Alan Miller leads a show called Miller’s Border Collies at the 120th Kentucky State Fair. The West Wing exhibit will run through Aug. 24, one day before the fair ends.
Miller, a farmer and former school teacher who lives in Nelson County, gives his border collies commands to herd a group of ducks around a small pen. The popular exhibit was started by his late father, Harold.
LPM News’ Jacob Munoz went to Miller’s farm to speak with him about the show, now in its 54th year. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
When you started, what was it like? Was this something that you started from the ground up?
I am the second generation. Harold Miller, a vocational agriculture teacher from Hardin County, moved to Bloomfield, Kentucky, and got a kind of prestigious vocational agriculture job in Bloomfield.
On some kind of road trip, he saw a little black and white dog taking a herd of milk cows up a mountain. So he found his way up that mountain, up a little gravel road to where that man was milking those cows. Asked that man, after the conversation had ensued for a little bit, “Does that dog do that all the time?” “Twice a day, 365 days a year.” And my dad said, “Did you teach him to do that?” “Nope, learned it by himself.” “What kind of dog is that?” “That’s a border collie.”