Treibbal (Ball Herding)

I just started and I'm teaching myself, as there is no one around who teaches it. I'd wanted to do herding with my dogs but no one around teaches that either. When I saw this on YouTube, I thought it'd be fun and something I could do on my own. We just started a couple of weeks ago.

Here is the link to the American Treibbal Channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/AmericanTreibball

The trainer I go to belongs to the American Treibbal Association.  This is all new to me but if you look the group up you might be able to connect to others who could help you get started and see when and where competitions are held. They also have the handbooks available on their site.

I really do miss doing sheep herding with Gizmo but this looks like such a great subsitute for dogs with the herding drive and even thoes who just need someting to do.

 Thanks. I hadn't seen those videos yet. Will check out their website a bit more, when I get a chance. I do agility with the dogs now. I just thought this was a good thing to work on, during our off season for agility, when our equipment is put away for the winter. I can do the treibball inside...least the beginning things. Our one dog (Gus) is a border collie and the other (Corey) we aren't sure. I think he might have some jack russell and some cattle dog in him.Both of them have the drive and so this is great for them. Just working with one ball for now.

Thanks again, Maureen

I'll have to look into this.  I've used balls with herders MANY times (put a dozen tennis balls in a bucket - heave them in the air and let them get them, move them or pick them up and put in the bucket.  TONS of fun!!

 just to throw in a funny................last September we were at a doggie event and there was a woman there introducing dogs to treiball so of course I took Bugsy for a spin.

She was using a huge exercise ball and all he'd do was keep trying to stand on it (front paws only thank goodness). You see having him put his front paws on one and moving it around like that was deemed great for core strength which we needed to work on after knee surgery.

Anyway this poor woman was so confounded, Bugsy was like "look I am doing it! I'm doing it! want treat!" (he kept doing it faster and more furiously - which was making me nervous), DH was embarrassed and I was laughing hysterically.

I can just picture poor Bugsy. Like you said. He's like I'm doing it, I'm doing it, come on where's the treat. This is a problem I'm having with one of our dogs. He does agility and in his crazy excitement of wanting to do the right thing, since he does respond very quickly in agility, he's jumped on the ball......guess he's thinking it is a new type of table. He's going to take a bit longer to catch on to things. I have to keep telling myself, remember how you'd never think a dog would learn weave poles and now you've taught several. He will catch on, he will catch on. Corey will be good once the both of us can figure it out, since this is all new to me as well. Now our Border Collie, on the other hand, has caught on quite quickly.