Lazy Ewe History
Linda Tesdahl's love for dogs began at the age of five, when she wandered to a neighbor's house, saw their puppy playing unattended in the yard, and brought it home with her. She hid it under a cardboard box in the hopes that her parents would not discover her new acquisition, but they did and made her take the puppy back.
Eventually, her parents let her have a dog of her own, and during junior high and high school, she began learning as much as she could about dog obedience and dog behavior. Upon getting married in 1977, she acquired the first of what would be several Shetland Sheepdogs and began competing in earnest in obedience competitions. It was not long before she received many "High In Trial" awards with her dogs, including a perfect score of 200 with her dog Heidi. She also had an obedience training center of her own in Washington State while her husband was stationed at Fort Lewis in the military.
In the mid-1980's, Linda just happened to attend a sheepdog trial, and she instantly became fascinated by this complex interaction between three species: a handler, a dog and a flock of sheep. Before long, she acquired her first Border Collie named "Spinner" and began learning to herd sheep by leasing land and buying a few sheep of her own. Controlling a dog over long distances by the use of various whistle commands and moving unwilling sheep through obstacles is a challenge that can take many people years to refine, but Linda learned very quickly and attended many handler training clinics to sharpen her skills. During this time, she also learned about the care and raising of sheep, which can present its own set of challenges at lambing time.
By the early 1990s, Linda decided it was time to have a small farm of her own so that sheep would be literally outside her front door and she could have a number of Border Collies in various stages of training. She began a long process of looking at farms in Maryland, only to discover that there are generally two kinds of farms: the affordable ones are run-down and needed thousands of dollars of home and barn renovations, while the really nice "turn-key farms" with modern home, well maintained barns and sheep-proof fencing cost millions of dollars.
One day while visiting a grocery store with her brother, she spotted a farm for sale in a real estate magazine on display at the store. It was a farm she had not heard about from any realtor and it was within her price range. The instant she saw the property, she knew that this was as good a find as she could ever hope for. It had two barns in decent repair, a small fenced barnyard, and a 1970s ranch-style house in extremely good condition. It also had 12 acres that were 70% pasture and 30% woods for shade, with a year-round creek flowing through the middle of the property. The problem was that there was someone else who had just mailed in an offer on it. She convinced her husband to quickly submit a bid on the farm even though he did not have time to go see it. He took her advice and placed the bid, and his bid was accepted over the competing bid. Linda and her husband moved into the home just before Christmas of 1993.
In the months that followed, Linda and her husband added hundreds of yards of woven wire fencing, cleared large areas of briars (during which they stumbled into poison ivy), added new roofs on the barns, and generally got things ready for their first load of sheep. From those humble beginnings, the Lazy Ewe farm has now grown to include: nine Border Collies, 40 sheep, two miniature donkeys (named Milton Burro and Spunky), a beautiful Haflinger Austrian mountain pony named Nick and a cat named Opie that was obtained for the purpose of keeping mice out of the barns but that prefers instead to sleep all day in the house.
Today Linda travels about 30,000 miles per year to sheepdog herding trials around the United States and Canada, traveling with as many as six dogs in her full-size van. She continues to travel as far west as Oregon, as far north as Ontario, Canada, as far east as Maryland's eastern shore, and as far south as Florida. She has competed in some of the most difficult and prestigious sheepdog trials in the U.S., including Soldier Hollow invitational competition in Utah and Meeker Sheepdog Classic in Colorado, and she has won many open herding trials with her dogs over the years. She has also served as a mentor and trainer to many people who are just getting started in the sport of sheep herding.
