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Shedding


Guest baabark
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Guest aurdank

Teaching the dog to shed usually begins with a large flock. I stand near a fence line, but not too close to it in order to teach the dog first to "come in". The dog is used to gathering, keeping the flock together, and so for many dogs shedding is a major adjustment, because you're asking them to essentially do the opposite. So with a large flock, you can create a big hole, and closeness to a fence means that they won't scatter everywhere. Try to use sheep that aren't flightly but at the same time won't cling together excessively, making the shed too difficult. Woollies, when they get very, very dog broken become heavy but also tend to flock less firmly, making it easy to create a hole. Hair sheep, when they get dog broken, tend to flock even more closely in my experience, and when not dog broken tend to be too flighty, which stimulates the dog to try and gather them, the opposite of what you want.

 

So you begin by creating a hole, with any number of sheep on either side, with the purpose of encouraging the dog to come through it. I'd say "come in to me" or "here, here". And I just work on the dog coming into the center of the hole to me and praising when it does. In the beginning you might want to crouch when calling in the dog, as this releases pressure on it. The dog has to develop the habit of coming into the hole. Then when it seems to have mastered this, you can teach it to turn to the sheep you want it to hold. The dog comes in; and you turn your whole body and point toward the sheep you want it to take and say "these". This bears lots of reptition too. The dog learns the commands "Come in" or "Here, Here," or "in here" to come into the hole and the command "these" to take the sheep. Once s/he takes the sheep you want it to hold them, and I usually say in a slightly excited (though low) voice, "watch 'em; watch 'em". This stimulates the dog to balance against them and to wear them away. Sometimes dogs with eye figure this out a little better and you can telescope the process, i.e. introducing the "these" as you introduce the "come in". But generally it's best to teach the shed in stages.

 

Once this is all mastered, the handler in the shed ring tries to line the sheep up so that their heads are pointing in one direction. Here of course you'll have only five at most, which is alot harder to work on (unless you'll be doing an international shed, but that comes much later). The dog must stay on one side and the handler on the other and not change sides (or else get penalized). Handler and dog are here functioning as two sides of a chute. If the aim is to take the last two ewes, this usually means taking them on the heads; with the sheep lined out, you can see which ones are the last two quite easily. You place the dog at the head of the next to last sheep; this has the effect usually of holding it and the one behind it, while the handler adjusts his or her position on the other side such that the front three sheep will move forward; this means also standing at the head of the next to last sheep. Together handler and dog produce enough pressure so that the hole opens, and the handler asks the dog to come in and take the last two on the heads. You always have to be aware of how sensitive the sheep are to pressure generally, so that you know where to stand in terms of distance from them and how far to place the dog; this sometimes varies according to how much presence the dog has with the sheep. But the key is to settle the sheep so that you can line them out (usually with a wave of your crook at their heads)and proceed to perform the shed. I could go on, but perhaps I'll hold off to see if you have any more questions about this.

 

Albion

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