Diamond and his seven dogs (one in training), perform flying disc stunts, circus tricks and other demonstrations that crowds are loving. He began by taking a canine disc workshop in Winnipeg and then competing in competitions, and has been training dogs for over 10 years.

Their introduction to performing was at a Blue Bombers halftime show with another Winnipeg group and this led to the creation of the Diamond Disc Dogs. Diamond and his dogs then began performing solo shows for fun at The Forks in Winnipeg that resulted in turning into a business. Since then they have performed at daycares, personal-care homes, parties, street fairs and exhibitions in small cities and towns, as well as a show before the RCMP Musical Ride.

Diamond also has some help doing the shows from Paige Swain and her golden retriever who have performed off and on for about for six years. To make travelling to events easier he has a small motorhome and it has its own power source and PA system which makes it possible to put on a performance almost anywhere.

Diamond really enjoys being in front of an audience, but admits that he wasn’t the best at narrating during the shows to begin with. “I was really bad when I started, but the more I talked in front of an audience, even though I made mistakes, the better I got,” he says.

In the winter, he and his dogs keep in shape by doing skijoring, where the skier is pulled by the dogs on lines similar to dogsledding. They live on a 50-acre piece of land about an hour north of Winnipeg to accommodate training and for more space for the dogs. He has fenced in a half-acre and has three kilometres of trail for skijoring. This is extremely helpful for training, which usually occurs during the less busy season during the winter and for keeping the dogs in shape. Food rewards and toys are used for training.

Diamond Disc Dogs performs at events throughout Manitoba in the spring, summer and fall and small indoor shows in the winter. For more information go to diamonddiscdogs.com.

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Cattle ranchers Glen and Dorothy Campbell have had their share of hard times. Raising Black Angus cattle full time for Glen, a part-time job off the farm for Dorothy, and a bed and breakfast business which allows visitors to explore their ranching way of life has kept these country folk busy. Health issues and poor cattle sales have also made life tougher. But the one thing that has made life easier for them is having stock dogs to help with cattle ranching. Since learning how to better use dogs with stock, they would never go back to being without them.

On their ranch, Campbell’s Angus Ranch Bed & Breakfast, they have two border collies, one of which was specifically purchased to help with the stock, and two rescue dogs – a German shepherd and a mixed breed – both of whom will help out when absolutely needed, such as in a long-distance drive or with stubborn stock.

Glen has been ranching south of Onanole, Manitoba for over 30 years and has always had a dog around. But it wasn’t until he and Dorothy got together and married that he decided to put the dog to work with the cattle. About seven years ago he started working with his newly acquired border collie Jake. Jake was purchased from someone who said that the dog was untrainable and was only asking $50 for him. At six months of age, Jake was still a puppy and the first few months on the ranch his favourite activity was digging holes all over the yard. As he matured, Jake realized that there were cattle around and started to take more interest.

Glen and Dorothy realized that they didn’t understand what to do to get Jake to work stock, so they took stock dog workshops and learned the basics of moving stock. The main stumbling block to having Jake work was Glen and Dorothy themselves. From the workshops, they found out they had been micromanaging the dog. If a dog has the herding instinct, he needs only to understand basic commands to work properly such as “down” and “come.” The most important thing they learned was that the dog is always in the right place to move stock based on where the human is situated. If the human is in the wrong place in the field, the human will be hindering the dog. Once Jake was able to move stock on his own without too much handler interference, things started to fall into place. Jake made life easier for the couple and paired up with Dorothy’s older, mixed-breed dog Lady who had previously worked stock. When they took in a stray German shepherd dog, Dorothy and Glen took him to a herding clinic for practice as well. They found that he would be able to work well with driving cattle due to his strong presence around them.

After losing Lady to old age, and excited by their success with Jake, the Campbells purchased a border collie puppy to help Jake, as he was getting up there in age. They wanted to have a young dog who was ready to work in case Jake no longer could. The Campbells found that the puppy, Zip, had a slightly different style of moving stock, and was more aggressive with stubborn cattle than Jake.

On the Campbell ranch, stock have to be moved across roads to reach pasture, sometimes short distances and sometimes several kilometres. Especially when going farther distances, both Glen and Dorothy feel that using dogs help the cattle to stay calm by minimizing or eliminating the roar of engines from four-wheelers. With herding dogs you simply don’t need a motorized vehicle to drive stock. Horses may be used in certain situations, but they prefer not to use ATVs.

Their stock dogs are also a part of the other business on the ranch – the bed and breakfast. As part of the guests’ stay at the ranch, they may participate in an “old-fashioned” cattle drive. The cattle are driven from one field to another or they may be worked on the Campbells’ own pasture if there is no long-distance drive going on at the time of the visit. Glen usually leads the cattle in a car or truck and Dorothy will follow up behind either on horseback or on foot, depending how far they are going. Sometimes friends or family help out with the drive, walking or riding behind the stock. Each fall and spring the cattle are moved several kilometres for food and the dogs are indispensable during these moves. By using the dogs to get cattle to feed areas, the Campbells are able to swath graze their cattle instead of continually hauling bales. In this way they are helping limit the amount of fuel they use which reduces their costs and helps the environment.

Glen and Dorothy both agree that the most important thing needed to get a dog working well is to spend time with it. The more time spent working the dog doing obedience or in a small pen with stock learning cues, the better the dog will be able to understand you when out in a large area and farther away. It is essential that training be done in smaller areas first to solidify the commands, before using the dog in larger working situations.

The Campbells no longer need to walk out to the end of the pasture to bring cattle in to feed, instead, they send out one dog to gather the stock. This greatly reduces the time and energy expended to get ranch chores done.

They also enjoy watching their dogs work in the manner that they were bred for. These working animals don’t need registration papers to tell their owners that they are good stock dogs; the proof is in each dog’s actions.

Glen and Dorothy realize that many dogs today are not able to work stock due to loss of instinct through breeding for looks. It is refreshing for them to see dogs that still have old-time country “values” bred into them – an excellent fit with the Campbells – people with these same old-time country values.

– Anne Bachewich writes from Sandy Lake, Manitoba

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“Watercolour is my favourite type of paint to use, but it is also the most difficult to master.”

– STELLA KOWALCHUK

She grew up in the village of Sandy Lake, Manitoba, and the family survived because of the animals they raised for food – geese, chickens, a cow for milk and butter, and a large vegetable garden. Her father worked away from the home, and her mother looked after the animals and garden on what was essentially a small subsistence farm.

Kowalchuk was encouraged to leave Sandy Lake after graduation, like her three brothers and one sister, to take more education. After becoming a nurse her

career took her to Vancouver, Toronto and Winnipeg and after her workday she took evening art classes where she learned to paint still life and figures.

After many years in the “big city” the country life began calling and Kowalchuk took a nursing position in Kamsack, Saskatchewan on the advice of a physician to live a less stressful life. Good food, fresh air and being only two hours from Sandy Lake rejuvenated her spirit.

In the early ’70s Kowalchuk returned to Sandy Lake to live. There she helped her parents in their home and worked as a registered nurse in the old Erickson Hospital and the Sandy Lake nursing home. During this time she continued to take art classes in Brandon and then in Minnedosa. It was not until after she retired from nursing in 1988 that she really began to explore her ability to paint and focus on developing her own style.

“I wasn’t always good at drawing, but over the years my skills have developed and have gradually turned into what I am doing today,” says Kowalchuk. “I had to learn different techniques and find my own style.”

She paints mostly scenes she

has photographed from the land closest to Sandy Lake, but has also done many paintings of different locations in Riding Mountain National Park. Kowalchuk does commissioned pieces for people wanting a remembrance of a special location or building. In choosing a subject to paint, she says that occasionally she will get “artist’s block,” something like writer’s block, and has to take a break from painting to reassess what she has done.

Kowalchuk assisted in starting the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Museum in Sandy Lake and was the president of the association for the first 10 years. She could be called a town historian, and is currently the curator for the museum. She uses this interest and knowledge to enhance her paintings and choice of subjects. Her historical paintings include the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox and the Ukrainian Catholic churches in Sandy Lake, Ukrainian dancers in traditional costumes and the mural inside the museum in Sandy Lake.

As history plays such an important part in Kowalchuk’s life and paintings, it is appropriate that the paintings are displayed in a historical building. The Shanty Gallery was at one time a small house that was moved from a farm onto the Kowalchuk family property in Sandy Lake in the early 1930s. During her childhood, before the new house was built, there were up to eight people (five children and three adults) living in the one-room house, 15×15 feet, plus an attic for sleeping. Later the shanty was used as a workshop for Kowalchuk’s father, but then stood almost unused for 16 years. In the late 1990s, it was decided to remove the attached garage and use the shanty for an art gallery. Today, the gallery houses Kowalchuk’s original paintings, prints and greeting cards, as well as photographs by a local photographer. The gallery still has the old wood stove in the centre of the room that her mother used to make meals on and heat the shanty in cold weather.

Kowalchuk paints mostly in watercolour and acrylic mediums but will do the occasional oil picture. “Watercolour is my favourite type of paint to use, but it is also the most difficult to master,” she says. “I love the colours and the types of sky you can paint with watercolour.” She also stretches her own canvases and makes some of her own frames, which she uses to temporarily hold each painting in the gallery. If a painting is purchased, it is generally reframed by the purchaser. In the winter Kowalchuk does most of her painting for the following gallery season which starts in May and runs until fall. “Late spring, summer and harvest time are too hectic to really do any concentrated painting, so I try to fit it into the winters and it really makes time fly by. I hardly ever complain about long winters now!” During the spring, summer and fall, Kowalchuk tends to her gallery visitors along with her flower and vegetable gardens. What she grows in the garden supplies her with most of her vegetables for the winter. The land she gardens on has been in the family for 80 years.

Kowalchuk has donated paintings of main street Sandy Lake and Ukrainian dancers to local fundraising events. She will also be designing and painting a mural on the side of the newly built change rooms at Sandy Lake in the summer of 2010. Kowalchuk’s latest project is a series of four booklets dedicated to the flowers found along the section of the Trans-Canada Trail that runs west of Sandy Lake. The pictures of the flowers are prints of small paintings that she has done and each print is accompanied by a description.

Kowalchuk doesn’t know how long she will keep the gallery running, but knows that she will continue to paint as long as she can. She is definitely a person who is dedicated to the country life and to expressing herself through art. It has become her passion, to showcase the beauty of the Manitoba countryside in paint.

– Anne Bachewich writes from Sandy Lake, Manitoba

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