Kelpies

Kelpies at Work, Rest and Play

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Exuberant with a touch of wild. I do wish I were brave enough to let it all hang out and live like this dog does, consequences be damned. But I am a quiet, contemplative soul, a look before you leap type. I balance well with Kelpies who are enthusiastic keeners for any type of work or play. [/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”2761″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]On the northern prairie the snow lasts for five months. I spend the first few weeks of winter adjusting to it, the middle part of winter relishing the quiet of it, and the latter part of winter wishing it away. I’m still relishing the quiet of it, active Kelpies notwithstanding. The Kelpies, actually, are the reason I stay so active.

I’ve spent a lot of walking time with the dogs, mulling over training difficulties and shaping my mountains back down to mole hills. My approach to stock dogs has certainly shifted with age and experience. I let a lot of little things slip by now; things that felt critical to me in the early days with dogs are no longer so. For example, I used to be much more stringent about the dogs following with me or behind me on a walk and then letting them run free only when I said so. When you don’t know your own way of being you follow the way of others who are doing it and that’s what I did with dogs.
[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”2765″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]But now I’ve carved out my own way to be with dogs. I’m not aiming for the Kelpies to be sheep trialing dogs and I’ve been highly influenced by the philosophical smarts of guardian dogs. So now we all just head out the door and go and so long as everyone is minding their manners, it’s all good. When they don’t I’ll act according to the infraction. I’m sure I’ve lost a bit of my trainer edge when it comes to the Kelpies and they might not take me as a leader in all manner of things important to dogs, but it doesn’t seem so life and death critical to me as it did in the past. I think there is unseen pressure on farmers who want to use to stock dogs, pressure to be proficient and expert at it or don’t bother getting a dog. Me and my current Kelpies would never make it around a trial course, and have no desire to anymore, but there are a lot of trial dogs who’d never handle 500+ head of livestock with as much comfort and control as we can either.
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Maybe it’s just a life stage thing and I’ll revert back to training, training, training but nowadays I talk to the dogs as much or more as I command them to do one thing or another. The Kelpies are here to help me get the work with the sheep done, and we’ve managed that for enough years now that I’ve figured out I don’t have be such a hard case about how the work happens or what we do or don’t do when we’re not doing sheep work. I like a dog who minds me but equally as important is our enjoyment of each other’s company regardless of who is leading in any moment. 

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Solo Sorting

This week required sorting a few Clun Forest types from the flock for private sale. Allen is away the whole week so the task fell solely to myself and the Kelpies. I decided to sort a sub-group and then let the individual pick the few sheep from the smaller group rather than trying to pick a handful from several hundred.

Coyote Mic was my choice of dogs for gathering out on pasture and getting them home. We headed out in the morning and came upon the flock still loosely gathered and not yet headed off for grazing. We both started at the rear of the group and just our presence there started the flock moving off from us. We pressed on them a bit and then retreated, letting them string out. I figured I could split the group while out on pasture and just take a portion of them home to sort further.

We start with a beautiful and frost covered morning.

Back on the Ranger I moved up to the midst of the column of sheep and split the bunch. I took the front bunch further along and figured the ewes left behind would slow up and stay put. Not a chance. They came along behind us. I put Mic on the ground again and we attempted to encourage the rear bunch to turn around and go back. They went far and wide around us and sped up to catch the front group. It twigged on me that the ewes figured this was a pasture move; no one was going to be left behind.

So instead, we took the whole bunch to the gate and once there I just let what I thought was a reasonable number go through then stepped in a cut the rest off. Those not allowed through the gate were dumbfounded! Having Mic on board allowed me to get through the gate without more streaming out. The ewes let out were already moving well ahead and beginning to spread out, exploring the new-old pasture. Mic and I picked them up and took them the rest of the way home. At the yard we turned them into the barn paddock and from there Mic handled bringing them up the hill to the building with ease.

At the yard. Mic bringing the group up the last hill to the building. Rams in an adjacent pasture look on.

Typically the hardest part of flock work is getting all the sheep into our alleyway along the building. Perhaps it was the lesser number that made it seem easy this time. I was pleased, Mic was pleased – and she sure there was a lot more work to be done, and slipped under the gate in an attempt to convince me to let her have at it.

Turning sheep into the alleyway alongside the building.

I was tempted, but really wanted to give this job to BlackJack. He’s been getting a fair number of the ranch jobs this summer and while he completely made a mess of one or two of them, he also stepped up in unexpected circumstances. BlackJack is a pup out of BJ and like his mom he works tight and is more than willing to come forward and force.

Our raceway is located inside the building while the wider alley leading up to it is located on the outside. The outside alleyway curves around the end of the building, enters at the back and narrows into the raceway. This means that when I have to run the sort gate located along the raceway there is no way to see out or manage what’s going on in the alleyway. It means I have to leave the dogs to work as they will, and rely on their work.

When I work right alongside the dogs I bring an expectation of how the work should go and how the dog should carry out the work. This expectation stems from a learned, stereotypical approach to working border collie and kelpie type stock dogs. When being directed on how to do the job the training the dog has is heavily relied on and can often override his default approach to the work. The expectation presses on the dog somewhat even when I determine to not let it. But I’ve had enough of these solo work situations now to appreciate there is a difference. When I’m not directly alongside the dog yet in need of the help, the expectations are not adhered to – indeed, the lack of them is not even seen/known. Now the dog works in his default fashion with whatever training he’s had to aid him and I have to trust that. The job has been set up but no one is telling him how to do it. This latter situation is much more like working with another person. Here’s the important distinction about our work this time around – BlackJack didn’t do every thing perfectly, I didn’t do everything perfectly – far from it in fact. But BlackJack and I got through that job together and we got through it honestly, and I was so genuinely pleased to have the dogs help on a big job and he was so pleased to have helped. I knew it and he knew it, and that type of knowing transcends expectations.

flock work with kelpies

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Joy is in Process

Australian Kelpie stock dogs

The other day I took Coyote Mic around back to bring wether lambs into the building. I returned to the house, put Mic inside and took BlackJack and Copo out. BlackJack and I worked the lambs inside the building until they settled a bit. Then I swapped dogs again and did some training on Copo, the greenhorn. Using the experienced dog to bring training lambs in, working the semi-experienced dog to settle the training lambs, and then working the greenhorn dog, just means one has too many dogs.

I recall having to move the first hundred odd sheep and using my first border collie to do so. Oh, how little we knew and how elated we were at the try. Every accomplishment we had with that first flock was a small miracle because when we stepped out to do it we didn’t know how these things got done. There was no experienced dog to use, nor any experienced handler, nor any experienced sheep for that matter. We didn’t know what we didn’t know and the mere try was success. And amazingly, within that unknowing was the joy of the process. And even if we didn’t manage to get the particular task done or it went all the way south, we always ended up where we needed to be.

Fast forward several years; when I work the dogs I find myself regularly doing a mental check up, not necessarily looking for anything joyful but looking for meaning, value and understanding, all of which equates to a sense of well being, a sense of internal joy – for them and for me. When working that first dog I wasn’t aware enough to recognize that finding joy in the process was something to strive for. Nowadays we’re all looking for it, needing to be reminded to slow down enough to be able to enjoy the process.

I hope this post serves as one reminder for today.

livestock guardian dog

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