Working Sheep

Apologies if there are already a number of posts on this but I cannot seem to get the search area working. However, i was wondering how many forum members who are not professional farmers or shepherds work their dogs with sheep and also about some of the issues that they have encountered.

Hi there

My hubby is a shepherd, but I trained and worked my two collies on sheep as a hobby before I met him.

I encountered lots of issues with my first collie It was a case of the blind leading the blind, as I was a novice (at the time) training a pup. His worst fault was running through the middle of the flock and gripping. My second collie came part-trained, and was much easier to handle!

Do you train your collie on sheep as a hobby? What kind of issues are you having?

four and a half yr old red and white bitch that I train on a mixed flock of Herdwick, Black Welsh, Badger Face and Balwen (never sure of the spelling). Bearing in mind she is a rescue that we took on at 18mnth and with little known about her apart from that she came from Wales, she is actually doing quite well. However she does have a tendency to be one sided and she will keep going round them! Still, she has a good stop, uses her shoulder and not her mouth and will bring the sheep to me. She will never make trials standard (that will be the next dog) but she will make a competent stock dog. It also means that i have discovered one of the most rewarding and fascinating of past times, that of an amateur shepherd!

Excellent. It sounds as though you are having a lot of fun with her. Is she your first? Any working pics. If you have a nosey in this section you will see plenty of working sheepdog photos from me

Do you train alone? Perhaps you could join a herding group or get some tuition? That is how I started and I found it invaluable.

Whereabouts do you live?

yes it is the first. I started to work mainly from home a while back so that meant that we could have a dog. Younger son wanted something the size of a donkey and older a Border Collie. As I was/am a committed OMAHD fan it was, as they say, a "no brainer." I currently train with Betty Temple at the Berks Training Group and we have the advantage of having Joyce Geier from the USA with us at the moment. Also get the chance to work with/train some other dogs (BC handlers are a generous lot) and have also watched Welsh Collies training (interesting! ) and a lovely Australian sheep dog that comes along that has its tail! I am also thoroughly enjoying the sheep work and enjoyed my first lambing experience. I plan to take some tuition from one or two of the "names" and see how we go from there. Also trying to convince the wife that 5 Border Collies is an appropraite number

It is something I would LOVE to do
But dont really think I have the dogs for it

Who are you thinking of training with? I used to train with Thomas Longton - and he is FAB!