Sheep escape on drive

[Maja]

When practicing driving, sometimes when we drive towards a draw the sheep take off to their destination. It's not that the dog pushes them, they just want to run. At home I lie down the dog, since the sheep do it only on an enclosed area, I call her off and then send her on an outrun to fetch them back. Occasionally, I stop her just before I figure the sheep are going to escape, to show her that yes, some times she must just leave the sheep, her task is done.

 

But the other day we were practicing at my friend's, fist time away from home in four months, with very light sheep, and Bonnie at first tried to push them too much on the drive expecting resistance from the sheep. The didn't need much though. So a couple of times they escaped on the drive. I really didn't want to let them because they would go up on a hill that they could fall off if pushed too hard from the wrong side. But I didn't know what to do. I read here not to let the drive turn into a fetch but giving Bonnie a flank command would have been useful. Any suggestions for the future?

 

Maja

[juliepoudrier]

There are times when a dog is driving when it needs to work from the side to control the lead sheep (that is, driving does not equal always being directly behind the sheep). When sheep are escaping on the drive is one such occasion. It's okay to flank Bonnie toward the heads to control the lead sheep and prevent escape. We saw a lot of that at the trial this past weekend, where the drive away was roughly in the direction of the exhaust, with a consequent strong draw. In many cases the dogs had to work at the head of the lead sheep to keep the group online. The trick, of course, is making sure you can stop a young dog before the dog has an opportunity to flank all the way around and turn the drive into a fetch (which is something young dogs tend to do anyway).

 

J.

[Smokjbc]

Not an expert but if there is a really strong draw (i.e your friends light sheep are at home and have a draw to gate, feeder, barn, etc), then I would try to set up drives away from the draw and avoid the direction that they are escaping to.

 

If it were my own sheep at home, in trouble spots I would flank my dog around to change direction so that the sheep know the dog is in control. If you do this enough, the sheep give up on the big escape as long as the dog isn't being too pushy. At your friends though, you won't have time to "retrain" the sheep so IMHO you are better off trying to work the sheep away from their draw or anticipate when they will start to bolt and let your dog change their direction before they have committed to it.

[Maja]

Julie,

I guess, I didn't realize that sending the dog to 3 or 9 o'clock would stop the sheep. So I will try it. I also got a little lazy and the dog and the sheep go faster than I, so the problem situation usually arises pretty far away from me. And in that situation (large distance) I think I would have problem stopping Bonnie e.g. at 10:00 or 2:00 if it was needed (it think she would go on balance). So I have to put walking boots again instead of farm boots and make sure the sheep are not too far when it happens.

 

Smokjbc,

I did try that of course - basically fetch towards the draw, and drive away from the draw, but I can't avoid the situation altogether, so I wanted to be prepared next time. Other than that the sheep are really sweet to work with. Light, but not too flighty respond to the dog very well.

 

Thank you both for your input.

 

(OT: We are still trying to untangle the flanks - Bonnie thinks there is a deeper meaning to comeby and away, and she is trying to fathom it rather than come to the simple conclusion that comeby is this way around the sheep and away is thata way. But I think eventually we will get there. Bonnie is an out-guesser a bit like her mother. She wants to guess the main purpose and then interprets the command accordingly. For most commands and chores it is a great thing, like taking the sheep out of the stall putting them in this enclosure and taking them through gates she is really great and needs little direction because from the start she thought why we were doing this or that, so sometimes we do something once and she has it all figured out. But for flanks it's often a problem when she does not see the purpose of it. And I think it's not just counter balance thing, because sometimes she goes on counter-balance and wrong - I send her on balance and she goes the other way - and she clearly thinks I am going to do something that requires her to go the way she thinks, never mind the command. This is different from a "dog with her own plan", she does not want to do what she wants, she want to guess what I want to do, so it is hard because it's rather frustrating for me and then doubly so for her. Ok, I'm sorry for rambling on. Where is Pam's skillet?)

 

Maja

[ThunderHill]

I've only gotten as far as Pro/Novice (just above the bottom level in the USA's middle Atlantic area) so working toward a draw with light (or just plain determined) sheep is definitely a familiar training challenge to me.

 

To Julie P's excellent and experienced advice I'll add the part of the work which at the moment is most important to me and my dogs at this stage of our learning: once your dog is far enough up on the heads (toward 3 or 9 o'clock) the dog needs to understand he/she is not to bend in, either. Even once they understand they're not to go all the way to the top and fetch, they often find a spot near the top and start leaning in too much. Then the sheep start to drift off line, even if they don't stop or turn back completely. The dog just needs to be out there paralleling the sheep, catching the right sheep's eye, and acting as a brake. I have to keep flanking out one of my dogs in small increments in such situations, or she starts wanting to fall in. Another dog of mine caught on early. I have no idea whether I contributed anything to their different learning patterns. Some of it has to be how different dogs learn, not just how the human teaches differently.

 

Once again emphasizing my low-intermediate level of comprehension: it seems to me that the right spot for the dog to be in, when "escorting" toward a draw is often, also, a small spot. And it isn't always where it seems like it ought to be, to the human. My dogs often seem to find it/feel it before I do. It's yet another working situation where it really pays to observe what the sheep actually do. It takes a dog with a nice feel for the edge of the pressure zone and willingness to listen and experiment with you (against the urgings of their basic instincts) to get it exactly right.

 

One other observation -- I've been at several trials where there was a strong draw on the fetch, and the dog(s) would get into what seemed to be the correct spot well up on the sheeps' flank. The overall speed would slow down to a decent pace. But the sheep kept pushing on the dog(s), and the dog(s) would then adjust outward to the edge of the sheep's flight zone. The result was that the sheep were actually moving the dog(s) in the direction the sheep wanted to go. I guess those were very nice dogs with an excellent sense of the edge of the sheeps' "bubble" who were also just a little too tactful. (Or whatever term is more appropriate.) Other dogs held the line on the fetch better at these trials, without doing anything conspicuously different.

 

I suspect that's one of those situations where more experienced and knowledgable handlers will start the discussion about the relative "power" of the dogs involved...

 

Just a few speculative pfennigs from South Central PA, USA.

 

Liz S

[Maja]

Liz,

 

Thank you for your thoughts. In a way, Bonnie is learning too fast for me. As soon as we try something new and she catches on somewhat, I find myself out of my depth again, encountering brand new situations I don't know how to react to. So all this is great food for thought and I will think about it next time we do driving.

 

Maja

[Smokjbc]

Just to clarify, I didn't mean you should always fetch towards the draw or drive away from it. Just avoid putting pressure in such away that the sheep see a clear path to where they want to go anyways .

 

Fetching towards the draw will cause her to flatten out her outrun if the sheep take off before she gets there. But Julie's example explained it much better than I could .

[juliepoudrier]

I just want to point out that I didn't say 3 or 9 o'clock. Every situation will be different, and there may be times when the dog needs to be only at 4, 5, 7, or 8 (or anywhere in between), and other times when the dog may need to be at 1, 2, 10, or 11 (or anywhere in between). The point is that the dog may need to travel up the sides of the group toward the heads in order to control an escape toward a draw. The sheep will tell you when the dog is in the right place.

 

J.

[Maja]

Smokejbc,

Thank you for clarification. I understood what you meant. I was talking about fetching sans outrun e.g. drving away from a draw moving around and the fetching toward the draw. And I agree with you, I tried not to drive where the sheep wanted to go, but the pasture had limited dimensions so it was not altogether avoidable.

 

Julie,

I didn't mean to say you said that . I was just saying that for Bonnie up the point of 3:00 o 9:00 I can flank her and lie her down, but past it I might have some problems at this point. It will be interesting to see what the spot actually is.

 

Maja

[Maja]

Julie,

I was so curious about your advice that today, after teaching for 6 hours, and a visit at my mechanic's, and buying a gift for my DH, I went out to check things out.

 

So at first attempt at escape I sent Bonnie on a flank at about 3:00, good stop, excellent distance, and it turned the sheep but didn't' slow them so I sent Bonnie a leetle farther, which ended the way I had thought it would - with an attempt to make an "oops fetch." So I lay Bonnie down and then called her off reminding her "I don't wanna the doggone sheep" and we tried again (the "oops fetch attempt definitely stopped the sheep, of course). So the rest of the drive Bonnie was at about 3:00 sometimes 2:00 and the sheep walked calmly all the way to their beloved home. There was one more "oops fetch" attempt, but it was corrected quickly.

 

So overall: Tadaaaaa!!!! Thank you Julie for advice. The only weak point in that is that I am the done deciding where the magic spot is, and nobody can help me in that problem . (Bonnie is almost 17 months now.)

 

Maja

[Maja]

This is working really well. Bonnie has really got the idea of the purpose of a partial flank on the escaping sheep. So she stops very well now whenever I tell her. Thank you again for the input!

Maja

[juliepoudrier]

Great news! Bonnie's a smart girl!

 

J.

[Maja]

 

I am actually having thoughts of taking her to the test this year (the one that will let her into trials), after her last visit to my friend's with totally bonkers sheep, where she handled herself very well.

 

Maja