The 76th National Sheep Dog Trial Championships are underway until Sunday and the competitors at the Hall Village Showground have no doubt that it is a sport demanding skill, agility and intelligence.
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And that's just from the dogs.
The humans, too, get an important role in this test of talent.
The sheep, if truth be told, only get bit parts. They are, well, sheep and behave like sheep.
Which is to say, they follow each other in a sheepish way.
The national championships have been held since 1942, initially at Manuka Oval and now in the venue in Hall.
The championships are, the organisers say, a "highly-competitive and challenging sport. A fascinating insight into Australia's rural life. A compelling sometimes nail-biting spectator experience. An example of extraordinary team work".
In their three-quarters of a century in the nation's capital, they have changed slowly from a demonstration of the essential skills needed by graziers and their working dogs into a something much more sporting, in that the humans compete for the fun of it. They sometimes don't have a rural background, let alone livelihood.
By day, for example, Kyleigh Victory is an engineer with Icon Water, but in her spare time she trains on properties owned by others with sheep owned by others, sometimes with her own border collies and sometimes with a dog she's been lent.
"It's become more of a sport," she said. "It used to be a pastime for farmers to test their dogs against each other."
This week, she's been putting a borrowed animal, Wynella Bandsaw, through her paces on the course which involves the three sheep being herded around a series of pegs and obstacles until they are finally coaxed into the pen.
Kyleigh Victory and Wynella Bandsaw work as a team in a demonstration of high skill and mutual understanding between human and animal.
It is an intense experience. "You tend to forget everything else when you're working your dog," she said.
She only got into the sport two-and-a-half years ago when she started training and then into competition a year-and-a-half ago.
The human skill is to train the dog to use its own instincts, according to Charlie Cover, the event manager. "We start with pups and these pups have instincts and we have to modify their instincts," he said.
The basic canine instinct is to hold the sheep - to stand alert and threatening to mesmerise them and stop them moving - so the modification involves teaching the dog how to allow the sheep to move, and to move in the right direction. A dog that over-reacts means sheep that flee. A dog that won't react enough means sheep that stand stock still.
"The art of sheepdog training is to balance the sheep between fright and flight," said Mr Cover.
The dogs have to obey orders but they also have to have some sense of what to do.
The human handler shouts "away" if he or she wants the dog to go anti-clockwise and "come" for the opposite, clockwise direction, but loudness and tone determine how fast and far the dog moves.
There is history. The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh attended the championships in 1970. The Queen presented the Duke of Gloucester Sash to the winner of the National Open Trial, Bob Ross and his dog, Yulong Russ.
The Queen, who is reputed to enjoy country sports, may well have enjoyed the Canberra event.
There is no doubt the sport - the sport - is highly skillful for both halves of the competitive team. It is also absorbing for spectators.
So, a thought: if synchronised swimming, golf and skateboarding can be in the Olympics, why not sheepdog trials? It would mean medals for Australia.
