I farm: “Part-time, on 80 acres of my own land and then there are 3,000 acres of commonage that we are allowed to graze on the Mourne mountains with other farmers in the area. I have 400 ewes – Scottish blackface Lanarks and around 20 store cattle.”

Dogs: “I have bred a lot of dogs, some of them I was successful with. The dog I had this summer, Mossy, was given to me by a friend. The man who owned him knew that the dog had a future in farming, so he offered him to me. Lucky enough he did. I won the national trials this year with him.”

Family affair: “My son, Peter Óg, his dog Tip is a half-brother of Mossy’s. He started trialling on his 11th birthday. He’s 13 now and he just won the young handlers’ competition this year.”

Peter Óg with his dog Tip. \ Patrick Browne

Mossy: “Is an everyday working dog. The hill work, rounding the sheep and getting them from the top of the mountain is great preparation for a dog. Most of the time, it’s the best farm dogs that make the best trial dogs, especially for the bigger events. It keeps them fit and means they have to think for themselves.”

At the moment: “We are getting ready for the ram sales. Peter Óg is getting to the age where he likes to put his opinion in on what kind of ram we should be buying. We’ll bring all the ewes down off the mountain soon and get them prepared for the breeding season. Then we put the ram in the first week of November.”

Lambing: “We start lambing around 1 April and we lamb outdoors on my own farm. As soon as the lambs are about 10 days old, we put them back out on to the mountain. They stay there until the middle of August when we bring them back down, and from there they go straight to the market.”

Quotable quote: “Farming to me is in your blood. It’s not always the best payer. You’ll sacrifice a loss the odd year and just keep doing it. If it’s in your nature to be farming, then you have to be at it.”