The Program.
Full-service trial management means Wolston Farm handles every part of the trial that isn't the venue's land itself. Here's what that actually covers, piece by piece.
After three decades of running trials, traveling to trials, and helping clubs build events from scratch, we've packaged it all into a service you can book: facility setup, course design, sheep, judges, field crew, and the thousand small decisions that make the difference between a memorable event and a stressful one.
New to the idea and wondering whether a trial makes sense for your venue? Start with Why Host a Trial for the case and the practical requirements.
Three site visits, months of planning.
We visit your site several months in advance of your first event to help you figure out where things need to go and what needs to be built. We revisit a month or two before the event to check on progress. And we come again one to two weeks before to make sure everything is ready for the arrival of the sheep and the competitors.
Designed for your field.
We walk the site, assess the terrain and sightlines, and design a course that suits your venue — from the point of view of both the competitors and your spectators. If multiple classes are being held, we will design things to work for all classes.
Uniform commercial sheep.
We supply sheep for the event, or we can work with your existing flock if they are suitable for trial conditions. The day before the event, all the sheep are screened by a professional crew to make sure they're ready to go.
The on-the-day machine.
Exhaust, set-out, announcing, scoring, flow between runs. We bring the crew and the systems so the event runs on schedule and the dogs get a fair shake.
From sanction to results reporting.
We secure sanctioning for your event, hire appropriate judges, and take care of all the post-event results reporting.
Entertaining the crowd.
We plan the viewing area to maximize the spectacle. Our announcers provide information on what's happening, answer questions, and keep the crowd connected to events on the field — so non-handler audiences actually understand what they're seeing and come back next year.
End-to-end event plan.
From first phone call to post-event debrief. We'll help you budget realistically, sequence the year's decisions, and avoid the classic mistakes that turn first-year trials into one-year trials.
Agritourism venues, farms, wineries, and others.
If your venue has a field big enough to run on and an interest in bringing sheepdog sport to your audience, we can probably help. Past partners have included working farms, nonprofits, and wineries that wanted to add a trial to their calendar, or wanted to have a trial but didn't have the infrastructure to pull it off alone, or wanted someone else to do all the event management work.
Thinking about hosting?
Let's talk about your venue and what you have in mind. If you're still weighing whether a trial is a fit, Why Host a Trial lays out the case and the practical requirements.