Sheep herding dogs

By jelly | June 16, 2008

I went and watched a competition this weeked from sheep herding dogs and I was truly amazed. They were so well trained.

In the competition that I watched, 3 sheep were up on a hill, probably about a 1/4 - 1/2 mile away, a person walks with their dog to a post at the bottom of the hill. The person cannot leave this spot, then he sends his dog up the hill to get the sheep. The dog must go get them, bring them down the hill, around the person and push them out to the left and then through a gate, then way out to the right and through a gate. then back to the middle and in a pen.

The person uses a series of whistles that tell the dog what to do. From what I could grasp, one whistle means bring to me, one means left, one means right and means lay down. And the coolest to watch was 2 quick blasts which means stop them. Because some times the sheep are in full run and the handler blows 2 quick whistles and the dog takes off trying to get around them and stop them before they run out of bounds.

I did see once where the sheep were pushed out of bounds and the dog just kept chasing them rather than stopping them, this caused alot of excitement when the sheep were approaching the highway.

Another cool thing was what I called the ringer dogs. I don’t know who there were but when the competing dog had the sheep in the pen the handler would call them off, as soon as they did that another dog would run out all on his own to the field and as soon as the sheep came out of that pen he would herd them into the big pen where the sheep waited for the next competition.

It was very cool and I would reccomend it to anyone.