘progress’. It was with delight, then that I can report that I have had two subsequent encounters with brethren of the Turkish Karabash, still doing the job of their forebears.

The magnificent Turkish Karabash, photographed 

for the 1987 Country Life article 'Dogs that train themselves'

I am currently working to make the Country Life 

collectors' edition devoted to Dogs available on Amazon, 

so you can read the whole article!

The first encounter was in Montana, when I accepted a kind invitation to stay on the Kalsta Ranch, a pristine slice of Big Sky Country nestled between the Big Hole River and 8,300ft-high McCartney Mountain, some 40 miles south of Butte and north of the old cowboy town Dillon. A beautiful slice of grass and sagebrush, it is especially notable for its environmental history, which has led botanical and agricultural experts and students to study its demesne. In the UK, we are used to having reference to centuries of records, not least from Victorian vicars like Gilbert White ofSelborne. Being a younger country, there are fewer such accounts in the US, but Thelma Hand, grandmother of the present owner Eric Kalsta, kept extensive journals that note weather and wildlife in prescient detail from 1936 to 1994. One of six children of Horace and Maggie Hand, who owned the ranch from 1918, she married Norwegian Lars Kalsta in 1929. He had been part of the crew rebuilding the bridge over the Big Hole River that was washed out in a flood in 1927, and the story goes that he, missing the waterways of his old country, was taken by the sight of her crossing the river in a small boat, and she was equally taken by his 6ft 4in stature. Their son Gunnar was equally devoted to the ranch, and his wife Elaine, a fourth-generation Montana cowgirl whom he married in 1936, was the perfect companion in his work. It is their son Erik who continues to safeguard and improve the health of this dry, sparsely populated valley today.

The mountains to the east at sunset

Looking south to snowy peaks under the last blush of the day

The streets of Dillon

He learnt at Thelma’s knee, listening to her observations of the natural world over breakfast and, delightfully, her custom of taking English tea. Seasons here are fierce, with harsh winters and dry summers, marked by natural indicators, such as the buds on the cottonwood trees and the blue birds that herald spring. As weather patterns shift and increased use puts more pressure on the land and its resources, so the Kalstas have adjusted their practices to conserve and restore the range and its biodiversity. Central to preserving the health of the land is water management, crucial here in an area that usually receives its water in a ‘gully washer’, a cloudburst that can deposit as much as three tenths of an inch in just 45 seconds. Building on the irrigation and flash-grazing advances his father Gunnar implemented to maximize grazing potential, Erik has built countour ditches on the slopes to slow down storm water, which stops soil being disturbed. He has also adapted a Nigerian technicque of building ‘rock weirs’ or ‘stone gabions’, walls built across water drainage zones. All these together prevent run-off, and the moisture is retained for longer, encouraging the growth of new vegetation.

Flood irrigation is an art… There’s a sound plants make when water washes 

over them. It’s like the land is letting out a sigh. 
Erik Kalsta

A Mecca for wildlife: a marshy corner newly revived

The Big Hole River

McCarty Mountain is so green. Makes us think of a story Grandpa Hand used to tell us of grass in the early days. This grass means everything to us. Peas and pod. 
A promise. Spuds blooming. Made ice cream and butter. Men finished haying. 
10 acres on Marlo pasture. Lars went to the hills today to salt cattle. Says grass was knee-high and more everywhere. A peach of a rain came this p.m. 
Gee, this makes one feel good to know it can rain.

Thelma Kalsta, June 8, 1941

Historically, the Kalsta ranch has run cattle, but rather than allowing them to range over vast areas as the earliest ranchers did, the Kalstas keep them close together by flash grazing. This echoes the way the buffalo grazed, clumping in a group for protection from predators, and prevents the cattle cherry-picking the tastiest plants and leaving the scrub to flourish at the expense of good grass. Concentrated deposits of cowpats also ensure free and natural fertilization.

My grandmother spoke of ‘grass bell-high to a mule’. Restoring the ground 
to that condition, bringing to back from the impact of early white settlers, 
is what we’re trying to do.
Erik Kalsta

Under Erik, with his wife Jami, operations have extended into sheep-rearing, which is where the giant dogs come into play. Bears, wolves and coyote all live in the hills, and even mountain lions, the rare Canada lynx and small, vicious wolverines have been spotted. A mouthful of grass-fed lamb is as tasty to them as it is to us, and it is nigh impossible to effectively fence off thousands of acres of rough pasture that backs onto wilderness. Enter the likes of Judge, a noble beast who spends his days patrolling the edges of the sheep pasture and chasing off or even killing any predators that the threaten the flock. He has been joined by several younger underlings, Storm, Winter and Laloush, the latter being a beautiful bitch who was brought from Tajikistan by an intrepid friend of the family after various cryptic telephone messages and long, bumpy rides in trucks across the steppe. There were moments when Erik feared Mafia connections, but all turned out well. After such dramatic beginnings, Laloush is slightly more cosseted than the others, but most of these herding dogs seldom come into contact with humans. I crept quietly as close as I could to Judge to take photographs, but although his glance was friendly, he ambled off pointedly when I came within about 15ft. He had a job to do, and he wasn’t about to let some interfering human distract him. How valuable his job is can be elucidated by the $246,500 recently awarded to an Oregon rancher whose three Great Pyrenees livestock protection dogs were shot by two hunters of below average intelligence. These animals are as close to wild as any farm animal will get, guarding domestic herds for the human owners without the slightest need for training or guidance. They might not be ideal for a small British farm, where an errant rambler’s labradoodle might be accorded the same treatment as a coyote, but out here, where large predators are an ever-present danger, they are invaluable.  

The noble Judge

Judge on his grassy throne

The objects of his concern in Big Hole Valley

If you want something done: ask a rancher. I stayed in a classic cabin built by the Kalstas with an inviting verandah that looks due west to mountains still snowy in May. Inside, the centerpiece is a staircase that twists up to a mezzanine bedroom, gleaming and tactile. When they were desigining the cabin, the architect said such a corkscrew stair was impossible, so Erik and the ranch staff simply got on and built it, using wood from the ranch. The result is simply beautiful.

Just the place to unwind after galloping after coyotes

The view as the sun set. Heaven

The most beautiful staircase in Montana!

I could have curled up with a book on the porch for days, especially if that book is by hapless hunter Patrick F. McManus, collections of whose hilarious tales I found on the cabin shelves. Distracting me was the equally hilarious Raisin, a sheepdog of sorts whose pesky tail simply wouldn’t be caught, even when she admonished it with a high-pitched barks. A spectacular view, good book and adorable dog – what could be better?

Raisin displaying her party trick! 

She went on for over a minute

Me and Erik, of whom his grandmother would be proud

The plaque awarded to the Kalsta Ranch in recognition of their

outstanding stewardship of the land

Back in California, the third encounter with the great canine guardians had shades of Yorkshire. My friends and family will be familiar with my love of the books of James Herriot, the vet whose stories of treating all creatures great and small in the 1930s in God’s own country have enchanted readers ever since. In their humour and self-deprecation, they are similar to McManus’s books of American back country. I have a tendency to quote them, perhaps too often, but there is rarely a situation not improved by a bit of good old Yorkshire wisdom. I therefore seized the opportunity to ride along with my friends Marol, 1st whip of Santa Ynez Valley Hounds, and Troy, admired veterinary surgeon of the central Californian hills.

Marol in her natural habitat, whipping-in to the Santa Ynez

Troy concentrating on the trail of a boar!

Me and Marol after a successful morning in 2014 - read all about it here

It may have been a tad drier, dustier and hotter than Yorkshire when we wound down a long, unmade road to a ranch inland from San Luis Obispo, but the contented sheep, the assorted dogs slinking out from shady corners and the paraphernalia of rusty farm equipment surrounding a collection of barns would have been entirely familiar. Less so was the patient and his complaint, a giant shaggy hearth rug of a dog who had been attacked by pestilential foxtails. Ubiquitous in the western states, foxtail grass has seedheads that burrow into pads and noses and under skin and stay there like tiny shuttlecocks, sharp hairs preventing retreat. In worst-case scenarios, they can enter the bloodstream and puncture valuable organs, causing infections and even death.

Is there any farm in the world without its assorted junk,

sorry, vital pieces of equipment?

Neat and tidy fields!

Tending the somnolent beast

James Herriot would no doubt have welcomed the head torch

and gloves, but a Yorkshireman would draw the line

at a pink toolbox 

The dog requiring attention had picked up several on his patrols of the flock, with one paw bloody and sore and several other areas in danger of becoming so. When we arrived, his owners were engaged in clipping – or perhaps shearing would be a more appropriate word – the thick white hair from the problem areas. Hitherto barely touched by human hand, he lay calm and unresisting, understanding perhaps that his nurses were trying to help. Troy anaesthetized him in preparation for digging into the wounds, reminding me of James Herriot tackling Blanco, the gentle giant who guarded the brilliant but tardy tailor in Darrowby from devoted but frustrated clients. With him safely asleep, Troy snipped, dug and bandaged, removing every foxtail and leaving this guardian of the Californian steppe comfortable and capable once more, if sporting a somewhat outré clip.

The Californian hinterland

All creatures great and small: Marol and her beloved pig Piccolo

Devoted vets, dedicated dogs and ranches that define the term 'sustainable': there's an awful lot of good in the American wilds.