A big yard, and something new

Jock is now 7 months old and has started a little bit more intense training.

Yesterday we moved to the big training yard, which is about 40ft across, with four young sheep in it. Now that I can 'get a stop on him' most of the time, I thought it was time to introduce something new.

So far, I can take him into the yard off lead and have him stand by my side. Leaving him on one side of the pen, I can move into the middle and cast him left or right so that he goes around the sheep and brings them back to me. I am constantly moving so that he must change direction to keep the sheep to me.

Every now and then I call him off, take him to somewhere else in the pen and cast him again.

Yesterday I decided it was time to add something new. I opened the small gate that leads out of the pen and into the funnel (small funnel shaped yard used for holding sheep from the paddock before moving them into the training yard) to get Jock to bring them through the gate to me, pick them up out of the corner and then bring them back to me in the yard.

When I first opened the gate, the sheep ran out into the funnel. The look on Jocks face was priceless....

"What, what are you doing mum? they're running away!" he seemed to say.

Staying just on the other side of the gate, I gave Jock the 'come-bye' command, and he came past me and went in behind the sheep to bring them back to me. I'd moved back into the centre of the round yard by this stage. Without fail, he did this three times. I only planned on doing it once or twice, but the sheep kept splitting up, so I'd have 2 in the yard and 2 in the funnel. This caused Jock a lot of annoyance because he likes to have his sheep all together. It was at this time that I decided to start introducing the 'look back', where he looks over his shoulder for forgotten sheep. Andy explains this really well in his DVD, so be sure to check it out.

When we finally did manage to get all four back in the training pen, I shut the gate. We'd both had more than enough of that exercise to last us a few days, maybe weeks.
I did this to see what stage Jock was up to. Maybe it was too early to do it, but the only way to find out was to try. And, I used sheep that would not hurt him if they bunched up in the corner.

We ended with Jock circling around behind the sheep and bringing them to me, nice and calmly.

At the end of the session, Jock got a good pat, a few words of praise, and was happy to leave the sheep and go lay down for a rest!