About Herbert Holmes

Herbert was born and raised in southwest Texas. He attended college locally at Sul Ross University, in Alpine, Texas, where he was on the rodeo team, competing in calf roping, team roping, and bull dogging. After college he worked on a ranch in Bosque county, near Fort Worth, which he later purchased. He was there for 12 years.

He bought his first border collie pup in 1977 and always had a collie around the place. He began to use dogs more as his livestock numbers increased, working the sheep, goats and cattle that he raised.

At one time his livestock numbers were as high as 7000 head of goats and sheep and 300 head of cattle. In 1985 Herbert attended a sheep dog trial, in hopes of finding a trained dog for sale to use as a work dog. "Right away I knew this dog trialling was something that I could do." He did not find a dog to buy that day, but went home and tuned up his own dogs, and went to his first dog trial. He's had the dog trialling bug ever since. He won numerous prizes and Texas Dog of the Year five times as well as the Texas Triple Crown championship twice with his very good dog Dave, in the years 1988 to 1994. He became president of the United States Border Collie Handlers Association during that time and is presently holding that title for another term.

The drought of the 90's in this area forced him out of the livestock business. He turned to training dogs as an additional means of income, and gave clinics throughout the United States and Canada. This continued along with raising a small number of goats and sheep until moving to the home place three years ago.

At present, he is doing contract water pipeline repair and maintenace for local absentee ranch owners as well as contract Bobcat machinery work. This is in addition to raising sheep and goats, and training dogs, at home.