kelpiegirl Posted July 25, 2007 Report Share Posted July 25, 2007 How big an area does one need to be able to do a very basic sheepdog demo? Julie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rebecca, Irena Farm Posted July 26, 2007 Report Share Posted July 26, 2007 It's not the size of the arena. The key is super quiet, bomb proof stock and a dog ditto. The farther you get from that, the more you'll have to compensate with the working environment. The other factor is what you are trying to demonstrate. I once did a demo in a church parking lot with three bottle lambs, just for fun and to show what it looked like. I do similar demos for school kids at my own place - nothing but gathering the sheep and sending the dog both ways and stopping. At my own place I then have the kids try to catch sheep themselves t see why we use the dogs. It's fun. At the other end of the spectrum, if you are demonstrating the usefulness of the dogs to professional stock handlers and farmers, you'll want room to set up typical chores like loading a trailer and putting them through chutes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItsADogsLyfe Posted July 26, 2007 Report Share Posted July 26, 2007 I have done tons of demos with my dogs through the years. Mostly we did not have any arena to work in. Sometimes we even just worked the sheep right through the crowd. It was nicer for the novice dogs in an arena setting as the lack of control on those dogs made it easier to keep sheep contained. But if you have good experienced dogs with you it can work without fencing. My older dog, Seth is a good and a bad demo dog. Good because he is so experienced, bad because he knows I can't correct him at a demo. Last demo we were at a year ago was in a park where they did all kinds of dog demos and contests, agility, disk dog, lots of vendors, obedience etc. The sheep demo was set way aside and we had a minimal barrier between us and the rest of the festivities. The other side was completely open. Seth earned his dinner that day containing the sheep and fetching them back when they'd gone out of bounds. I enjoy doing demos, but it is a lot of hard work, especially if you want to do a good one. It also helps to have a dog that likes people. We would have tons of people come up after the demos wanting to ask questions and pet the dogs. Fortunately Seth excelled in this capacity. He loves kids and especially babies. He definitely got a swelled head at demos. This pic is of Seth (when he was young) and me at the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA. As you can see, no fence boundaries. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelpiegirl Posted July 26, 2007 Author Report Share Posted July 26, 2007 Okay- anyone interested in doing a demo or two for $$$$???? I would love to do this, but Lucy, well, um, I am not so sure. Maybe if I ran her for two hours first.... Julie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItsADogsLyfe Posted July 27, 2007 Report Share Posted July 27, 2007 Okay- anyone interested in doing a demo or two for $$$$???? I would love to do this, but Lucy, well, um, I am not so sure. Maybe if I ran her for two hours first.... I have never gotten paid for performing in a demo. The people who put them on did, but I just did it for fun. I started out doing it to get Seth used to working sheep around people. He went through a faze when he was young where he'd quit and go to the gate if someone came in the arena while I was working him. Well it did work. He was around 2 when I did my first demo with him. He was a bit nervous while we worked but after our bit was over everyone started clapping as we walked away and Seth started strutting. After that he seemed to have no problem working sheep with people around. I've worked my older dogs, my just started dogs and even my puppies in demos. The people that did the demos I worked with put on very professional demos. We had PA system and had dogs in varioius stages of training, plus different breeds. We had someone over the PA system describing exactly what we were doing and the age of the dog, how long it had been working, etc. It is very important to have dog broke sheep that work well around lots of people. If you work young dogs and / or puppies, its important to have very experienced dogs to contain the sheep if the young dogs have a wreck. We never had any major problems in all the demos I worked. Once someone did get knocked down by a particularly energetic outrunner ( next year at this venue they put us behind fences) and another time one of the dogs got into the sheep pen (four panels bungied together) and the sheep knocked it down. Nothing major though. We also always had a booth so people could come up and ask questions and we had printed information we passed out regarding working dogs. If we had room, we'd set up a small course. In between demos we'd keep the sheep either in the pen, or have someone watch them with a dog. This is Seth again at the Queen Mary but a different demo. this is Meg at the QM demo, before she was a year old. You can see the pen we would keep the sheep in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdarling Posted July 27, 2007 Report Share Posted July 27, 2007 Cool to see those photos, Joan. It's been a while. I'll have to see if I can find mine. Jodi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItsADogsLyfe Posted July 27, 2007 Report Share Posted July 27, 2007 Cool to see those photos, Joan. It's been a while. I'll have to see if I can find mine. All those demos we did and I have very few pics. I think I may have some video of Mike when he was a pup. I have this one of Zip with Jock and Meg though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdarling Posted July 27, 2007 Report Share Posted July 27, 2007 Very cool! It's amazing how much Zip's coat has darkened these last couple of years. I'll take a look this weekend and see if I can pull up some of those demo photos ... maybe I can find pics of Justin or Charla in the mascot costume. LOL!! Jodi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelpiegirl Posted July 27, 2007 Author Report Share Posted July 27, 2007 It looks like we just won't have the right sheep/dogs/arena to do the demos- bummer. If anyone is interested, it will be the last full week of August at the dutchess county fair Rhinebeck NY, and this is a paid gig. Julie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItsADogsLyfe Posted July 28, 2007 Report Share Posted July 28, 2007 I'll take a look this weekend and see if I can pull up some of those demo photos ... maybe I can find pics of Justin or Charla in the mascot costume. LOL!! I have video of Jillian in the Mascot costume..so, I probably have Zip in the video also. I'll have to see if I can find it. Did you ever work the Bakersfield demo? Or the one at the LA fairgrounds? Both of those were in an arena. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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