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Rancher Pete Carmichael
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South Dakota Rancher - Pete Carmichael
by Linda Fogt

This past fall I had the pleasure of interviewing Pete Carmichael. Having met Pete before trialing at the Prairie Classic, I became aware of his engaging wit and humor, which is often directed at himself or his hapless dogs. Pete generously shared some of his experiences with us.

"I was raised in North Central South Dakota with three other siblings. Went to country school, only went through the eight grade. I wanted to be a World Champion Bronc Rider. That didn't turn out so good. I worked on sheep ranches as a kid. At that time we did a lot of trailing for the railroad. Most of the sheep flocks were around eight hundred to a thousand head. Ordinarily we'd wean off the lambs and drive them off to the railroad. This would have been during the last half of the 1940's. Being as I didn't go to school I helped trail five cattle herds and that many or more sheep herds to the railroad. Gained a lot of experience that way. It was about 30 miles to the railroad, which took two to three days to drive. We always had farm dogs around. Course everybody talks about the dogs they had as a kid. There were some pretty good ones really. But not like these dogs we have today.

I wish now that we did have access to some really good herding dogs back then. If someone like Bud had come into the prairie country with some really good dogs and taught the ranchers how to use them it could have really improved the shepherding. At the time we had yellow or brown dogs called English Shepherds. They were decent ranch dogs, but we didn't know how to train them.

I grew up in a Norwegian neighborhood. The Norwegians recently came from the old country and had a bit of trouble with the language and spoke broken English. The neighbors had two sheepdogs, with English names, Maude and Bob. Every year Bob had two litters of pups and Maude never did have any!

When I was just a kid I went with one of the last Wild West rodeos. We traveled around for a couple of years. Then I worked on ranches for the next few years. The day I turned twenty years old I went in the army for the Korean War. When I came back from the war, I rodeoed a little more, but by 1954 I was a foreman on a pretty big ranch. I ran that for several years until I got on my own about 1956. That was about the time pregnancy test came in. A friend of mine talked me into training for that. It was a good choice and I tested about 15 to 20 thousand cows a year over about thirty years.

My first Border Collie, Tom, came from Clinton Harlow of Llano, Texas. I figured up one time that Tom may have put 450,000 cows down the chute for me. He worked the chute for me loading cattle into it. He got me done before dark alot of times.

In about 1974 we bought a ranch and I had a herd of cattle that we worked the dogs on. I later sold that ranch and we just have a smaller place now.

I got acquainted with Bud Boudreau finally and Bud showed me a lot of things I didn't know about. So Bud was the main guy that showed me what the dogs were capable of. I just got hooked on it.

The first dog that I trialed was called Tom also, but came from a neighbor. Two of my friends entered me in the trial at Rapid City. The dog was just about a year old. $50 to enter the trial. They said, "We're going to enter you."

I said, "Don't enter me in that."

"Yeah, we're going to."

So they did, and I gave them fifty dollars worth of entertainment. It was the open class and sanctioned. I didn't know any better at the time so I was in open from the beginning. I didn't have much business being in open, but that was the rules. That was in 1990.

I do know what these people are going through with the young dogs. That is why I have done a few local clinics. If you can just help a few of them a little bit it will start the ball rolling. It seems to me that the sheep dogs are where the horse business was twenty years ago. They started having clinics and teaching people how to handle a horse. To me the key is getting the young dogs and the people started right. The basic stuff is what you need to teach them. Otherwise with mistakes they get too far and have to back up and go through it again."

"I was born in 1932. The 30's were tough years in that country. I know things were awfully tight for my parents. I never remember my folks saying anything about money though. I remember my mother wrapping our feet in gunnysack to keep warm riding to school. Things have changed a lot since then.

At that time everybody was a horse trader. There weren't that many tractors in the country yet, so everybody had a few horses. My daddy would get one that was broke good and swap for a green horse for a little extra spending money. We never borrowed much money. I can remember milking the cows, separating the cream, taking some eggs to town to get some groceries. Not much money changed hands.

We didn't think it was bad then because everybody was in the same boat. We didn't get electricity until 1952. We sawed a lot of wood and carried in the water before that.

Sometimes it would be two to three months we would not go into town because we were snowed in. We had a bobsled and horses to feed the stock with. At that time one hundred head of cattle was a lot for a rancher, now you can't make a living off of five hundred.

At that time there was lots of free range. In the 30's a lot of that country land went back to the county for taxes. Not until the men came back from the Second World War was it bought back. The land prices then were $1.25 to $2.50 an acre.

It is amazing when I think back now about how tough of times it really was."

"We would lamb between 1200-1500 ewes the first of May. I would go home, which was about fifteen miles away and get enough clothes for several days. I'd stay in a little tent during the duration of lambing and even did my cooking there. It would rain for days with no chance of even getting our clothes to dry out.

We'd have the drop bunch in an area of fifty to seventy-five acres. We'd keep moving the main group of ewes away from the ewes who had recently lambed. At the crack of dawn we'd move the herd away about ¼ to a ½ mile from the ewes that had lambed and let them graze and water. In the evening we moved the main herd away again and bed them. The next morning at daylight move off again, always dropping the new lambs and ewes back. Generally in four to five days the ewes with lambs would move enough that a couple of groups would get together, but we never pushed them together. We'd work them together after the lambs were old enough to be bonded with the ewes. The sheep all had access to water scattered around. We would periodically ride through the ewes and lambs to check for any lambs that needed grafted onto another ewe and check for other problems.

For ewes that needed a bit of help or shelter with their newborn lambs we used sheep teepees. The teepees are about four foot square. There is a ring with four rods through the canvas to make a little tent. The rods would be stepped down on to secure them into the ground. When not in use the teepee would easily fold up and be carried alongside or behind the saddle of the rider. Generally the ewe stayed in the teepee for about 24 hours or a bit longer if it was raining. To get a hold of the ewe, we'd rope or use a sheep crook and then place the teepee over them. We'd sometimes have twenty or thirty teepees scattered across the prairie. Any ewes with lambs that started chilling, or twins that needed help, would have a teepee over them. When the ewe and lambs would be in the teepee for 24 to 36 hours, she would bogie out of there if we would open the little flaps slowly. So instead we learned to pick the corners of the teepee up just enough to be able to ride by on the horse, reach down and swing the teepee off over the top of the ewe. We would also use lamb blankets, but we would have to wash the blankets before putting it on a new lamb.

I'd always take a couple of green horses with me. At first I couldn't get close to them with the sheep teepee, but if you ride a green horse in that mud for 30 days it will be well broke by the time lambing is done.

It was thirty-five miles from our house to Faith, SD. I could trail the herd into Faith with a couple of horses. Back then I could turn the horses loose after the work was done, and hitch a car ride back home. The horses would show up at the house the next day.

There were no fences on the prairie at that time. This was back about 1946. The only pens we had to use were generally a set around the ranch houses or a set of shearing pens.

When they first started bringing the Mexican sheep shearers up, they would set up an old Army squad tent. They set up the posts, chutes and pens and went to work. A band of eight hundred or a thousand sheep were sheared at a time. We sheared in June. As they would be finishing up one herd another band would be coming in from another direction waiting to be sheared. The bands wouldn't come from far. Maybe ten to fifteen miles. I bet they sheared for about three weeks in one area. Grass wasn't a problem; there was plenty all over the county."