kylieandpossum

oooh nice kelpies! they look like nice strong bodied dogs. my dad always preferred the black and tan because he reckoned the sheep could see their eye more but im a big fan of the red/brown and tan myself. i am so pleased that other people have joined this thread esp people with working koolies, just in these few posts i have got a lot of encouragement that im not doing something wrong with possum but that she is bred to work hard and fast. she is a really brilliant yard dog because of that, the people we have worked with say they would take her to work with them now, she is not scared of anything in close quarters and i think she references me much better. she works well in open space but when we try "second pattern" stuff (sorry technical training speak!! ), which is me behind the sheep and her working to one side, she wants to come round to the top again and i have to be on her a fair bit. i think youre right about the driving jesomil, if i am in front of the sheep she drives beautifully straight into me, or the gate or whatever. having said that, this last weekend we did some great open space work where we got sheep out of a tight corner and took them down across the paddock to the gate together and she didnt get in front of me once. when you only get to work every so often sometimes you really do go forward two steps and back one. but in the padock she has a much better distance as well, which my instructor says is more like a collie. heres another bit to chew on...my instructor said that possum had too much dog for me and not enough for him (he is the aust champ so he is very big on the forceful really strong kelpie) and that part of the issue was that i was a woman and as such had a 'nurturing piece in me' (i love the way he talks about me like im a dog ) that wouldnt let me push her too far. i hate to agree with him but i think there is something in this if only to the extent that i have had graet difficulty finding the right tone of voice to work with possum. to keep her off we were working on a low long growl sound, rather than words. she is extremeley responsive when robert does this to her but tends to ignore me at first until i really hunt her off the sheep and remind her im in charge. part of it is that i cant get my voice low enough, and another part is that i get too emotive and let anger creep in which she thinks is hilarious. do you think there is any difference between male and female handlers with sheep work? (putting on suit now ) !!! ps more pix of dogs please!!

i saw someone with a 4mthold sheltie take on a mob of sheep, it was hilarious, this tiny little fluffy thing barking its head off. how big is panda and how do the sheep react?

upright, yes that a very good way to put it! its like she doesnt have a lot of feel for the sheep unless they are moving - in fact that is the way she works by folding them in all the time. hence we have to stop the endless running around the sheep. someone had a 12 week old koolie pup on the weekend and we put it in and she showed plenty of interest but worked straight away a lot like possum, keep em moving, keep em going round. i am starting to see what that farmer meant by 'heat', its hard work for possum to just let the sheep be. i think perry is a bit like too a. and maybe even chance, tho i think he is a bit more sensitive. so it probly is a koolie thing. i have been able to scale most of it back down but its still there. i wonder why they were bred that way?

shes beautiful vickie ....is she a border? and do they call it merle in the borders? (sorry probly stupid questions! ) where is she from, she looks like a blue moon (as in i have seen a blue moon that looks like her) if i were going to get a border it would be from there, just cos i hear they have great working ability. i can see why people think poss is a border, although trim looks a bit taller. i would kill for poss to have just a little bit of that stalking thing happening. do you trial with her at all?

this is a very good point, id never thought of that. she has a reputation from crossing her koolies with 'other dogs' which of course i didnt know about until afterwards, but i cant complain at all about poss. she is very small but a very big personality, just so much brain activity! (not all of it useful ) when i first got her people thought i had a border collie altho when you put the two together, esp pups, they are very different. so i call her a border koolie if you want to work with them id really recommend them, theyre great pets but great workers, if youve got the time and the backyard! (at two years old she has only just stopped ripping up the dripper system). i'd get another one for sure, although as i am getting older im thinking something a bit more sedate might be the go

in both ways i think. she knew how to keep the sheep together straight away, but she did so forcefully, as if she were chasing them. obviously kelpies also do this but she was just whizzing around barking (plenty of bark!). it only took one or two sessions of blocking to get her to work in the arc behind them. i think it is an eye thing. she tends to work off the shoulder of the sheep rather than straight onto the head, and she doesnt 'naturally' stalk them, in that slow, head down, one foot at a time way that some kelpies have. lets just say there will be no three sheep work with this dog! i would second this only because of my own experience with possum. we had to have complete control in the small yard before we tried the bigger one or the paddock and if i dont set the pace, i get stressed out and anxious, and that ups her energy and then ive lost the sheep! every so often after working outside we go back in the small yard just to reinforce things. she is a little unusual but theoretically speaking, koolies can be short or long coated and solid or merle. her quote is a LOT shorter than a border, its rough rather than long. she has a long fan tail rather than a pointed one. she has merle skin and freckles across her nose and feet. in her litter there was one red merle, two traditional blue merles, her and a black and white solid colour, so they have lots of recessive genes that get thrown up. her mother and father were both short coats, one red and one blue merle, and i took her i think because she was different. oh and she has very light coloured eyes, greeny yellow. she is very fine bodied and much smaller than a BC. koolie breeding is a very strange thing. the breeders are even stranger (in a nice way of course ) some of them are very busy trying to get a breed standard based on DNA tests etc but i dont see that happening anytime soon. she was from a breeder who apparently breeds for farmers wanting slightly bigger koolies to work cattle, some other koolie people tell me shes a 'bad breeder' but she breeds working koolies and i had met a dog from there that does agility that i really liked and poss has the same grandfather and they are quite similar dogs. there is some in-fighting among koolie breeders over the true koolie standard but i really dont buy into it, i knew it wasnt a recognised breed but is certainly a distinct type. check out this story http://www.burkesbackyard.com.au/2000/arch...g_breeds?p=1603 and also this site http://www.koolie-tjukurpa-kennels.0catch.com/ although i really take everything koolie breeders say with a grain of salt!

so you show shelties and have working kelpies? and heres a spanner in the work, is there a difference between colours and working ability! im being a bit silly cos my instructor says he hates red dogs - i wonder if theres anything in it. i know the sheep respond different to diesal cos shes all black.

Yep. Plus a few other breeds for good measure (maybe GSD, maybe kelpie, maybe ridgeback, maybe some collie...), all of which are meant to be intelligent ... ! I get so jealous of the others at herding, who often say "oh, my other dog does that so I never bring him/her herding" I only have one dog to choose from!! And a husband who consistently says no to the thought of a second. Especially when I start talking about getting a working-bred pup for sheepherding teehee - trent was contemplating a cocker spaniel or some other little lap dog (having had enough of the working dog thing). now that he has given up on herding with jem i think he may be re-assessing his position on that. we came home on the weekend and he said he was jealous of all of us with our herding dogs. i write this looking at a wall covered in agility and flyball ribbons that miss possum (ie, me) will never have! but its the process thats the thing. and how much does jack love it?! thats the important part i reckon :D

:D its that damn stubborn cattle dog thing (he does have some of that in him doesnt he?). jem is sticking with agility and flyball! altho i read last night that there are actually cattle dog trials and trents eyes went all kind of funny

this is diesal, cobbers housemate, who is a kelpie/bc cross and really does have the best traits of both: here is poss and kobe caught being naughty: and another gratuitous pic of poss: we put all our herding pix on my husbands flickr too, here is the link trents flickr there are pix of other stuff up there too enough from me now

yes that must be a factor...a lot of the trialling borders i have seen down here are the short coat ones. here are some more pix! this is chance, the other koolie i know. he has an ANKC herding title and is working on yard trialling here are possum's best friends cobber: and kobe: they are both noonbarra kelpies and like chalk and cheese, but really lovely workers ive run out of room but have more, will do another post

decided to start a new topic because we kind of overtook that last one, sorry kavik we're naughty i know anyway now we are talking about different kinds of sheep herding dogs and whether you can 'generalise' working traits across 'breeds' and what it takes to get different types to do different things. i said i would post some pix of my koolie, who i do yard dog work with, and who is a little different to kelpies. ive got a closeup of her: and here she is taking on a sheeps head which she avoided when younger but is ok with now: and here she is stepping nicely, rather than going round and round in circles (after much training!) i know there are lurkers out there who have pix too...or i can dob you in

hmm yes so true says kylie, slapping self on forehead. ah koolie breeding. well thats a thread in itself. there are some people who are very thingy about koolies, as in getting their history right, trying to make them into a recognised breed, but they have been here for such a long time (german settlers bought them to SA in the 1820s, and they are related to the german tyger, or the blue merle collie). i dont really care about any of that, i do think they are pretty much a mix between BCs and kelpies tho. strengths: very strong will, very intelligent, great deal of common sense and self-sufficiency , really super people affectionate, eager to please, endless work ethic. possum doesnt sulk, but has a certain level of nervous tension/anxiety. she was other dog aggresseive, mostly to big dogs, but we have almost socialised that out of her. weaknesses - working wise a bit too headstrong for me (hence the perpetual struggle) but not too much for my instructor (he said shes not enough dog for him and too much dog for me but hes a professional). movement wise, good balance but pushes in too hard, have to always reset the bubble/buffer. we didnt think she would want to head the sheep but she has stepped up in that dept as she has gotten older and is more willing to confront them. in general, like a kelpie on caffeine! working on pix... sorry for being so OT!!

now its my turn :D yes i have heaps of pix of miss poss! will see if i can upload some...i will need to do some resizing first so will post them in a bit... in the meantime, i am very glad to hear what you have said as i basically use the same methods with possum, i have a short stick with a plastic bag on the end that we used to get her attention at first, to bring her eyes up and off the sheep. that was pretty funny, the first time she saw it she attacked the bag. (i dont use it anymore, revs her up too much) it took some persistance in terms of blocking her up constantly - she used to try and get me to run around with her, which i have tried very hard to break. the stop/drop works too, when its too much i just shut it all down. and i do notice if i slip up on things at home, am too fussy over her, or let her set her own agenda, i will pay for it in the sheep ring. poss is actually the only other koolie i know of doing yard work, michelle and chance are the other ones up here. chance is a big solid boy, a typical short coat merle. possum is a long haired solid, but her red merle is starting to come through. -shes only just turned 2. robert (instructor) says she works a bit more like a collie, i think not as 'sweet' as a kelpie would, if you know what i mean, but she has developed some really nice moves. the full-on-ness gets tiring after a while but everyone says its a good thing so.... pix to follow

oh well thats good to know! im not aiming to be really competitive, like i said its more for the sake of the journey. i guess when we only get to work sheep every couple of weeks i worry that i am too 'soft' on her in between times, like let her wander around the house, play with other dogs, and if this affects her "respect" for me. i use that word cautiously cos i dont think they really know 'respect' in the way we do. i try and be consistent all the time tho, when i ask for something it has to happen, always follow through on a command, doesnt go in and out of doors uninvited etc. also good to know. i am a little envious of people who naturally have quiet dogs but my instructor says its better to have a wild one you can bring back down. she has calmed down a lot since we first started and always starts soft now whereas she used tobe a bull at a gate, so to speak. can i ask what techniques you use to keep them off the sheep? yes this is my experience too, definately the borders are more prevelant in the open spaces. given her tendency to work 'high' yard work is better for my koolie because shes strong enough but i can still contain her. would be interesting to hear others experience, for sure.

Not entirely sure what you mean but i will have a go. I dont do anything special to help the relationship. He is my special boy and i adore him but if you give him an inch he will take a mile so i always have to keep on top of his training and dont let him get away with anything. We do live in suburbia but are lucky in that he gets to work stock most days so that really helps. yeah thats pretty much what i mean, just the not getting away with anything....i cant quite bring myself to treat her like my dad used to treat his, tied up to its kennel unless its working. i know most farmers and even triallers (i do yard dog stuff too so they are mostly farmers) who are what we might call harsh with their dogs, you know they dont fuss over them or play with them, they really only relate to them when theyre working. they're well looked after and everything but they dont get to come inside and lie at my feet when its blowing a scorching norwesterly like today! training wise she gets away with nothing - she walks beautifully on lead and off, comes when called etc etc etc, but she does get free play time and interaction with other dogs, and i think sometimes that its those things that will keep us from really competing at a top level. which is fine, thats the trade off you make i guess. so another question. if you have kelpies that are hard and strong minded do they also try to work at speed or are they naturally slower, more stalky? we had some real hyper ones on the farm but we were talking to a grazier out west a couple of weeks ago and he said they dont tend to opt for koolies anymore because they put too much heat on the sheep. this is certainly the biggest issue we've had to work with. so this would be a breed thing? i hate generalising about breeds, it seems weird to me that stuff like personality or working style can be transmitted genetically. what do you think?

hmm my post went twice for some reason, sorry about that ;)

;) Excellent !! I was feeling nervous about asking any more questions. I just think it is interesting to learn how others perceive sheep dog training and what they do. You can always learn something from everyone. These questions are asked in a completely friendly non judgemental way - sorry didnt mean to make anyone nervous! really, they are good questions, i just thought maybe we were going down the 'right' and 'wrong' path of herding technique discussion and i think we all agree there isnt one or the other. its really interesting to me, this balance between instinct and training...my dad was a bad sheep farmer in that he expected his dogs to jsut know what to do and would get the shits if they didnt - for some reason if a pups mum knew 'get behind' then the pup should know it too. was very frustrating to watch. of course he was also blessed with dogs that just knew it, from the get go, and then of course all other dogs were compared to that one and found lacking. i started doing herding schools because i have a herding dog who obviosuly had a lot of natural raw talent but i found myself not able to harness it - having had kelpies on the farm i found this koolie to be a lot harder and stronger in the mind and much more determined to do her own thing, to avoid referencing me. this was partially my problem in that she was now a city dog and i treated her like a princess - ooops i mean a pet (well shes cute, what am i sposed to do ). as soon as we put heron sheep we could see the natural drive and that strength of mind and we had to DO something about that or she wasnt going to work for anyone except herself. so that was a process of off sheep relationship building between me and her where i continually inserted myself into her world and took away a lot of her capacity to make her own decisions. not to stop thinking but to not just rule her own roost. that paid off very quickly and she started to work very nicely for me in a small ring. we went backwards and forwards for a while between a small ring and bigger one, building that relationship, me figuring out how she worked and what got her attention without shutting her down, but without letting her set the rules. now it looks like i have a dog i will be able to trial with, but im not really in it to win, more to see where it takes us and because its a good way of getting her working while we dont live on a farm, and its just a fun thing to do with my dog. now we have confidence between us im happier to let her do her own thing on the sheep because i trust her now to know what shes doing and ive learnt that constantly interfering makes her work higher rather than slower, and i want the slower. she has nice moves, good distance, great balance. but it does frustrate me at times that she wants to work revved up and i have to stay on top of that without hassling her constantly. that is still an area that needs a lot of work. do you guys have your dogs in the city, as pets as well? what do you do, how do you treat your dogs at home, to help with that relationship aspect. for me that relationship is everything. if she listens to me off sheep , then she listens to me on sheep. how do you handle that?

;) Excellent !! I was feeling nervous about asking any more questions. I just think it is interesting to learn how others perceive sheep dog training and what they do. You can always learn something from everyone. These questions are asked in a completely friendly non judgemental way - sorry didnt mean to make anyone nervous! really, they are good questions, i just thought maybe we were going down the 'right' and 'wrong' path of herding technique discussion and i think we all agree there isnt one or the other. its really interesting to me, this balance between instinct and training...my dad was a bad sheep farmer in that he expected his dogs to jsut know what to do and would get the shits if they didnt - for some reason if a pups mum knew 'get behind' then the pup should know it too. was very frustrating to watch. of course he was also blessed with dogs that just knew it, from the get go, and then of course all other dogs were compared to that one and found lacking. i started doing herding schools because i have a herding dog who obviosuly had a lot of natural raw talent but i found myself not able to harness it - having had kelpies on the farm i found this koolie to be a lot harder and stronger in the mind and much more determined to do her own thing, to avoid referencing me. this was partially my problem in that she was now a city dog and i treated her like a princess - ooops i mean a pet (well shes cute, what am i sposed to do ). as soon as we put heron sheep we could see the natural drive and that strength of mind and we had to DO something about that or she wasnt going to work for anyone except herself. so that was a process of off sheep relationship building between me and her where i continually inserted myself into her world and took away a lot of her capacity to make her own decisions. not to stop thinking but to not just rule her own roost. that paid off very quickly and she started to work very nicely for me in a small ring. we went backwards and forwards for a while between a small ring and bigger one, building that relationship, me figuring out how she worked and what got her attention without shutting her down, but without letting her set the rules. now it looks like i have a dog i will be able to trial with, but im not really in it to win, more to see where it takes us and because its a good way of getting her working while we dont live on a farm, and its just a fun thing to do with my dog. now we have confidence between us im happier to let her do her own thing on the sheep because i trust her now to know what shes doing and ive learnt that constantly interfering makes her work higher rather than slower, and i want the slower. she has nice moves, good distance, great balance. but it does frustrate me at times that she wants to work revved up and i have to stay on top of that without hassling her constantly. that is still an area that needs a lot of work. do you guys have your dogs in the city, as pets as well? what do you do, how do you treat your dogs at home, to help with that relationship aspect. for me that relationship is everything. if she listens to me off sheep , then she listens to me on sheep. how do you handle that?

its ok, im still working out how to deal with the whole forum thing and i have a tendency to take things personally at the best of times, so ill just be getting over that now ;) i really enjoy the discussion too, its so hard to put in words something like herding technique but i love talking about it anyway. whcih my instructor hates cos he says i just have to 'feeeeeel it'. keep talking and i'll just listen for a while

sounds like a very good method mooper! i use the bird chasing/going mad around the hose stuff at home as well to practice the 'stay there'. it really does work! as for DOL, yes well...its a nice distraction from what i should be doing. i think i need to get a thicker skin tho. i forgot how anonymous forums can get a bit... um... heated sometimes!!!

you know i never said a dog shouldnt come when you call it and im getting a little frustrated. and i also made it quite clear that my dog comes everytime i call it. the OP asked about her dog that is new to sheep and didnt want to come away so a discussion started about words/training. you said yourself the dog needs to be trained to do it, my dog is, vickies dog is. even with all the instinct in the world we still had to work on things. we used different methods to get there, thats what the discussion was about. my dog DOES move where i want her to, but that didnt happen overnight, we were talking about different ways of making that happen thats all. feeling a little "picked on" now

well like i said im not an expert and can only talk about what my dog does and what works for me. and i do yard dog stuff so i dont often stand in the middle, its usually about getting her to move them in and out of small spaces and then the open paddock stuff we're either working one side of them each from behind or she just naturally goes round then until theyre bunched up and brings them in depending on where i put myself. This is always what i have seen it to mean and i think it is a good idea. I think as a handler, you have the right to call the dog to you any time and for any reason and it should be the one command. It should do it because it is told to, not because it may or may not get rewarded. well in an ideal world maybe! but even the very best working handlers i know have had to find a way to get the dog to WANT to do what you want it to do, or at the very least to get it to understand whats required. they dont understand the meaning of words unless theyve been shown the associated behaviour was all i was trying to say. i think we were talking about 'training' - the OP was about how to 'teach' things to a dog that may not have always worked sheep or has been previously trained in different ways. most dog training is reward based in some way, if the dog does the right thing it gets paid (whether thats with a treat or in my case with being allowed to work). the OP was talking about having a recall in the face of competing motivators so i suspect a 'reward' may help with that. vickie was saying she used work itself as a reward but the OP was asking how to stop the dog from working - or from self-rewarding basically... anyway, i think we might just be splitting hairs now, cos i think we're basically talking about the same thing. unless im missing something. editted for punctuation!

Just to clarify..."That'll do", means come away from the sheep to me, then I will choose what we do next. It was only in the very beginning that I resent her as a reward for coming more often than not. Like I said, I'm not saying this is right (nor am I recommending it), it has worked for us, I just know some people think it's a bad idea. I guess she knows what happens next by whether I walk away or resend, but it still means come to me regardless. oh i think its a great idea, youve obviously done it right because it works - she knows what it means regardless of what happens after now, the behaviour is so 'conditioned' she does it regardless of the 'reward'. thats the way ive seen it work and theres something about the way "that'll do" rolls off the tongue that it just means what it sounds like! and i imagine its not like when you walk out of the area completely she gets no reward - a good girl, a big pat, a treat, those are all rewards. just at the beginning i know for myself nothing was the same reward as sheep! less so now. oh and i forgot to say the other thing i do to signal 'its all over' is just put my hand on her head - sometimes when we're done and ive asked her to drop, i go over, touch her head and say possum come and that seems to break the connection with the sheep and put her back on me and she walks out (looking over her shoulder at the sheep of course )

I dont understand how you would achieve this. How do you teach left and right with this method? Maybe i have just misread this as i dont understand. How about just using the one command. The dog comes to you regardless of whether or not it is going to work the sheep again. I would think you had recall problems if the dog didnt come regardless. I am just a touch confused about the commands being used here. Sorry, i dont mean to be a pain here. sorry i got kind of rambly there and didnt explain myself clearly. and its hard to explain this kind of stuff without firstly, over intellectualising something as nebulous as herding and secondly, in words rather than actions. but i'll try. by the command thing its the same principle as in other types of dog training. shape the behaviour you want BEFORE you put a meaningless word to it. we dont ask a dog to sit without showing it what to do cos we know it doesnt speak english. in herding i use the same thing as in teaching other movements, basically set it up so the dog HAS to go that way then reward it in some way for doing that. so for 'sides' (as in left and right) i just physically stop the dog from going the way i dont want it to go and when it goes the right way say yes good girl and then eventually put the word to it (come by, away, round, here, back whatever you chose). having said that i dont have words on my sides because she does them anyway and i just turn my shoulder AWAY from the direction i want her to go in so she rocks back and changes direction. that one i cant explain in words, i just taught her from the get go to not work in front of me unless there are sheep there. shes a koolie so she is very sensitive to pressure coming off the front of me. when there are sheep in between us ("first pattern") and shes bringing them into the front of me she naturally works in short arcs behind the sheep - when she wants to go too far around i put my arm out to block her and tell her good girl for changing direction. with the recall thing, ive just been taught to not use the same command for two different things and vickie was saying she uses 'that'll do" to reset her dog to keep working but also to stop working completely and leave the area. obviously if that works thats awesome, id hazard a guess that there is something different in vickies voice when she says that'll do that refers to "that'll do for that move" vs "that'll do we're going home now". i was just wondering that if you taught a dog a 'stop' command that actually meant 'stop for a minute while we move over here" and you rewarded the dog with sheep for that, the dog should technically think (of course i have no idea what dogs think ) whenever i hear that word we are going to work sheep again. if you then use that same word for "we're leaving now" the dog might think "no we're not, we still have work to do". so to me thats not really a recall right? so i use "stay there" for "keep doing what youre doing" (whether its moving or not moving), drop when i want everything to STOP completely (regardless of what happens after that. if im going to use that and then keep working i need to give a good break in between so the dog doesnt think DROP actually means keep working - again like what vickie said with the 'steady') - and then when we're all done its jsut Possum Come and walk away and she follows. does that make sense?