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Review: Lessons From A Stock Dog by Donald McCaig
Bruce Fogt is one of America's best (and best respected) trainer/handlers. At one time or another, Bruce has won most of the biggest trials in America from the old Kentucky Bluegrass to the National Handler's Finals(twice), usually with dogs he trained himself. B.B.C. (before Border Collies), Bruce Fogt was a 4-H farm kid, lucky enough to have Lewis Pence as a neighbor. Lewie was a sheepman and sheep shearer, a genuine original, a little larger than life, and Lewie and his dogs traveled all over the country to sheepdog trials. One day, Lewie told young Bruce, "You need one of these pups." . . . "I wouldn't know how to train it," "I'll show you," he responded. . . . "I don't know if I can afford one." "I don't care about the price. What do you have to trade?" . . ."I said, ‘Could you use a Hampshire ram?" In a few short minutes, by chance conversation, the direction of my life was changed." The first part of LESSONS FROM A STOCK DOG are lessons Lewie Pence taught the young handler about training and trialing a sheepdog. Systematically and thoroughly, Bruce takes the handler from the first introduction to sheep all the way into the shedding ring and turn back. Part two of the book is a training outline and a hearteningly thorough discussion of what to do when you have problems. For instance: The dog will not look for the sheep as it is set up for an outrun. (1) Focus your attention on the sheep, the dogs often look where we do. If you are looking at the dog, it will stare back at you and not look for the sheep. (2) Use a better set up procedure. Walk forward a few yards with the dog walking slightly behind, but on the same side as the desired outrun. Don't allow the dog to switch sides or to run around in front of you. Your attention must be focused on the sheep while walking straight toward them. As you come to a stop, continue to focus on the sheep while quietly sending the dog. Use this setup even on easy outruns to help establish the pattern. The dog will learn that the sheep are always somewhere straight ahead even when it can't see them. (3) Don't send the dog until it does look at the sheep. (4) It is possible the dog has already spotted the sheep. Should it find the sheep without any problems, don't worry about it." Bruce Fogt's discussions of problems and remedies are, like this example, thorough, clear and dog-savvy. Even advanced handlers will benefit from his suggestions. Bruce Fogt's LESSONS FROM A STOCK DOG is experienced, thoughtful and agreeably modest. Certainly it is the best American training guide ever published and can stand comparison with the British classics, Jones and Collins "A Way of Life", and Longton and Hart's "The Sheepdog". Sample Chapter: Teaching Sparky to Run Wider
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It takes courage for the novice
handler to go to the post with his(her) first sheepdog
and send it. More often than not, while the handler
bellows fruitless desperate commands, the dog blasts the
sheep apart or locks in on them or seizes some poor ewe
with lethal intent and the dog which only yesterday
seemed so clever looks like a hopeless reject,
completely unlike those skilled open dogs who rush onto
the field to restore order. It is not the least virtue
of Bruce Fogt's new book, LESSONS FROM A STOCK DOG that
Bruce remembers how that novice feels.
"Training," he writes, "was not as simple
as I thought it would be. It was more like reciting the
alphabet backwards while dancing the
jitterbug."