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won't come into pressure


Guest Pacifica19
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Guest Pacifica19

Hi,

 

A friend of mine has a dog with a problem which seems to be getting worse rather than better, and I'd like to find some way to help her out. The dog came from Scotland last year and is fully trained, about four years old I believe. She has a wonderful outrun, is very biddable, covers the sheep well, and as long as the sheep move along for her, things are fine. But if any sheep turn and look at her, or even if the group just slows down and stops, she starts bouncing back and forth off the pressure (which often leads to one or two of the sheep starting to push back at her, exacerbating the whole situation). The owner will say "walk up," but the dog will just stand there, or flank but not go forward.

 

This dog is quite assertive with other bitches -- other than telling her to think of the sheep as other bitches, what might we do to help her overcome this?

 

Thanks for your help,

 

Linda Rorem

Pacifica, CA

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Guest Penny Tose

Is it safe to say that you and your friend now know why the dog was sold?

 

You can do a lot to improve the kind of problem you're describing if it isn't too severe. You probably can't overcome it entirely. If it's really severe, I doubt the bitch would have gotten to be four years old, let alone fully trained. The issue, however, will raise its humiliating, oh I hate that, head again. If the bitch weren't already four, I wouldn't be as concerned.

 

There is raft of stuff to do here and maybe some of it will help some. If it doesn't, your friend will need to choose her trials carefully. She'll have to think of it this way: it's marginally better than not finding the sheep. Well, maybe not, but it won't hurt to believe it and may provide some mental insulation from the embarrassment.

 

I'm going to make a list in no particular order. If anyone has any other suggestions, I would welcome them. I don't know if you can post them in this thread or not. You might have to start another one.

 

1) Get the dog into a stall that is *full* of sheep and have her move the sheep. This will help her relax and realize sheep will move off of her.

 

2) Use a quick, repeated walk-up whistle as a run or hurry whistle. Run or use a 4-wheeler with dog fetching or driving. If you use a 4-wheeler, remember, that the dog has to become accustomed to working while you're riding first. Sprint across the field with the dog rocketing sheep along with you. This will teach the dog you sometimes want sheep moved at warp speed. Start with light sheep. It's great exercise.

 

Kay Stephens told me about the above for speeding up fetches and drives.

 

Like almost everything else about retraining, the technique is not a cure-all, just a help. Along with a good, healthy diet, you can lose quite a few pounds practicing this and be the envy of everyone at the dog trial, which will be some compensation if the sheep stall.

 

Watch out for holes in the field when training at a brisk pace. One of my friends seems to find every armadillo hole in my fields with one ankle or the other.

 

3) If the bitch won't hit noses or somewhere in front (let's not be too picky here), teach her to do so. The old drag a sheep or straddle it method works and a little one will do just as well as one weighing 150 pounds and be much easier on you and your friend although it does seem unfair. I have a nasty, tiny ewe that I always mean to use for this but can never pick out of the crowd when my intentions are getting even with her.

 

If the dog gets into the spirit of this, bringing in small lambs or an injured ewe can occasion some misgivings about how much help you are likely to get from the dog. But that is later. Right now you want some action.

 

4) Find some horrid, slow, blackface wethers often used for training. Put them on a bit of grain and have the dog grip the sheep off the grain with the handler up close encouraging.

 

Get her to hit somewhere in front. Once she will do this, she will have fewer problems with sheep facing her because other sheep will read that she is willing to grip.

 

You can also do this with sheep in a corner on grain in a pan held by their doting owner. When my dog moved all the sheep except the greediest, orneriest wether, I then explained that I needed all the sheep and encouraged the dog to get western. I think we also used the wether by himself.

 

This did help with moving sheep but had the side effect of making the dog think that any time the dog and I placed sheep in a corner and backed off for a flank that I wanted sheep blasted out of the corner. This interfered with using a corner to teach "keep" and "out" in a singularly spectacular way. Nevertheless, moving the sheep seems preferable to me. Before I did this, the dog I was working would sometimes leave an ornery sheep behind at home.

 

As I'm sure you know, when you work the fence or the corner, you want to get to being able to lie the dog down in the corner or on the fenceline behind the sheep then walking the dog up. With the dog you're describing, I wouldn't make that a goal for sometime.

 

Penny

 

<small>[ January 29, 2005, 01:36 PM: Message edited by: Penny ]</small>

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