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Rancher Pete Carmichael Lighter Side of Stock Dogs
Poem: The Shepherd's Bath
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Lessons From a Stock Dog
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Teaching Sparky to Run Wider I was getting control of Sparky and gaining an understanding of how it was supposed to look. Gradually, I started getting better results with the sheep. They were beginning to be more cooperative. I could now keep Sparky from diving into them, so they were no longer running for their lives when they saw him. They were even flocking together now and learning to stay with me for protection. Concentrating on some finer points of training was now possible. Although he was going around and bringing the sheep to me, he was still working too close. I was working with Lewie one morning when I asked him about this. "I know he is working too tight as he goes around, but how do I keep him back off?" "Basically, it's corrected the same way you corrected him for diving in, by running at him and pushing him back off. It is the same correction. Position yourself near the sheep, then when you send him, run at him and force him back off wider. You have to watch, because after he moves back from the correction he will try to slice in again. To counter this you'll need to reposition yourself immediately to give him another correction as he starts to come back in. They usually go about a third of the way around before trying to cut in again, so be prepared. You'll need to keep repeating this as he circles around. Your movements may look like you are tracing the outline of a three-pointed star, each point being the correction. Immediately after the correction, go back to the sheep and be in position to give another. You have to move fast to stay ahead of the dog." This was difficult to get the hang of, but I understood the principle and could see the results. Like most of Sparky's problems, fixing it would have been easier had I not allowed it to become a habit. The correction he taught me worked well with most dogs because it went along with how dogs communicate. Dogs don't think the way people do. All those movies they make where the dog will rationalize a problem out the way a human would are just movies; it's not the way dogs think. Their brain is different from ours and their form of communication is different. Humans communicate through speech. Dogs communicate more through body language. That's why just yelling at a dog usually has very little effect. To them it's just noise. They understand positive and negative movements, positive if the trainer is backing away and letting them have the sheep, and negative if the training is forcefully going at them. I use positive and negative voice along with the motion and they quickly learn the meaning of the tones, but it is the motion they understand best.
This diagram shows Lewie's method of pushing the dog out wider. The trainer stays near the sheep as the dog starts to circle. When the dog starts to cut in too close to the sheep, we run toward the dog and aggressively push it wider. Immediately after the dog responds to the correction by running wider we go back toward the sheep and get into position to give another correction if needed. Notice the trainer's movements are in a star pattern, and the dog's path looks like a clover leaf. As the dog learns to stay out at the proper distance, the clover shaped path will become a smooth circle. Review of Lessons From a Stock Dog (by Donald McCaig)
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