As a father raising a son, it brings you great joy when they decide to walk in your footsteps.    

For Airdrie father and son Milt and Kier Scott, those footsteps include a couple of sets of paw prints of their stock dogs walking along beside them.  The two recently competed at the World Stock Dog Championships at this year's Calgary Stampede.  What's even more remarkable is that both made the finals of the event, Kier in his first trip to the Stampede.

Milt says watching his 21 year old son compete was far more stressful than actually being there to compete himself.  "I was on a pretty big high.  I won Stampede last year, went on to win Regina, then I won Clock, Stock and Barrel during Aggie Days.  But then I went to Winnipeg just before the Stampede and didn't do anything and that hurt my confidence.  When we got to the Stampede my dogs were running well, but the most nerve wracking thing was witnessing my son run, I found that way more nerve wracking that running myself."

Milt says his son has just recently gotten into competitions.  "I didn't think he was interested at all.  I had a dog that really wasn't suiting me and he started messing around with him this past winter and we had these little competitions at the feed lot I manage and he decided to enter and he was winning the classes there, so I said 'do you want to go to Calgary' and I thought his answer would be 'no' for sure and he said 'yeah, I would' so he was surprised to get into the finals.  He hasn't been doing it long officailly but if you ask him he says 'you know I been watching you my whole life so how wouldn't I know how to do it'."

Milt says identifying good stock dogs all starts with being a good stockman.   "They need to learn how to handle sheep on their own so that they can be in the right spot so they can identify if the dog is in the right spot.  Once you learn to work livestock on your own without a dog, then what we do is start assessing the dogs.  To me, the great ones are like great athletes.  The big thing they can do is take a lot of pressure.  Tensions run high and sometimes we're loud and hollering at them and they have to understand to stay in there and not just want to quit and go home."

Milt thinks a handler can take his dogs to as many, or as few, trials as he wants.  "Until you either run out of time or money or both," he says.  "I was in Denver, Colorado in February, I was in Reno, Nevada in May and I'm planning on going to Kingston, Ontario at the beginning of August."

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