SophieRose went out to the pasture again with me today. A friend and I rent land and have about 50 some odd hair sheep (ewes and lambs right now) out there.
Spot the border collie and I moved some of the sheep into a 100 x 100 pen and pushed the others out into the 14 acre field to graze. Then I put Spot up and got SR to help me fill up water and just hang around sheep.
I want to be really careful not to let her get scared so I only have her out when i can pay pretty full attention to what she's doing.
Well,the sheep that had been put out in the larger area decided that they didn't like being separated from the other sheep and came back through a gate I hadn't thought I'd need to close.
SR was quite interested but tentative (she is only 12 weeks old!) so I picked her up and we pushed the incoming sheep out of the way. By that time, SR had regained some confidence and we were on the far side of the sheep about 10-15 feet off who were moving away from us so I put her down (she was on a line so not loose). She took a step toward the sheep and the sheep moved away and SR stopped and watched the ewes move away. We did this a couple of times to help SR figure out that moving toward sheep caused them to move away and to let her watch them move off (as opposed to chasing). No hysteria, no nothing but helping me move sheep a little bit. And thinking. This dog likes to consider the world and think rather than leaping before looking.
So then, we did a "here, that'll do" and she and I walked off to do something else. We also spent some time in another area with her pretty much being responsible for keeping up with me and keeping track of me.
I'm letting SR's reactions guide what we do. I could not have done this, for instance, with Pearl, the border collie, when she was this age. My goal with SR is to make having sheep around (and later ducks) normal and to reinforce the kind of behavior I want while not letting behavior I don't want happen.
It's not that SR is being "trained" in a formal sense; she's just getting used to how sheep behave in a safe context. And all of this took maybe 10 minutes, including a fair amount of walking.
Kathy
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