The beginning of today’s lesson — Chase doesn’t believe that “STOP” means “halt and stand there until I tell you otherwise” so that was what he and Susan were working on in this first video. (Honest — it gets better.) I’ll post a second video later — when Cheryl gets it uploaded from her trusty camera. Be sure to check out Kearney and Lowri’s herding videos.
Herding Day – Lessons in Stop and Walk
June 27, 2011
Category Bluefox, Chase, Herding, Tennessee | Tags:
5 Comments
It is so good for me to watch the videos to see what is actually going on. Chase has progressed soooooo far. He is actually walking up to the sheep when asked to. What the video isn’t picking up is my soft comments to him once he has stopped. He NEVER gets to break the stop unless I tell him to. I very quietly tell him, “walk up”, “away” or “go bye”. I caught one “away” in the video. I am very proud of this boy. He is in the toughest part of his training. This is the part that causes lots of confusion – “you want me to take them AWAY from you??? I thought I was suppose to BRING them to you.” He is a good boy!
From the tiny bit of herding I’ve done, the biggest obstacle I see is that the dogs can so easily self-reward. You want them to stop, they want to chase…which is more fun? Obviously scattering the sheep and running around to collect them is WAY more fun than listening to the human!
That is soooo true, Taryn. That is why you really have to hustle to prevent the self-reward (G). Blocking them from getting to the sheep is the only way to stop them. Eventually, they get the idea.
My *old* computer loads about 10 seconds of video at a time. It seems that Susan says “stop”, and Chase and the video oblignly comply. I spent most of the time grinning at the unintended humor.
Ditto on what Taryn said. The herding (or bowling for sheep/ducks) is so much more fun than holding or stopping. Great job! It’s been very fun to watch Chase’s progress.