Life on the farm - Ted's Day

    • Gold Top Dog

    Life on the farm - Ted's Day

    Ted is my young dog who is learning the ropes - Ben's all but retired now and I am using young Ted more and more.  

    Here I'm running Ted through a very short version of a trial course.  First I had to put my sheep at the "setout", because we didn't have anyone else to do it. 

    Then I called Ted back and we went down to the "handler's post" about 150 feet away.   The idea is for Ted to bring the sheep straight and controlled, then we take them together through the course.  It's really hard to see, but the first obstacle we are aiming for is a couple of flat black feed pans (I kept losing them!).  The second one is the blue bucket.  Normally then we'd take the sheep to a pen, but I did a hold and flanked him (moved him from side to side on command) a couple times.  Then we left the sheep, did a third gather for the fun of it, and then we were through.  

    [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JoX5hwDMKI[/url]

    Later today Ted put the mama sheep and their lambs in the night pen, as usual.  These gals gave us fits when Ted first started - they really took advantage of Ben's age and poor Cord's weakness.  As you can see, Ted now has them trained extremely well!  He kept looking back at the camera, though - he wasn't sure about that!

    [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f0enO97O6c&feature=user[/url]

    • Gold Top Dog

    Ted is doing great!! I love watching your dogs work.

    • Gold Top Dog

    Wow, sitting in my dreary office, I could just watch your farm life alllll day long. Ted is so sweet and seemed quite happy and proud of himself Big Smile

    • Gold Top Dog

    neat! thanks for sharing that!

    • Gold Top Dog

    Lovely videos!  Great job Ted!  I am so in love with the border collie breed....     

    • Silver

    Is that called 'the fetch' in the first video, where he runs out to the sheep and drives them to you?

    • Gold Top Dog

    The running out part is called the "outrun".  Then the sheep are "lifted" - ideally, you'll see the sheep's heads come up, the sheep will come together, and they will start moving straight towards the handler together.  I'll post a video in a minute that will show this more clearly on a larger flock.  Then the "fetch" is when the sheep are moved towards the handler.  Border Collies generally have a natural inclination to fetch.  The rest of the video is the "wear", in which the sheep are walked with the handler, around a course marked by obstacles to simulate holes in stone walls, mountain paths, bridges, or gates.

    The outrun, lift, and fetch together are called the "gather."    I ask Ted to "gather" the sheep three times in this video.  That's not typical at this level, although in an Open run one might do the course, then divide the sheep, then regather the sheep, then pen, then let them out and do another type of division of the sheep. 

    And there's a championship style course where one might be asked to stop the sheep when they have only come a third of the way down to you (the distance of these gathers is usually more than 500 yards).  Then the dog will be asked to leave those sheep and turn around and go get another group of sheep in a different part of the field, which he can't see from where he is.  Then the dog must correctly bring those to where he left the first set, then leave the second set to go get the others which by this time have wandered off, and put them with the first group.  These are usually done in groups of ten, so the whole flock when done will be twenty sheep.  Then they do the whole driving course with twenty sheep.

    • Silver

    These are great!  I've found a farm within driving distance for Cau, and am eagerly awaiting a reply to see how he does with them! 

    • Gold Top Dog

    wow. i wish I could teach my border collie to herd - although alot of it would be instinct - but i dont know what i'm doing so it'll remain a wish.  You have such a neat place!!  Great vids, can't wait to see more!!