Meg again.
by
, 07-12-2013 at 04:22 PM (4937 Views)
Meg's training is now on phase three. Phase one was fairly disasterous, where I tried her with sheep straight away and she kept running off in ever increasing circles. Phase two was to take off all the pressure and have nothing to do with sheep for a bit, so that the "come to me" command now means come here and have a cuddle, and "lie down" means roll over and have your tummy scratched. This has worked as far as it goes, she has become alot more relaxed.
Phase three is born of that old adage ; "there's nowt trains a dog like work ." So as it's sheep shearing time where I need to gather sheep in smallish bunches (I'm no longer young so I like small bunches of sheep to shear) I've decided that will be Meg's job.
Straight away there was a Problem, she has been trained principally to bring sheep towards the handler. This is a very strong natural instinct anyway in sheep dogs (because the handler is the alpha dog,) and in the days before quad bikes it was very useful, the shepherd could stand at the gate while the dog went round and gathered the sheep. I need a dog that can work along side me and the quad, in other words a dog that can drive sheep as well as gather.
So anyway, I was driving sheep towards the farm and Meg was trying to gather them back towards me, but eventually we got some in, so it was a qualified sucess.
Then tonight I was returning some to the field, and Meg had gone round the wrong side again and I whistled her to "come here" and she came ! Is it a breakthrough? Time will tell.