Today our Naughty Nola met sheep for the first time. When we got to Robert’s place at about 8:00, we saw a sea of mud — it rained up there. I got Holmes and Nola out of the car and we started up toward the pens. Ellen and the farm Aussie moved sheep from the night pens to the working pens. Nola saw SHEEP — she froze, her ears quivered, and she never took her eyes off of them. That’s a good start, but what would she think when she was in a small field with them (the round arena was simply muck and not usable)?
We’d soon find out.
. . . and here is her first encounter in the field:
We went back in about 45 minutes later and she had another wonderful round with some lighter sheep. The bigger field, combined with lighter sheep, and a dog-with-no-legs was not as successful. However, what we learned about Nola is that she has tremendous eye and controls the sheep by staring them down. She does the Border Collie Crouch (must have inherited it from her dad). She’ll have to learn to go out and come around to pick up the sheep and fetch them to the person. She seems to understand driving. As you can see in the beginning of the video, she was wearing (moving back and forth) behind the sheep to keep them moving.
For this second video, I was in the middle of the field — and it did not distract the puppy at all. She was there for a reason — SHEEP!
This has repercussions for Holmes. He’s not been all that enthusiastic since his first couple of trips up to Robert’s. He has the been there, done that attitude. I think I’m going to let him track and do Rally for now — he loves both — then we’ll check out the livestock again in six months or a year. In the meantime, Naughty Nola has found her avocation. I can live with that.
