226 replies to this topic

[kelpiegirl]

okay.... In your post characterizing the sheep, you stated that they frustrated your older dog, but some how they are okay for your younger dog?
It is *not* that hard to get a few dog broke sheep that would HELP your dog instead of HINDER her. It's not a breed that does a lazy trot and keeps a yard from your knees, it's a character of well dog broke sheep. This is not my brand shiny new idea, it is an idea that I learned from folks LIGHT YEARS ahead of me in sheepdog training. But, do what you must, I will refrain from any more advice.

The sheep are good enough for what we are doing now in the enclosed area; I just wanted to show their character so that perhaps later you can understand better why the dog is doing what she is doing, when their character is not apparent to the viewer but is to the dog . Bonnie will practice on different sheep too, but these are our sheep and I won't change it. On our farm the dogs are for the sheep not the other way around, though of course I wish we could keep the breed that follows people at a lazy trot and keep a yard away from my knees but it is not financially feasible.
Maja

[Maja]

I said that I was frustrated not my dog , and I said that the sheep are ok in an enclosed area (as you have seen yourselves) for the younger dog, and I said that for outruns we will go to practice on other sheep. I showed you the movie so that you are aware of the subtle things that might influence what the dog is doing that may not be apparent. So there is nothing to get upset about here. I change what I can, and what I can't I just have to deal with it .

I think on the point of the character of sheep I will remain with an opinion that there are differences among breeds - knee knockers, distance keepers, heavy, light, sticky, though all may be dog broke.

Maja

[bcnewe2]

I can't tell, what kind of sheep are they?

[J.D]

This is my own personal opinion after watching a few videos. I don't think those sheep are any good for training a dog, they're not doing anything. If the sheep are the centre of a clock and you are at 6 oclock your dog will naturally stay at 12 oclock. You move round the dog moves round, you move back the dog comes forward. You move forward the dog stops or presure is taken off the sheep (albeit for a brief moment with a youngster). You showed a video of how flighty the sheep are (thats not being flighty), they were trotting away that was the time to let her go and say nothing and see what happens, my guess is she would have taken after them and popped round to the front to head them and if she didn't well they are in a enclosed area so no harm done. She needs a bit of freedom to make mistakes and learn.
John

[Maja]

Yes, she would have taken after them and popped around to the front to head them, and then she would bring them to me.

They are called Cameroonian Sheep in Poland and Germany. They are a hair breed as you can probably see. But they are light unlike a similar breed in the US , I think.

Maja

[Maja]

Here are some photos of my Cameroonians with Kelly and with her grandfather - a Polish herding champion :

The sheep look a little scruffy because they are shedding.

Here are photos on one of two breeds of my instructor's they are called wrzosowka - it's a Polish indigenous breed. We used to have four of them (Santa, Pinta, Ninia and Columbus , since we got them on the the fourth of July) for the very purpose kelpiegirl mentioned , and they helped dogbreak our sheep.


The other breed he used to have is bigger and heavier and they never made contact with a human body, always respected my personal space .

Maja

[juliepoudrier]

Maja,
Your Cameroonian sheep look very much like Barbados blackbellies (I wonder of the two breeds aren't closely related?). At one time here in the US, if you wanted hair sheep, barbs were pretty much your only choice. Since then, other breeds have become available. Barbs have a well-deserved reputation of being light and difficult to work (often described as very deerlike).

J.

[Maja]

That's right I remember the name of the American breed now, and they are related as far as I know. The Cameroonians are exactly like you have described.

At the beginning of August we are going to a herding camp (almost a week) with sheep like the woollies above. I am looking forward to it.


In the meantime we had a good session with Bonnie. Lots of walking nice, a bit closer than I would have wished, but no pushing and a steady pace. she is also showing glimmers of intensity. Nothing like her mother yet, but less of the puppy looseness.

Maja

[bcnewe2]

The dreaded Barbados.....I've seen them take fences down with ease but really I've seen them jump fences just like a deer usually.
Not my favorite even for trained dogs. Just don't like those sheep.
What do you raise them for Maja? Do you sell lamb? Maybe you could borrow a different breed of ram and mix them with something heavier?

I have the flightest Cheviots I've ever known. Bad fencing makes for not much training. Dew is 4 and we've been either sheepless or had these darn Cheviots for the last 2 years. Her training is all but at a standstill. She has learned a good deal about sheep bubbles and correct pressure and why it's so important. We've been able to work on a few things, outwork is not one of them.
These darn sheep, if they're not running for the mountains they are challanging Dew and will squish her if they get a chance.

I can say for a well started dog, they have been a wonderful tool to teach Mick about distance and the need to stay off.
He's older, stiff, and out of shap. He learned quickly if the wrong pressure is applied he doesn't have the energy or ability to catch them without totally wearing himself out. Much easier to learn compared to me trying to train it.
It's one of the things I've really enjoyed about moving around and having real, different work and working situations for Mick to do.
Nothing teaches a dog more than real life situations.
I'm not going to go back and re read this thread but I think I remember the suggestion of having Bonnie help you with some chores if possible. I do think it shows the youngesters that there is a reason for all the training and would be good/helpful for her.

[Smalahundur]

Buying dog broke sheep isn´t always as easy as Kelpiegirl suggests.
Take my situation; First off there is just one breed available here; the Icelandic one (well obviously...).
Secondly there are severe restrictions on where I can buy stock in Iceland.
The country has been divided down in parts, after what kinds of diseases occur (they are in effect isolated from each other). You can only buy stock from "clean" areas (free of scrapies and a number of other infectious diseases). This goes so far that officially I am not even allowed to buy from a neighbouring farm (completely absurd as these sheep are in contact the whole summer...).
So yeah, I´d love to buy some nice dog broke ewes, but they simply aren´t available, and then you work with what you got.

[juliepoudrier]

I think sometimes we forget that the sheepdog culture elsewhere isn't the same as it is here. There are a lot of hobby herders here, and finding dog-broke sheep isn't terribly difficult. Good puppy sheep are harder to find, and in the past when I've been done with mine I've sold them on to someone else who needed them, but I have since learned the folly of that behavior, because another youngster always seems to come along. So the puppy sheep I have now will stay here and live the good life until needed for the next pup that (inevitably) comes along. The problem is that puppy sheep also have limited utility. They're wonderful for starting a pup, but that same slowness/heaviness can kill you when you're trying to, for example, teach a youngster to drive.

Today, the puppy sheep were being used in a smaller paddock for Ranger's sister, so I tried working Ranger on just the karakul sheep that I use for lessons. They are dog broke and work quite well for trained dogs, but really are not puppy sheep--too flighty (for example, I had one break off at the start, and she literally climbed over the gate to get to the rest of the flock, she was that determined to get away, and this was after Ranger and I had taken the other sheep--I left her because I knew she was just going to be trouble--and were wearing them across the pasture, so that particular ewe wasn't even being bothered by a dog, and yet still she went over the gate; that's the first time I've seen a sheep do that here). When combined with the puppy sheep (all hair sheep) they work fine, though they lighten the whole group. I was working Ranger out in the pasture. I can tell you that if I hadn't had my friend Laura here with her trained dog to catch the runaways and put them back together for Ranger, training today probably would have been ugly.

When Maja mentions her sheep walking with their heads just past her, that's what my karakuls do when I work them (alone or with the puppy sheep) with the pup. Unfortunately, although Ranger will walk behind the sheep, he still tends to be a bit closer than they'd like and so they kind of plow into me and even if we're all just walking, their heads are past me and they're stepping on my feet (which is pretty annoying). But as he's actually walking at a decent pace behind them I won't correct him (he's really *trying* to be right and do the right thing), so instead try to keep the sheep back off me with my stock stick. We can do little tiny outruns on these sheep, but if I tried to set up anything at a little distance, they would just bolt in several different directions (hence the need for Nick today). I could train Ranger on these sheep; I'd just have to be aware of the bad habits they could create in him with their own behavior. It's no different than trying to train an outrun on super broke sheep that leave for the handler as soon as the dog is sent (and if I had to make a bet, I'd be willing to bet that all the ugliness I see at the top when setting sheep for trials is the direct result of dogs who are trained on sheep who don't stay put until the dog actually gets behind them and lifts them--that is, the sheep's behavior is causing poor work habits in the dog that the trainer/handler never bothered to correct.)

So Maja is on the right track to work in a more confined area to limit where the sheep can run. The reason we see Bonnie often coming off to the side to catch the lead sheep's eye is because that's where she needs to be to keep them from running past Maja. It may not be an ideal situation, but sometimes you *do* just have to work with what you've got. I'm spoiled and I like having puppy sheep, and I know that not having them can make things more difficult and make training the basics take a bit longer, but it can be done. I've done it, and I have friends who have done it. (I did it today because it was very hot and humid and it wouldn't have been fair to the puppy sheep to work them with both youngsters, so Ranger, being a little more advanced, got the non-puppy sheep.)

Barbs and their relatives certainly aren't for the faint of heart or the slow of foot!

J.

[Sue R]

Thanks, Julie, you've been taking a lot of time and effort in posting wonderfully helpful training advice and information.

[kelpiegirl]

That's too bad. I don't know of Iceland, but I do know of Norway, and have some friends who sheepdog there. They have some Norwegian sheep, and within those, there are dog broke ewes and wethers that they use. Is there any dog trialing in Iceland?

Buying dog broke sheep isn´t always as easy as Kelpiegirl suggests.
Take my situation; First off there is just one breed available here; the Icelandic one (well obviously...).
Secondly there are severe restrictions on where I can buy stock in Iceland.
The country has been divided down in parts, after what kinds of diseases occur (they are in effect isolated from each other). You can only buy stock from "clean" areas (free of scrapies and a number of other infectious diseases). This goes so far that officially I am not even allowed to buy from a neighbouring farm (completely absurd as these sheep are in contact the whole summer...).
So yeah, I´d love to buy some nice dog broke ewes, but they simply aren´t available, and then you work with what you got.

[ItsADogsLyfe]

I thought I'd post this picture of these "wild antelopes" that Seth was working, in the open desert, when he was only 1 year old. You can see they are flighty to say the least. Seth even when he was young was a calm working dog. These are mostly Barbados sheep which do look a lot like the ones Maja has. I never did like working Barbs. Seth didn't like them either.

[kelpiegirl]

I wouldn't either. I've worked my dog on light sheep, and when they run run run, it just becomes an exercise in cover. I think I will stick with my boring old BLs.

I thought I'd post this picture of these "wild antelopes" that Seth was working, in the open desert, when he was only 1 year old. You can see they are flighty to say the least. Seth even when he was young was a calm working dog. These are mostly Barbados sheep which do look a lot like the ones Maja has. I never did like working Barbs. Seth didn't like them either.

[Maja]

Julie,
You explain everything so well .

bcnewe2,
Yes, Julie suggested real life tasks, and I explained that I really want to and I will try but that there are difficulties in designing a doable task in an open area for a young dog.

-------
When Kelly was growing up we had a mean ram to boot. So Kelly has grown to be a very strong and extremely fast dog. I didn't know how fast she was until we had the instructor come to us and I could compare my dog against his dogs. I will never forget when he came, placed his dogs in the enclosed area, where the sheep where, the little rascals just stood there and looked innocent. He turned to us and said, "this is how sheep behave when an experienced dog handles them." That was their cue - the sheep found a weak spot in the positioning of the dogs and shot out of the the enclosure and off into the sunset . They also presented later what I call a "Cameroonian maneuver" . I am sure other sheep do it too, it's when a sheep goes directly at the dog, the dog summons all of his eye-power to stop the sheep, and the sheep instead of backing off, speeds up and jumps a clear long jump over the dog.

Now for mixing Cameroonians with other sheep. We did that of course. First we had two flocks. The dynamics and reactions were so different we had two different flocks, and working with them was one big mess. Then the Cameroonians calmed down a little, and the woollies got a little turbo charged. Then the woollies started to teach the hair sheep bad habits of going thought he electric fence, and we had to fix it sometimes every day. And then we sold the woollies, as they had had no further influence on the other sheep. However, the ram went to live with a large flock of woollies and he behaves just like them. He produced a bunch of crosses with the hopes that the woollies will be a bit less sticky. We will see if it worked.

We live in a non-sheep area and are able to sell the lambs because the are pedigreed. The mixes we just about had to give away. the wool is impossible to sell. People with wool sheep jut burn it.

Maja

[kelpiegirl]

Your description of a sheep leaping over a dog, reminds me of the time a Scottie tried to jump over my Lucy, and was stopped in mid air- both flipped backwards and landed on their backs. But, she didn't let that sheep get by.

[Smalahundur]

That's too bad. I don't know of Iceland, but I do know of Norway, and have some friends who sheepdog there. They have some Norwegian sheep, and within those, there are dog broke ewes and wethers that they use. Is there any dog trialing in Iceland?

Yes, there is a herding club here "Smalahundafélag Íslands", and they organize trials from time to time. I planned to go to one last spring as it was relatively nearby, but the weather changed that plan; heavy sleet showers on the mountain passes...Ah well better luck next time.

[Maja]

Here is a new vid with Bonnie. There is one instance where Bonnie scatters the sheep, but such things happen sometimes.
I wonder if I yell at her too much. I have noticed that now when I changed my approach with Julie's help, she reacts much more to my correction, and sometimes I seem to overdo it. I have unfortunately a tendency to yell. I would have liked her to be a bit farther behind the sheep, but I let it go for the time being. I like that Bonnie showed a bit more intensity.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=dDunka7xQE0

Maja

[glennkopp]

I think Bonnie is coming along nicely. Just as an experiment, I would try to do a five or ten minute session without saying a word. Let Bonnie do the thinking, and see if she can figure out where she needs to be. She needs to figure out the right pace and distance to keep things quietly under control. And when you stop with the sheep, give her a chance to find a balance point to stop on her own. Of course, if she goes into a mindless circle or if she dives in, you have to do something, but I would try body language or guiding with your stick or a verbal AHHH as correction.
Keep up the good work.
Glenn