General

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Training

Dog Finder

Raising and Training a Border Collie

Part 2

By Beverly Lambert

      My young puppy usually starts going to sheep with me as soon as he can walk as far as the sheep pen.  The young pups play around my feet while I train other dogs until one day they are up and after the sheep.  Once the pup starts working I might take them to sheep once every week or so until they are six or seven months old when our "real" training will begin.

     How young I can start a puppy depends upon the puppy.   Most nicely brought up pups will respond pretty readily to vocal corrections once they have gotten their initial crazy, running around the sheep out of their systems.   If I have a dog that is really tearing into the sheep and causing damage I will usually put the pup up for a month or two and see if he settles down.  If he doesn't nothing is lost and he is just a little older when he starts and better able to handle the stress of not being allowed to molest the sheep as he would like.

     The first few times I take the pup to the sheep I just stand around with the sheep and try to encourage the puppy to stay outside the flock and not do too much grabbing.  This is the pup's first lesson.  He is learning to control the location of the sheep by moving around the outside of the flock.

     After only a few sessions most older (10-12 months) puppies will have settled down and learned this lesson.  I can tell if the pup has figured this out by his balancing on the sheep in order to control their movement.  I test this by changing the balance point by moving around, which moves the sheep and forces the dog to move to maintain control of the sheep.  Younger puppies take quite a bit longer to learn this.  This is one reason why most folks prefer to wait until pups are a bit older before starting them on sheep.

     Once the puppy has shown me that he has learned lesson one we move right on to lesson two.  As the pup moves to control the sheep I encourage him to stay off the sheep.  If the pup starts to come in too close I will tell him "no" and "get back out" as I step toward him.  If he is really coming in tight on the opposite side of the flock forcing the sheep into me, I will go through the flock and tell him to "get back out." I will come through the sheep and speak the words with as much force as is required to get the pup to give ground.   I only need him to give a little ground to satisfy me.  What I am trying to teach the puppy here is to respond to me while he is working.  I am not trying to frighten the wits out of the pup or teach him to worry about what I am about to do.   This is the second lesson.

     Once the puppy has learned lessons one and two the rest is pretty easy and consists of perfecting the first two lessons.  The puppy needs to learn more and more about how to control sheep.  I help him to learn this by taking him out and having him move the sheep around.  I teach him to respond to me by teaching him more and more commands that he needs to obey while working the sheep.

     Throughout the training I continue to try and show the puppy better ways of controlling and moving the stock.  I know more about the most effective way of handling stock then this six to twelve month old puppy does.  I need to convince him to listen to me and take my advice on how to control the stock.  With experience he will learn and perfect his understanding of sheep until he knows how to control and move sheep, when to apply a great deal of pressure and when to back off and let the sheep relax.  But these are not things that most dogs are born knowing.   They learn them from experience.

     It is no coincidence that the first command that I teach a puppy is "get back out".  It is a very rare pup that is not too close and tight on the sheep the first few times out.  I want the puppy to be tight.  I want to see him eager to get to the sheep and maybe try to get in a nip or two.  I am much more concerned about the pup that is running wide around the sheep and not wanting to get in amongst them.

     Most puppies are made with pretty good directional balance.   That is they understand pretty well that to stop the sheep from going west they need to get between the sheep and where it wants to go.  Most pups are not born with good distance balance.  This is much more a learned skill.  The pup must learn how far away from the stock he needs to be to control their movement.  He must also learn the speed at which I prefer to have my stock moved.  Most young dogs would prefer the sheep to move at a good Border Collie pace, which is sort of a dead run for a sheep and an easy lope for the dog.  The dog learns that I want a slower pace on the stock.  The dog learns to stay off the stock.  These lessons are only learned if this is behavior that I insist upon, always require and consistently reward.  For this reason the dog works at my feet until he is working off the sheep.  Then we proceed to short gathers, with the dog staying off the sheep.  As the dog runs around the flock to gather them I will walk up the fetch line and be waiting at the sheep to insure that he comes on to them quietly and moves them nicely.  This is the outrun, lift and fetch. It is learned at 20 to 30 feet.  When the dog has a perfect 20 foot gather we will gradually proceed to 400 yards.

     Occasionally, I have young dogs returned to me or I acquire a young dog and train it myself.  These dogs are frequently much wilder then the pups I have raised myself and much less responsive to my requests for self-control.  I use the same process to train them.  I teach lesson one the same way to most dogs.   The dog is allowed to work around the sheep until the dog learns how to control the position of the sheep.