We all know about setting a young dog up for success but sometimes some ‘failure’ is good too.
If our dog is constantly plodding around on quiet sheep, or we haven't taken the time to finally put them out on a bigger mob then perhaps they need to step up.
I don't mean letting them run out of control. Quiet sheep are essential for their first few looks or for training, but there are times when they need to see what real sheep can do.
So take the brakes off sometimes, let them go in a bigger paddock, put them on more challenging sheep, or create situations where something different can happen, through gates, or with other sheep nearby. Run through the sheep and scatter them, make it fun.
The most important thing is that we don't panic when things get tricky.
So when the sheep have split and one has jumped the fence, keep calm, try to get things back together but allow them to work it out as much as possible. The more experience they get with sheep that do sheep things, then the better they will handle it when things really go wrong. If you panic and start yelling, this confuses the dog and can make the dog panic too.
Yesterday I had a small mob in the yard, and I thought Pocket could just put them back in their paddock. She has no commands, and it should not have been difficult. But sheep are sheep and they split, two pushed through a gate into the wrong paddock, and when I sent her after them, they jumped the fence. The rest bolted up the lane (These are usually quiet sheep LOL) So I called her off and set her up to retrieve those, then we put them all back into the paddock. So she learned something about what sheep can do.
It's all part of learning and if you work with dogs and sheep, at some point things will get messy and out of control. We need to stay as cool and as calm as possible so the dog will feed off that.
If we panic and start yelling, then the dog will lose faith in our ability to control the situation. So chill out, the worst that can happen is not as bad as we think.
Plus, when this happens it can give us an insight into how advanced (or not) our training is.
If the whole thing was a bit of a train wreck and we could not even get a call off, then we need to go back a step and re-visit some more basic training.
