CMP

Thoroughbred Horses are a good place to look to really study the popular sire effect - the records are so good and the results so obvious.

I am learning in order to take over a private breeding program that needs to make sure at least 20 healthy, usable dogs are always in the right age bracket. My great grandfather was a science-guy and so we were lucky to have avoided any line breeding issues and regularly enough (from a genetic perspective) add new blood so that we have maintained a fairly healthy and vigorous population.

It is my understanding, based on the many breeding notebooks I have been reading (almost through the NINE boxes now), that this was accomplished by being able to track dogs through their lives through many contiguous generations. As noted, sometimes whole lines were abandoned because three or four generations in, litters with this or that commonality were faring badly.

It is very important, in my mind, that, for the sake of the breed, the trial/public lines and the farm/private lines do not continue the trajectory they are on - which is one of division. More trialers have to farm and more farmers have to trial and those dogs have to get busy with each other.

Yeah, I feed a diet with a kibble base (Purina) - but augmented by meat, vegetables and rice. The oils - and powder glucosomine - get mixed with the refrigerated portion - the meat/veggies and rice. At meal time I add the right amount of kibble per dog. Then if a dog, such as the BC puppy who had so many issues with lameness, has a special supplement need, it gets added on top of whatever the base contains.

The old, arthritc dogs get an extra shot of hemp. The young recovering or "with issue" dogs get extra glucosomine or salmon oil or Vit C or whatever. I have quite a little system happening for food, I tell you

My dogs range from 14 pounds to 123 pounds and have wildly different dietary needs so this is the most efficient way for me to manage making sure everyone gets what they need.

I'm not big on a lie down--anything like that taught off stock may not carry over well in the excitement of the early days.

Good point.

I believe our process involves a lot of proximity active training (sheep are close by, in view but not accessible) and actual exposure with only passive training. So, there's a desensitization process involved and the down/easy off stock biddability gradually proofs itself as it moves closer to the stock, literally.

Also, to OP, others may have other takes - it's a wide world, but I heard you ask about when her tail was going to go down so she had more of a working look. You answered yourself When she thinks it is work and not play.

I give oils daily. I mix food in weekly portions but that has 7 daily portions of oil, if you will. All oil intake suggestions are the same: about a teaspoon a day for a dog under 50 pounds.

As long as it is cold-pressed and 100% pure, you're fine. I make my own but I know of several suppliers locally (Atlantic Healing Hemp is one) who sell it in pump bottles or by bulk.

It is particularly useful as a replacement for NSAID in *MINOR* joint/inflammation issues. I have seen it used successfully on dogs in the first stages of arthritis.

She looks like she has the interest and she was trying to get the animal to go a certain way (as opposed to just chasing blindly for the sheer joy of chasing something). So, as noted, she looks like a youngster most stock people would tick off as a "potential".

I know it was her first time and she did observe and have to sit while other dogs worked (which can skew things) but I suppose if there was any one thing I might pick out and work on - which can be worked on without stock to move - it would be the portion of the process maybe best described as stalking.

I know here that a down-stay (or at least a solid down) has to be in place before work on stock actually takes place - the theory is that it forces the dog to think for a moment and often the pause gives them a chance to work out a smarter way to move that animal where they wanted it to go. I believe it is considered the "proof" that a dog is mature enough to learn good habits before bad ones and thus training goes faster.

I have seen them work younger dogs without a down but with a very solid "easy" (some dogs never get the down-stay and prefer to crouch and we let them) but that is a rarity and only happens after it seems very obvious that this is a croucher dog and not a down dog.

That all said, we don't trial, so form is not important which definitely affects training schedules and processes.

My dogs rarely wear collars once they are fully "stay home" proofed - around 1.5 years old. Before that they wear them only when outside. For puppies and juveniles I prefer 1/2 and then 3/4 nylon with flat buckles and large top mounted rings - they make them here with all the other tack type stuff and there's always a bunch lying around and, as Henry Ford once noted, you can get it in any color you want as long as it's black. Works for me, I do not like fancy or colored collars at all. Just a personal quirk.

I needed to get two new dogs licensed the other day and had to wait for the clerk and read, for the first time, the local dog bylaws. As it turns out, sheepdogs, specifically, are exempt from the requirement to wear collar or tag and there is no fine for a sheepdog found wandering as long as a tag and inoculation records can be provided upon request and the dog does no harm. It's an old law but it made me smile.

Back to topic - older dogs get leather collars, plain black 3/4 or 1" with simple buckle and top mounted ring. They don't last long, whatever they are made of. As others have noted, proximity to sea water is a factor.

I dislike a collar on a long haired collie so I avoid it when possible.

Any of Hemp, Salmon/Fish or Coconut oils, ingested, will work.

They all deliver a lot to a dog, aside from less dry skin and nicer hair/fur. They help maintain and lubricate joints and ligaments, keep the animal "regular", all the awesome Omega stuff they bring on board. All my dogs get all three, I mix it in with the kibble base they all get in weekly quantities and am done with it.

If I had to pick one, I would pick Hemp as it will more or less do the all the things the other two do plus it has potential benefits in terms of general health (cancer-restricting) and blood circulation, particularly in the brain, that the other two do not offer.

They all cost about the same, IME.

The dogs seem to have no preference - they like all of them.

My Berners say, "Child's play!"

Actually, they all like them - even the Scotties who are pretty small. And, of course, the antlers are the best long term chewies ever.

Moose hunting is complex around here, numbers closely checked, licenses very restricted, etc. They're large brutes with erratically waxing and waning populations. Even our guard dogs are respectful of them. Of course, you can virtually *count* on someone from the farm hitting one every year. Usually the vehicle is more damaged than the moose :/

Almost the whole moose gets used in making meal for the dogs. Same with deer and the ocassional bear.

Personally, I do not like the taste of wild meat but the dogs like it best.

Ah yes, bone days. The very reason my dogs get up in the morning... In case...

We do lamb, deer and moose. Moose have VERY large bones.

^^^^

I would LOVE to see a recent pic

^^Agreed Robin. I don't know how many times I've explained my training philosophy to others in terms of wanting an independent thinker who will do the right thing even if I'm nowhere in sight/sound. It astounds me when people make pronouncements about things with which they have no real experience.

 

J.

I am just going to assume, Julie, that you refer to me. In future, I would be grateful if you could address me directly.

"Real" experience is a many layered thing. I hear pronouncements all the time from all sorts of people, yourself included, about things which they admittedly have no "real" experience.

We are all entitled to opinions and we are all entitled to ignore those we find distasteful. The need to belittle the people who have differing opinions is, frankly, not something I am overly interested in being the target of, so I wish you would stop, please.

Maybe we could just sneer at each other as we pass in the hall instead?

Good question, about the independence thing.

What evidence do you have for this claim (I mean this at face value, not as an attack--I'm honestly interested in how you developed this perspective)?

Evidence? None I can enter into the record, I am afraid.

Since it is an important distinction in this case, I did not intend to make a claim but rather express an opinion. I will be more clear in the future and instead of relying on telepathy, I will add the standard "imo".

Best I can offer to give weight to my opinion, is that I have considerable peripheral experience with trials (attending, being related to/knowing people who trial, following the trial world by way of reading and discussing with other interested/involved people), have some interest in breeding and have spent most of my life involved with working dogs. I will inherit a share of a large working farm where dogs are important to the operation and I am currently in the mode of "learning the business" and breeding is one of the areas I will be very involved. I have been engaging in discussions all over the place and, trust me, you are not the first person I have annoyed

Additionally, there are several younger members of the family who would like very much to trial and I would like to help make that happen for them. To do that, I need to make a good case for it. So I am expanding my understanding by participating in discussions and putting forth ideas and learning from the responses.

As you've noted many times, you do not work your own dogs on sheep and your family does not think trials are worth spending time on, so I don't really get where the idea that "no trial person wants a really independent dog" comes from.

The suggestion is that I don't trial a dog or handle the dogs on stock ergo I am lacking in knowledge about those matters. That would be a mistake. And one you seem much too intelligent to actually make except from pique.

In my experience, this is not accurate of people who trial their dogs except perhaps at the lower levels of experience. ETA: I think "independence" might not be what the farmer wants when the dog decides to take the sheep over the hill....(ETA again: I see Mark already said virtually the same thing)

Okay. This makes sense. We have not defined independence to a standard and therefore cannot argue about it because we are likely arguing separate ideas.

To me, independence means that a dog is biddable but may not be obedient. It will bring the sheep, but may make a field decision that either contradicts a command you have given or one you would be likely to give (goes against training), because he has decided it was a bad command and will cause him to fail at the task. In other words, a dog that does your bidding, but does not always follow the guidance you offer to get the bidding done. One that will outright disobey you under those circumstances.

I do not mean a dog that will go chasing butterflies instead of get the sheep or one that defies your commands when not in the midst of doing a job that could be considered to have arisen his natural instincts.

I have seen very very good stock people have to really *insist* their dog do a thing - as in give the command a few times and then give it in the "boss voice" way - because the dog was intent that it was a wrong thing and was not going to do it. You'd think that would bother them, but it does not seem to. Most of them seem to let the dog have its way most of the time.

You can do that on a farm. You can't at a trial.

That is what I meant.

I have never met an old timer, and I have met a lot being one myself, who did not have a story about the time his dog saved his ass (or his sheep or whatever) BECAUSE he did not listen. They tell those stories with the best smiles.

For those who don't trial, do you think it is possible to consistently place well at a wide range in trials by only working a few training sheep at home?

 

How many head of livestock is sufficient to be considered adequate for selecting breeding dogs for farm work?

 

How many head of stock is sufficient for you to consider trial dogs also farm dogs (30, 50, 75, 100, 500, 1000)?

Ha! Tables turned, um, I don't really have answers for most of that - the same way you may not have answers for the counterpart queries. But you make an interesting cut into the discussion (turning tides always do that) from which a thinking person could come away with:

Yeah, there really is no perfect solution. Maybe the "most perfect" solution is the one that exists in this bi-partisan community: challenging one another so the *discussion* is engaged. I don;t know about anyone else, but I have never read one of these threads and not had my understanding or appreciation altered, however minutely.

And the dogs will go on...

It also gets old real fast trying to move 75-100 head out of a lot with a dog that you have to cheerlead.

I want to *like* this post.

As usual she said in one sentence what took me a few paragraphs

When I talk about stamina, I am talking more about the ability to do it every day, some days for many hours a day (if one has a large farm and grazing is done on hillsides or in remote places, as an example) and less about the ability to withstand many contiguous hours of work (that does happen, but it happens infrequently).

The dogs here are with their people all day, not necessarily *working* the sheep in the sense you mean it, but they're trotting around with them, doing this or that, and those people get up and sunrise and quit when the light does and they do that almost every day (we are not a single proprieter farm, so days off happen, of course).

*That* is what I mean. Not sure what other people mean.

If I had to pick a single thing that I would pinpoint as lacking in trial dogs, if such a thing actually exists, is independence. No trial person wants a really independent dog and most farmers need one and some farmers need a *really* independent dog. Stamina would not be high on my list except in the big picture way.

...

 

There is a difference between a dog lacking in experience and not naturally having the power and desire to create motion.

 

So many want to believe that you can just teach it, well to a degree you can, but it isn't the same as bred in naturally and you will find that when you try to take the dog to tougher situations the weakness will still be there, it's not the dogs natural predisposition it had to be taught and what we teach does not breed true aside from the fact that you will likely have to teach it in the next generation.

I agree. We have several dogs that are naturally "soft" and are used in fairly specific situations - and you can trace the softness through the line(s). None of them would even be considered to go work the island/wild-ish sheep or go on long drives, but they're go to with the wool sheep who are worked more often. Interestingly, the softer dogs tend to be the ones with the most white.

^^

Yes. That represents very closely what I hear as well.

ETA: the other morning I watched one of the barge dogs, a very large dog we call Rocky as a nickname, essentially drag, push and intimidate a ram off a boat. The relevant human was engaged elsewhere, busy with the offloaded sheep and the remaining stubborn Ram had to come off. He did drag him a few feet, actually. He is quite biddable, but will not be told how to accomplish the minutia. He could have been called off the Ram but he could not have been told to go left or right or any such thing as that.

His whole line is like that. And he is as pure a representative as we have on this farm of a "trial dog" being a long descendant of Imp Moss on both sides.

So ... yeah. Go figure.

Yeah, when a dog growls over something at me, I simply don't make a big deal of it. If I was just walking by, I say something like, "never mind that" (a phrase they know) but I don't much care about a warning growl. I am okay with a dog letting me know something is important to them - as long as THEY don't make any more of deal of it than a growl.

If I was trying to get it, it's different. I reach down, push a shoulder away with one hand and take the thing with the other. Very matter of fact. A bunch of minutes later they get it back and we see how it goes.

I don't encourage resource guarding, but I do allow for some small lee-way. They *are* dogs.

Our breeding decisions are similar to the above. This or that trait should be encouraged and bred towards, on a litter by litter basis, to ensure the farm has a good supply of dogs best suited to the tasks to which they will be put. It takes a different temperament and type (strong eyed, willing to grip, aggressive, stamina) to deal with the island sheep, for instance, than it does for the hill sheep. And yet another type to handle the girls and their young ones in close quarters.

Sometimes biddability is important and other times it does not matter so much. Since a dog generally is trained to a set of specific tasks which he does his whole career some dogs are bred to this or that bitch in an attempt to gain a biddable crop of puppies who will be primarily yard dogs (working with the stock close to the farm), etc. A barge dog really just needs to be a bully with good grip restraint, as I understand it, so different parents are selected.

My brother claims it is not a science but an art

Well, in my case, I REALLY hope it's six months

But they change, not necessarily growing but filling out, until around 18 months although they are mostly done, by the eye test, around 14 months. IME. But I suspect it's all over the place.

I would be very surprised if my 44# 6.5 month old got much heavier. I suspect she will finish in the 50# range and 24" in height.

At -26 weeks, Molly weighs 42#, stands 22.5" and went from stout legged and short backed to long legged and long backed. She is a complete athlete and runs faster than any dog I have ever had. She's sound as a trumpet and I swear she is making up for lost run and jump time.

 

I believe she is nearly done growing and is about to have her first heat. Apparently she is doing EVERYTHING at breakneck speed.

Yep, first heat happened last week. Weird dog.

She is now 44#, same height but looks short legged again as her body gained mass.

I can hardly get her to eat. She doesn't even touch food until well into the afternoon and then I have to jazz it up with some especially yummy things or she picks at it and runs to the garden and eats some beans (well, frost burned beans, now). Again, strange dog.

She has crossed from puppyness into a higher state of awareness - this is the youngest any of my dogs have ever done so - you know that state, where you can see that they have started to make really adult connections. She could care less about any other dogs or people, even children now. She's fine being alone, she's fine being with me, she's fine being with the pack - alone or with me - but the days of running off to see the interesting stranger seem behind her. Could be a phase.

I'm not sure I'm following you here. Are you saying it's bizarre that people who trial should be the ones recommending dogs for stockwork to farmers? Or are you saying it's bizarre that people who trial and who also don't farm (on any scale, before that comes up) are encouraging farmers to use dogs?

Yes, that folks who not "really" farm (as in make a sole living at it), should be having to encourage folks who do to use a "system" that was once the sole domain of those farmers. So they gave it to the public, who made a sport of it, and that sporting public is now in a position where it is trying to sell it back to its own source.

Yes, that *is* strange to me.

Not bad, just strange.

It is definitely something one should be thankful for.

I don't farm on a large scale, but I raise sheep primarily because I like raising livestock (and I was raised on a farm--again not a huge working farm, but one that supplied us with the milk, eggs, produce, etc. we needed for our family). I don't make a living raising stock, but I supplement my living. I do not keep sheep primarily to train dogs (anyone who knows me knows that I don't do much training, but we do plenty of practical work).

 

Anyway, back to the topic. I do demos when asked. It's a great way to inform the public what real working border collies are and what they can do. People are generally very receptive and ask many great questions. I don't reach out to the farming community per se, but when I converse with folks who farm but don't use dogs, the topic often comes up in one form or another. Today, for example, I was talking to a gentleman who was interested in my Suffolk ram. Not only did we discuss the value of UK/NZ genetics in the Suffolk breed for a grass-based system, hair sheep vs wool sheep, our market for the lambs we produce (he also raises Jersey cattle), but we also talked about working dogs. He's looking for one that can work his cattle and sheep. He doesn't need anything fancy, just something that with minimal training can bring the stock in, load a trailer, and work the pens/chutes at the stockyard.

 

In the past he has used an aussie, a heeler, and an aussie/pit bull cross. Someone local to him came out to buy some sheep and used her border collie to gather his flock. He was super impressed that the dog went out through one pasture, into another, and then found and gathered the sheep and brought them back through the gate between the pastures (this is a 500-acre farm, but I don't know how big the pastures are) to their feet. Now he wants a border collie.

 

I believe the person who did that doesn't own sheep, or if she does, just a few. But the fact that her dog was capable of doing a simple job that I think any well-bred border collie could do, this fellow now wants a border collie and recognizes what help they can be. He doesn't want or need a fully trained dog (doesn't want to pay a great deal of money).

 

I don't see how his introduction to working border collies through a trialer and/or hobby farmer is such a bizarre or awful thing. If the real farmers are too busy to leave the farm to trial or do demos, who else will be able to introduce other farmers to the possibility of using dogs?

 

J.

Agreed that it is not awful. Not one bit. I refuse to give up on my belief that it is bizarre. though, because I think that's valid. Maybe ironic is the better word.

Yeah. go to the vet for sure.

I meant from dogs found in the general public/at rescues.

Dogs in a breeding program for service dogs have a much higher rate - the number of which I would not be qualified to even guess at.

Agreed.

Sorry if I was not clear.

That's a good suggestion.

Just a query ... would those who attend trials to the point of getting to national finals consider the route there a test of endurance, alike to, say, a sports team getting through the playoffs to win the championship. Really, the team that wins wins on merit and sustainable performance/durability.

Is the road arduous enough to merit the comparison?

Anyone?