A Brecon sheepdog was top dog at the Skipton Auction last week - fetching a price of £5,600.

Foxridge Flynn was one of four entries for Kevin Evans, of Llwynfedwen, near Brecon at the North Yorkshire event on Tuesday, June 13.

The fully broken two-year-old red and white dog is another well-bred son of Mr Evans’ red Spot - a German import increasingly proving his worth as a stud dog.

As well as enjoying the top call of the day, Mr Evans took home further bragging rights as being one of a trio to achieve a sale of £5,100.

Kemi Nan, a black and white bitch, is another fully broken and fully home-bred dog. The June, 2021, daughter of European Nursery Champion and dual Welsh and International Brace Champion, Derwen Doug, out of Scalpsie Joy, herself a daughter of fellow Welsh handler Ross Games’ accomplished trials dog Roy, joined an American buyer, Dr Karen Thompson, of New Kent County, Virginia.

Over the years, Dr Thompson has imported a number of top-class working dogs from the legendary Welsh handler for her Thompson’s Border Collies Farms, also home to Dorper hair wool sheep and percentage Boer goats. Back in July, 2020, and again at a Skipton online sale she paid £10,200 for another well-bred Evans dog, Kemi Floss.

A retired theologian who has been working, training and breeding Border Collies for some 40 years, Dr Thompson was herself a well-known trialist in the 1970s and 1980s, serving on the board of directors of the North American Sheepdogs, which later became The American International Sheepdog Society and now the American Border Collie Association. “I’ve been importing steadily from Kevin Evans since 2012 and he’s never failed,” she commented.

Mr Evans claimed a second top price of the day in the unbroken section with a £2,100 sale of another fully home-bred youngster already showing a great deal of potential. The 15-week-old red, tan and white bitch, Kemi Joy, is a daughter of the Swedish-bred Midderry Frank and litter sister to Kemi Ruby, who herself made £5,050 in an online auction.

A trio of fully broken entries also went under the online hammer at £3,500, two of them coming from Northern Ireland’s Francis Mongan, of Cullionboy, Co. Donegal. The first and Lot 1 was Nan (Jan), a January, 2021, black and white bitch, and another daughter of Evans’ red Spot, out of Queen, from Welsh shepherd, John Griffiths, based near Brecon.

She joined Thomas Longton, a member of the well-known Red Rose sheep dog trialling family from Quermore, Lancaster, and who also regularly sells dogs at Skipton, with Mr Griffiths himself making £2,500 with a two-and-a-half-year-old black and white dog, Oaktree Jim.

Skipton’s next working sheep dog sale, a live fixture with field trials, is scheduled for Friday, July 21.