Sheep Fun!

Saturday morning Sarah and I braved the cold and went out to Scott and Jenny Glens place again for a morning of sheep herding. We had a blast and it was neat to see how the dogs progress each time.

Wicca was first- and she was excited the instant she was out of the Rav. We worked first on teaching her that when the sheep run she has to stop and wait (lie down) So we worked her on a long line- to make sure she understood. We spent quite a bit of time on that. After we let her off the line and gave her a chance to "be bad" to bring back the excitement. She was great and had really fast downs- Scott explained to me that she doesn't neccesarily need to lie down- but stopping is more important. I told him that Wicca is one of those give an inch, take a mile kinda dogs- we agreed that making her lie down was in both our favours!

Gyppie's turn was next and she was GREAT! She set right down to work and only had a few moments of trying to decide between Pete (he barn cat) and the sheep. In the end the sheep were more fun. Her progress on her lie downs were very noticeable- as Sarah had worked hard on that using toys and excitement.

I brought Vito out to watch half way through Gyps turn and he was so excited. Instantly he locked onto the sheep and started whining and barking. I told Scott that I wasn't sure what he would do with sheep as he'd never been exposed to them or anything- for some reason I thought he wouldn't be that interested. Boy was I wrong! Vito LOVED it. He was on a long line as I knew he would not lie down with this much excitement- it was a good thing because he was completely out of control. I'd never seen him run so hard. Because his lie down was almost non-existant we worked on that at first- making him listen and only releasing him after he'd lie down. We also started to teach him to move to the outside of the sheep- which he did great. Scott used a rolled up feed bag to put some pressure on Vito to move out- Vito didn't appreciate that and started to lip curl whenever Scott would move in. It was funny...(but not really, I know) I was very impressed with him- he moved out around them better than Wicca did! (first timers excitement mostly) But wow! He did it and was having a great time.

You can see the pictures Jenny took on her blog: http://altapetestockdogs.com./Lessons.html