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terrecar
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  • 2 weeks later...

Coming back to this thread. I would love to experience a working-bred Kelpie, but I wouldn't know how to find one here in the States. I know someone with a couple of them, but they are very shy and anxious, so I am thinking that there may be a split of working vs. pet similar to the BC breed.

 

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6 hours ago, gcv-border said:

Coming back to this thread. I would love to experience a working-bred Kelpie, but I wouldn't know how to find one here in the States. I know someone with a couple of them, but they are very shy and anxious, so I am thinking that there may be a split of working vs. pet similar to the BC breed.

 

I saw a couple of Kelpies a few days ago, but I didn’t get to see them work. I suspect they were working bred, but I couldn’t swear to it. The trainer has HTCD’s, one of which he brought out so I could watch him work cattle. The Kelpies may just be there for training, probably on sheep. This is in Maryland.

ETA: The dog I watched working cattle is all the way on the right in the third photo. Other than the white, his coloring is similar to a red Kelpie, but his structure is different and he is a HTCD. https://www.hangintreecowdog.net/2021-futurity

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  • 1 month later...

I am somewhat resurrecting this thread, as I have just seen an advert for a new series being produced by the Australian ABC, called Muster Dogs.  The premise of the show is that five Kelpie puppies are given to five graziers from various parts of the outback, and the show follows them over a year as they train these pups up to compete against each other as "champion muster dogs".  I am not exactly sure what they mean by muster dogs, but it sounds like a great excuse to see cute puppies and stockwork training, based on the trailer.

I guess my Sunday evenings from 23 January 2022 are sorted for a while. Or I may just catch up on watch on demand and binge.  Wish they were BCs, but maybe if it is a success other countries may pick up the format and use BCs? 

Not sure if anyone who is not in Australia will be able to watch, unless you have a VPN.  Just in case you can, here is the link to the page https://iview.abc.net.au/show/muster-dogs

And for video of a Kelpie dog working stock, there are some links to Facebook videos in a previous post of mine about a world record price for a Kelpie in 2021.

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So I have binged the four episodes of Muster Dogs.  I enjoyed it a lot.  It was described as an experiment to see if it was possible to bring a well bred dog on faster than the three years generally accepted to be needed to train a stock dog.

The pups went to their new owners at 3 months, and then had assessments with specific goals at 4 months, 6 months, 9 months and 12 months.  I was surprised at how local to me a lot was, with the breeder, the head trainer couple and one of the participants all living within two hours or so of me.

The pups mostly went on an epic road trip to reach their homes, with the longest being 7,000km (4,350 miles).

The early goals were things like bond with owner, communal feeding, recognising their name, dragging a long lead, loose lead walking.

The halfway point included holding stock on the fence, bringing stock to the handler, off lead walking and jumping onto bike or buggy.

Nine months was resisting distraction, having a stop, sit and hold on stock, work stock to the sides and do a 50m cast.

The final test was to go into a paddock, bring a mob of cattle to the handler and through a gate, and then to bring the stock back through the gate but hold them near the gate to stop them running off.

Four of the handlers ran cattle, one ran sheep.  Two of the handlers also had packs with border collies, the other three seemed to only have kelpies.

There was drought and then the drought breaking, there were snakes, injury and many many cute and funny puppy moments.  There was a sad moment at the end.  There was lots of reflection on why people were using dogs instead of other methods, and how it was a question of animal welfare for the stock and also better for the land.

All the dogs completed the assessments with varying levels of success.  The black and tan bitch that won was amazing to watch - she glided around the stock, very calmly but with authority.  She and her handler were incredibly in tune with each other.

I don't know much about stock work, but this was really enjoyable.

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