44. E-collar

You had to know that this topic would eventually come up sooner rather then later.

To establish my position on this devise you should understand that I do not like the e-collar.

I have used them very rarely. I do not have one now. Having said that, I do believe that there

is a time and place that one can be used. I do not advocate the use of an Ecollar for training.

I will reluctantly say that they can be used for correcting an existing behaviour that is being

ignored by the stockdog.

As I mentioned I am absolutely against using the collar for training a behaviour. If you feel the

need to use one for training I would suggest that you have not achieved the “VERY” basics of

training your stock dog. See my post #  5. Levels  (of training),  

6. Starting a new pup or tuning up an older dog,  10. Bonding. If you need to correct a problem a

e-collar might be an additional tool to use.

One of the key ingredients to training is bonding. If a dog is not doing what you are instructing him

to do then he is working for himself. If a dog is working for you then correcting problems can, in most

cases, be fixed without an e collar.

43. A new year refresher training

Just looking over last years posts, hmmmm I guess I didn’t do very well. I guess I will have to come up with some

new excuses …. oh well a new year and lots to look forward to.

Enough said. I want to talk about starting up and tuning up after a bit of a winter lull.

When dogs haven’t been working for a while they tend to get a bit excited when they go back to work. Usually what that means, when you take a dog to sheep they will move in with purpose and usually right on the sheep’s butt. That, of course, means that we have a wide open race to nowhere.

Just before Christmas my dogs and I had the opportunity to move a gaggle of bulls around. No problem for the dogs here as they have to work close in. Once they get them moving the closeness should be measured by the amount of space between the dogs and the bulls/cattle in order to keep them moving at a steady pace.

Now the same dogs moving some flighty lambs (hair sheep) requires some considerable distance away from the little critters. This is where the refresher course/training comes in and usually is a spring tradition. After all a good herding dog should be able to do both with minor corrections coming from the handler.

I like to set some lambs up in a tight group and settled them down. I will bring the dog in (start with one dog and then bring in a second dog in later), and stop him just before the flight zone and use the command watch them.

That command tells my dogs that they stay at that distance.

Their job now is to balance on the sheep (not on me). I then will move around and through the sheep to get their noses pointing in different directions. The dog should move to counteract the movements.

Once the dogs have settled down it is time to start moving the lambs with the dogs. Now the dogs will cross into the flight zone, but just barely enough to keep the lambs moving at a steady pace. I will repeat this refresher training a couple more times over the next few weeks.

I like to start with these flighty little lambs. If the dogs can handle them without a train wreck, then they will or should be able to handle heavier sheep.