Hi Lana I have a Border Collie I have been herding with for about a year now. I am a novice so can offer no advice but can point you at some resources. First I use to subscribe to herders-l it was the first herding list serve I was on. I unsubscribed due to the amount of non Border Collie related material filling up my mail box. Its an all breed listserve so the amount of non border collie material makes sense but most of it isn't applicable to herding with a BC alot of the little tricks and stunts that work great for other breeds just dont apply to the border and can actually stunt their training progress. So I'm not saying you shouldn't subscribe I'm just suggesting you be wary on applying everyhing you read to training your Border Collie and you may well already be aware of this. Hoping that doesn't sound like I'm picking at the suggestions of a previous post thats absolutely not the intent at all. Some list serves I am subscribed to are Sheepdogs-L on yaho!
o groups
and Working sheep dog news which you will have to type into your seach engine and locate as I don't have the homepage. And you absolutely must check out Littlehats www.littlehats.net its a site designed specifically for novices.Where do you live and have you located a trainer in your area whether its going to be a trialing or farm dog or both its alot easier if you have someone experienced to get you started and you defiantly don't want to start out on regular sheep you'll need to locate or locate someone that has Dog Broke sheep which are sheep that have been worked by a dog and are not aggressive and know to follow the handler. Most dogs are atleast 9 months before they are ready to start herding for the first time and I say atleast because more than likely their not mature enough till they are a year to 15 months. But starting a pup are evan exposing a pup to sheep by letting it walk and move the sheep on lead is a !
big
mistake as in the pups mind it is already working the stock and this is not what you will want it to work like when it is older and turned out to work stock the first time. What you will have is a dog that doesn't want to leave your side and will only feel confident pushing the sheep from behind with you at its side because this is how you taught it to work in the beginning. It will not want to run to their heads and balance them to you the way a Border is suppose to start its first time on sheep. you can probably work out of this problem eventually but by correcting them out of this habit to teach them the beginnings of a natural balance (which any dog MUST know before it can begin the real ground work of herding) it will later haunt you when you start to introduce driving which you then WILL want the dog to push the sheep away from you. Also letting the dog chase the sheep teaches it to do just that chase especially if it isn't physica!
lly
capable of outrunning the sheep and getting to their heads to turn them back to you so it gets in the habit of playing chase with the sheep. No matter how tough are how much fun the pup looks like its having its not learning anything about how it will be be expected to work in the future in these situations. Also by taking a pup out that cant physically catch its sheep you can actually hurt its confidence. Well guess I did give some advice didn't I? Be sure to check out little hats and email me if you would like some book references.
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