A SHEPHERDESS from Shap has been flown to Saudi Arabia to train dogs belonging to a princess.

Katy Cropper, 52, received a phone call from the personal assistant of Princess Latifa bin Fahd bin Sbdulaziz al Saud requesting that she go on an all-expenses paid trip to the Middle East.

The Hause Farm shepherdess landed in Saudi on Sunday having been flown out in business class for two weeks to teach the royal dogs how to be real sheep dogs.

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Katy is going with her 12-year-old daughter Henrietta and her 15-month-old sheep dog Johnny, who will be sleeping in the palace with the Saudi royals.

No expense has been spared and the Princess even offered to buy Herdwick sheep for the occasion.

"The Princess' PA phoned me a few months ago and asked me to go," said Katy. "I thought it was a joke at first obviously and then it all came out that they did actually want me to go, so that's what's happening."

Two weeks is a minimal amount of time to train a dog, let alone one that is more used to the desert and sweltering temperatures than a windswept Lakeland fell.

Katy is being realistic about the situation.

"Their dogs might not be interested in sheep," she said. "I'm going for two weeks and I'm hoping it's going to be an ongoing venture because you can't train a sheepdog in two weeks.

"They have got all sorts of sheep and they are going to great lengths to put round pens up and accommodate us so it is going to be hard for me to tell them that their dogs are rubbish!"

While she is keeping an open mind about what her Saudi Arabian experience is going to be like, Katy, who moved to the Lakes from Cheshire in 1990, is not wildly enthused about having to leave her Shap farmhouse.

"I haven't got a clue what it's going to be like," she said.

"I love training dogs here so I can't wait to come back. I'm getting a bit long in the tooth for this.

"It's a bit of an honour but I just think of it as another job to do. I have had a long life of ups and downs and not being happy and I have found happiness at Shap so I'm loathe to go anywhere else."