"Herding" with random breeds

[Donald McCaig]

Dear Doggers,

 

I have long felt that working with your dog increases happiness and health for both. While I am convinced that conformation showing is the worst idea that ever overtook dogs and their owners, the conformation showers I know have a better relationship with their dogs than pet owners who do nothing with their dogs.

 

A year or so ago, a pupil brought a malumute Border Collie cross to my farm to try it in the small ring. No. While I am willing to subject my sheep to sheepdog training, I am not willing to subject them to human foolishness. Consequently, I am willing to introduce a Lassie Collie or Australian Cattledog to my sheep (on a long lead) but they have about sixty seconds to prove they are trainable into a useful farm dog. Not a trial dog - just a dog that can, with proper guidance reliably and without harming them gather and drive sheep.

 

From the perspective of someone whose doggy life has been spent inside the dog fancy (conformation, agility, rally - pretty much any activity that titles dogs) working a sheepdog - especially trialing a sheepdog - looks like a dog sport. A modestly titled dog might be "instinct tested", a more talented dog might have earned its HX or even a "herding" BIS - just as it might earn titles in other doggy sports.

 

In a quarter century of training, working and trialing, my sheepdogs have never earned a title and precious few blue ribbons. I do need them.

 

A poster here noted that one can raise sheep without using a dog and if one has the facilities and not many tame sheep, that's true. You won't find many sheepdogs in US purebred Suffolk flocks. That's cultural - sheepdogs are commonplace in UK purebred flocks. J. M. Wilson (the famous sheepdog man) earned his knighthood for purebred sheep - not dogs.

 

Sheep are a high skill, low capital business. They can graze low quality forage and recover their cost in two year's lamb production but unlike cattle, they require frequent human attention. In summer months on pasture, I get nervous if I haven't walked through my flock in three days. To attend properly to sheep on pasture I need a dog to gather and hold them. If I discover a problem with a ewe, the dog's other skills come into play.

 

Yesterday, for instance:

 

Our farm is divided into three big fenced fields of 50, 40 and 25 acres. To the north is 25000 acres of Game Commission land, The 180000 acre National Forest lies across the river south. East is a cattle farmer, west: unoccupied hayland. Spring has been wet, grass is a kneehigh ocean and nobody can get hay equipment into the fields. A friend is pasturing 70 breeding ewes in our river field.

 

Because I'm leaving for Montana Friday, I decided to bring these ewes nearer the house where our farm sitter can inspect them every two days. She's stock savvy and if she doesn't know what to do, she'll phone their owner. We have handling facilities beside the barn and Luke ( my 10 year old retired trial dog) will stay here to help.

 

His 10 year old mate June will accompany me. This will be her last year trialing. I've owned five year old Fly since October and sixty days later she decided to work for me. Fly's a piece of work but I like her. She was a Scottish hill dog - not a trial dog - and has worked a lambing.

 

I'd seen the 70 ewes yesterday at a distance. I drove my pickup into the fields to find them. I've farmed this ground for forty years and know every bit of marginally high ground - else I would have bogged the truck. Water in the hard-bottomed road was above my wheels. Although I saw the shady spots sheep might bed down, I didn't find them. About five o'clock I repeated my search. No sheep. This was not good news. Our fences, though adequate aren't panic proof and if coyotes had got into the flock they might have escaped into the river bottom and 180,000 acres of National Forest.

 

I drove the county road above the beef cattle guy, thinking they might have got out there. Nope. I started revising my trip plans. Sheep come first.

 

It was still hot when they came out to graze. I was greatly relieved.. Fly's and my task - moving 70 sheep through two gates into a different field was complicated by the knee deep running water and hundred yard swamp betwixt.

 

Sheep are prey animals. They don't like to be first through tall grass where a predator might be lurking and they definitely don't like getting mired in a swamp. It wasn't going to be easy so I drove my truck near and jumped Fly out. When she brought the ewes (and ram) I thought I saw . . .Oh dear. Newborn lamb - crusty navel - day old. Fly held it, I caught it and popped it into my crew cab. A second newborn went into the crew cab with the first.

 

Since no ewe wants to go first into the swamp, they swirl unforward. Fly swings back and forth and I flutter my hat and we make small progress. A third lamb. I snatch it and take it to the truck and Fly and I resume pressing our sheep balloon. I wipe sweat out of my eyes and Fly's tongue is hanging out a foot. Half an hour? Three quarters? before they were through the swamp and I was mud to my knees (no I hadn't been wearing rubber boots) and Fly was a mud ball. It was the first hot work of the season and Fly isn't used to it. I send her to the pond before we get back in the truck and back to the farmstead.

 

I need to rejoin mama's and babies so I put Fly up and Luke and June put my training flock into the barn. Mamas bleating, the seventy ewe flock are drifting across the bottom of the house field, four hundred yards away. When I send June into the unmowed grass, she disappears. I know she's reached the sheep because they stop drifting and start swirling. I can't drive down there and I don't want to walk.

 

Luke has a heart murmur (hence his retirement) but I need more dog to unswirl and bring those sheep, so I send Luke. I can't see my dogs but pretty soon the double dogged sheep start coming. I open the lot gate and though they don't want to go in, Luke and June insist. I fetch the lambs from the truck to their mama's.

 

I call their owner to say, "That's some ram you've got. Put him with the ewes and two weeks later they're dropping lambs."

 

Like you I love and respect my dogs. Like you they are my favored entertainment. Every year I rediscover how little I know about their minds, hearts and desires. Like you I am fascinated by them.

 

I need them.

 

Donald McCaig

[Sue R]

Lovely story, Donald - real dogs doing real work when you really need it done. My favorite kind of story.

[Root Beer]

Wonder what purpose the stick serves? Kim

 

In some of the European vidoes I've seen, the handler sometimes uses the stick to help guide the ball into the goal when the dog gets it really close. Not sure if that will be included/allowed in the American version of the sport which, I believe, is still being developed.

[Mark Billadeau]

Shouldn't the stick have a VERY large "head" to be useful for catching the ball (ball crook vs. neck or leg crook)?

[juliepoudrier]

^^Sounds like a design and marketing oppportunity Mark. Put your thinking/salesman cap on and get working!

 

J.

[Smalahundur]

Shouldn't the stick have a VERY large "head" to be useful for catching the ball (ball crook vs. neck or leg crook)?

 

This conjured up a very funny image in my mind´s eye (but I am easily amused...).

[Root Beer]

No, you don't "catch" the ball. This handler is using the stick in this way here.

 

I don't care for this video because the dog is too barky for my taste, but this is a good example of how the stick seems to be used in Europe.

 

 

I'm not sure if this is just in training or competition. I don't know much about the rules at all.

[juliepoudrier]

So she's just using the stick to stop the ball going past the goal and to help the dog push it in to the goal? Guess I should read up on the rules sometime.

 

The barking would drive me crazy, though, and it seems fairly common in the videos I've seen so far.

 

J.

[Sue R]

I wonder if the barkiness is because the dogs (at least initially) have had to be pretty revved up to be interested in shoving balls around - especially big balls that they can't grab hold of with their mouths?

 

I don't mind the stick but it does ruffle my gag reflex when they use a crook (real or fake) and all the "herding" terms. I am so easily bent out of shape over nothing much...

[mjk05]

I wonder if the barkiness is because the dogs (at least initially) have had to be pretty revved up to be interested in shoving balls around - especially big balls that they can't grab hold of with their mouths?

I think that's part of it. I've never done treiball, but we do have a big red hard plastic ball which they chase around, trying to steer it by pushing it along or biting at it on either side- and almost every dog that plays with it starts barking, even dogs that hardly ever bark in other situations. They've never needed encouragement to play with it, they seem to really enjoy it, but I think there's a high degree of frustration involved in shoving around a ball they can't bite and they definitely get very fired up.

 

I don't mind the stick but it does ruffle my gag reflex when they use a crook (real or fake) and all the "herding" terms. I am so easily bent out of shape over nothing much...

Me too... It looks like a fun sport, I wouldn't mind giving it a go, but it's as closely related to sheepdog work as agility.

[Root Beer]

If I ever get around to training Dean to do this - and I'd like to - I don't plan to include barking. If he gets barky, which I doubt he will, I would just use off switch games to teach him to keep his head, while keeping his drive up, while keeping quiet.

 

If the barking were required, I wouldn't even consider trying to train it.

[Root Beer]

I wonder if the barkiness is because the dogs (at least initially) have had to be pretty revved up to be interested in shoving balls around - especially big balls that they can't grab hold of with their mouths?

 

The way I saw to train this, the dog doesn't get revved up to start learning to push the ball.

 

In the tutorial that I watched, the dog is taught to target a post it note and then that is placed on a door and the dog learns to push the door closed by pushing the post it note. Then that's put on a cue. Then the ball is introduced with the "push" cue, and the ball is pushed toward the handler. Gradually the handler starts to back away more and more to teach duration on the push.

 

It is actually a very interesting training process. I'm sure there are lots of different ways to teach it, but that is definitely the method I'm interested in using to initially teach the push. I will want my dog calm and in his right mind through that learning process, definitely not revved up.

 

I expect that once the dog is actually pushing balls around, the drive will kick in since there will be motion and rolling balls in the picture at that point. At least I can presume that with the dogs I would try it with.

[Sue R]

Thank you for that explanation, Christine. It seems simple and straightforward, and something absolutely any dog could learn (at least with appropriately-sized balls!).

 

The explanation of how this is trained points out that this is not "herding" in any way, shape, or form - it is a trained behavior, not a channeling of instinct (although I could see where a dog with a nature that encourages it to bring things to its handler could be at a definite advantage in a game like this).

 

I think it's a fun idea and a good game for dog and handler. I just don't care for calling it ball "herding" and the use of stockworking terms and even crooks by some participants. I just need to get over that, I guess. It's not a big deal in the scheme of things.

 

JMO, and I have a boatload of more important things I should be doing right now!

[juliepoudrier]

Although I think using stockwork implements is a little silly, frankly I don't care what the people do--at least no living animals are involved! My dogs love to push a basketball around (even after deflating it), so I could see where they might find something like this fun. And it lets folks "herd" with their dogs, gaining at least some of the positives that result from that sort of training without any of the negatives (stress on livestock). Since they're already using a soccer goal, I think it would be fun to create teams and start up doggie soccer leagues!

 

J.

[Sue R]

You are right, Julie. It is a small thing. And I think it would be a great activity to do it as "dog soccer" and set up competitions. I think you'd want to have each dog do its turn individually. Some dogs could get pretty possessive of those balls!

 

Thanks for bringing me a good dose of common sense.

[Root Beer]

I just don't care for calling it ball "herding" and the use of stockworking terms and even crooks by some participants. I just need to get over that, I guess. It's not a big deal in the scheme of things.

 

I've heard that the term "treibball" (spelling?) can be translated "ball driving". You could always translate it that way.

[Vickkers]

Thanks for the recommendation, Julie... and this is an interesting topic... lots of things I didn't think about when it comes to sheep and what is best for them. I am definitely going to look into starting Treibball here...