Yesterday, we took Roofus, my Old English Sheepdog, and Merlin, my SO's Pembroke Welsh Corgi, to a sheep herding clinic. It was a LOT of fun, and I've been wanting to introduce Roo to sheep for years. I did not take any photos, just video, so the photos I have are taken from the video, excuse the poor quality.
There were a ton of aussies, some cardigans, another pembroke, a white german shepherd, a mutt and a sheltie that were totally disinterested.... I am now looking into taking lessons from the trainer, she was absolutely amazing. I am so pleased to find something Roofus was so good at naturally and he loved it from the first moment. Not to brag and I know I'm incredibly biased, but he was the best in the class. Another person told me so too so see, I'm not totally off-base LOL!!!
The first session was a herding instinct test, and those are the videos and photos. The second session was learning to work with your dog and how to teach him what you want. I SUCKED at that. ROOFUS SUCKED at that. She very politely told me that I can't allow Roofus to keep muscling me. She repeatedly told me what a great manner Roo has (gentlest dog on earth!) and what a good heart he had, but he was bowling me over simply because he could. She rigged up a different type of harness (similar to a Sporn, which I will now purchase) and got him under control eventually. You're supposed to train using a shepherding stick, but that was meaningless to him, so we used the orange rake. Even when it was bopping him directly in the face, he was unresponsive. Even the trainer, after a solid minute of it, had to laugh at how bullheaded an OES can be!!! She did recommend a choke chain but I am never putting one around his neck - he was responding to the new harness so that's what I will use, with the corrections she showed me.
Don't want this to get too long, I'll try to keep my comments with the videos and pics.
Pardon the poor quality of the videos, but i wanted to upload a lot of them and they had to be small.
Merlin's herding instinct clicks "on"
Merlin keeps running the sheep in circles (she said he'd be good with ducks, which he is as he's done them before)
Merlin rounds up a couple strays... albeit inefficiently.
*MORE*
There were a ton of aussies, some cardigans, another pembroke, a white german shepherd, a mutt and a sheltie that were totally disinterested.... I am now looking into taking lessons from the trainer, she was absolutely amazing. I am so pleased to find something Roofus was so good at naturally and he loved it from the first moment. Not to brag and I know I'm incredibly biased, but he was the best in the class. Another person told me so too so see, I'm not totally off-base LOL!!!
The first session was a herding instinct test, and those are the videos and photos. The second session was learning to work with your dog and how to teach him what you want. I SUCKED at that. ROOFUS SUCKED at that. She very politely told me that I can't allow Roofus to keep muscling me. She repeatedly told me what a great manner Roo has (gentlest dog on earth!) and what a good heart he had, but he was bowling me over simply because he could. She rigged up a different type of harness (similar to a Sporn, which I will now purchase) and got him under control eventually. You're supposed to train using a shepherding stick, but that was meaningless to him, so we used the orange rake. Even when it was bopping him directly in the face, he was unresponsive. Even the trainer, after a solid minute of it, had to laugh at how bullheaded an OES can be!!! She did recommend a choke chain but I am never putting one around his neck - he was responding to the new harness so that's what I will use, with the corrections she showed me.
Don't want this to get too long, I'll try to keep my comments with the videos and pics.
Pardon the poor quality of the videos, but i wanted to upload a lot of them and they had to be small.Merlin's herding instinct clicks "on"
Merlin keeps running the sheep in circles (she said he'd be good with ducks, which he is as he's done them before)
Merlin rounds up a couple strays... albeit inefficiently.
*MORE*
