Learning from my Border Collie, Bess
About 5
dogs later, and about 7 years on, and my emigration to
Canada, I bought a 2 month old pup from Jack Knox, a well-known
Border Collie handler who was living in Wisconsin at that time. This little
bitch was called Bess.
We had a few sheep that were always close to the yard and when
Bess was about 5 months old, and loose around the yard, I soon found
that wherever I was working in the yard, Bess would fetch this small
group of sheep to me. It didn't matter whether I was working in my
garage, fixing a piece of equipment in the yard, or whatever. I then
found that if I walked into the yard, away from what I was doing,
Bess would keep bringing the sheep to me. And when the ewes ran bye,
Bess would take off, circle them and then bring them back to me.
Interesting I thought! Next time the ewes ran bye I would make
her go out on the other side. After a few days I started giving a
side command, Come Bye or Away to Me, as she ran out.
Gradually, through being able to lay Bess down, I would let the
sheep get further away before giving the side command and letting
Bess fetch them back to me. I carried on this method until Bess had
a great outrun of several hundred yards. I had read several books on
training Border Collies and none of them gave any ideas of such a
simple training method. They all had long sticks and hundreds of
feet of rope for holding the pup
back.!!
(Border
Collie training information)
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