Into the Field

 I was recently asked to help prepare a group of Heifers for an annual Fall Fair Cow Dog trial. My job is to dog break the cattle which should calm them down for when they go to the arena. The trial is indoors and when you take a bunch of cattle that have never been exposed to that type of surrounding it can take a great deal of fun away from the trial.

This is a perfect time and place to evaluate the training my pups have received to date. I had my new pup, Wage, with me as well as this mother, Kate, and of course my main dog, the old guy. Each morning we would round up the Heifers out in the field and bring them into a paddock. We would then separate a few and move them into another paddock and work them for about 1/2 hour. We then join the separated ones up with the rest of the herd and move them back out into the field. We did this up to 4 times a day.

Wage working the flank

Here he keeping everyone on the straight and narrow

While moving the cattle I used as few commands as possible. Mostly “there” and occasionally a directions command “go bye” or “away to me”. This gives me an excellent opportunity to find out where we are in the reaction to the commands. So now that we are back home it back to the side commands.

Even in the paddock he is keeping order

It was very interesting to watch Wage, he is 8 months old, work the flanks with very little direction. He would swing out and run along to near the head of the herd and then turn into them and run back to where we were driving from. This appears to be natural to him. He exhibited the same technique in the paddocks. He certainly did not pull any punches when one of the Heifers stepped to far of the line.

After 3 days of this, training in the training paddock is not going to be as exciting. Back to working on sides

"Go Bye"

I am frequently asked why the "Go Bye" command rather then the traditional "Come Bye" command? I learned a long while ago that a dog can be come confused by the "Come By" command. Just think about it for a few moments. How do most of us call our dog to us, the recall. The vast majority of us call our dogs to us by using the command "COME". No we know that the dog usually reacts to the first word it hears ie "Come Bye". To avoid the possibility of confusion I use the "Go Bye" command.

Be who you are and say what you feel....
Because those that matter...
don't mind...
And those that mind... don't
matter."

Equipment Manners

Now what does this have to do with herding you say. Wellllll we train our dogs so they can help us with our chores. Much of what we do is with machinery. So if your dog is not familiar with the equipment then they will have no idea how to behave around it. They have no rules or boundaries. Sound familiar?

When traveling to the work place on a tractor, ATV, or even in a truck, the proper place for your dog should be behind you. If the dog is running around beside you or in front or playing with another dog running beside or in front of the tractor, his life is in extreme danger. So how do you train a dog to be and stay in the proper place?

In your basic training you like to teach sit, stay, down, and heal, obedience commands. The one command that we seem to miss is the “behind” command. This is a very easy command to teach your work partner. Try this: from the heal position while moving forward, using a training aid such as a sorting stick, give the “behind” command forcing the dog back with your stick. Of course it goes with out saying that repetition is what makes this command work as in all commands.

When working with equipment your concentration should be on the task at hand. You should not have to be worried where your dog is. PROTECT YOUR DOG teach the behind command.

Until next time