losing contact while driving

[red russel]

Bev,

 

I am working on driving and inside flanks with a young dog. He is a bit soft so we are taking things slow and easy but we are getting better and moving in the right direction. When driving he rates his sheep pretty well, attempts to hold the line by himself, and has good pace. One of the behaviors I’m seeing is when sheep move off him quickly he stops. I think he is trying to take the pressure off the livestock and hoping if he stops, they will stop. When they don’t it has been difficult to get him to walk up so we quickly lose contact with our sheep.

 

My plan is to flank him up until he catches the eye of the livestock and slows them down, then walk him up once he feels he is in control. Does this make sense and will I be creating any problems for us in the future?

 

dave

[Lambert]

I don't think I would do that Dave. I don't know how firm your youngster is on the driving concept but it sort of sounds to me like when the sheep get to be any distance away from his he loses his idea of driving. I would try to encourage him to change speed when the sheep change speed since this is the behavior you want to ultimately achieve. Try sort of running after the sheep yourself while encouraging him to "come up" or "walk on" until he gets the idea of hanging in there.

 

I would be concerned that by flanking him when the sheep move away that instead of teaching him to drive you would be encouraging him to stop driving and start heading when his sheep were out of contact.

 

What you want is for the dog lean into his sheep as he is driving. He should be learning to provide the propulsion that moves the sheep forward. Since most of our young dogs are trained on pretty broke sheep that readily come to the handler, driving is often the first time that sheep have leaned on the dog for any length of time. Sheep that just follow the handler when being fetched and worn aren't at all like sheep that resist being moved away from the handler. This is a new kind of behavior for the sheep to be displaying to the dog and your youngster needs to learn to lean into the harness and push back. When the sheep run away from him he needs to go after them but not head them (which I think your flanking to catch their eye would be). All of these sheep behaviors are new for a dog learning to drive since they are not occurring in relationship to some fixed point of balance (the handler) but are sort of free form.

 

Now I'm sitting in my living room trying to visualize what you are trying to visualize so I may not be seeing the same picture but that's my best guess of what you are talking about and what I would do about it.

 

Beverly

[red russel]

Nope. We are exactly on the same page. We are visualizing the same things.

 

I've been working on getting him to lean in to his sheep for months. My sheep aren't fetchy so he definitely has to lift them and move them along. When driving, depending upon which way the draw is, they will either move freely (run) from him or can be pretty heavy. I've had him pull the sheep off their feeders to make sure there is resistance and also worked on a fence drill where my back is to a fence with sheep in front of me and my dog walking in to the sheep... All to get him to start to feel confident and apply pressure. We've taken this pretty slow and I've made sure he won his tiny little battles. He is quite up to the job and lifts on the fetch extremely well but it hasn't quite translated to driving yet. Teaching him to drive has actually helped me lose some weight because I've run up and down our west paddock cheerleading behind him so many times it could be called my exercise program.

 

Sounds like what I need to do is go find some sheep that will flow better. Lift and move without sprinting away or acting like Soldier Hollow sheep. My little flock may not be giving him a realistic view of the world. My biggest challenge is probably the fact that this is only my second dog. I'm not sure how long things should take and, of course, that is dog specific. As an ex-boss used to say, "it takes as long as it takes." I'm sure his lack of confidence has a lot to do with his hesitance so we'll avoid the flanking and just keep at it.

 

thank you,

 

dave