A square yard

Until recently I had always trained Jock in a round yard. No corners means that there was less chance of the sheep jamming up and facing up to him. However, the weather decided to play by its own rules with absolutely no thought to my training schedule.
In the matter of 5 weeks we have had over 8 inches of rain. There is water, literally, everywhere!

This is the drain that runs to the boundary of my property. As you can see it's overflowing its banks, and this is just a small hint of what it's like on this property at the moment.
My farm is definitely a 'gumboots only' place right now :(

So, we decided to start training in the barn. There is a yard in there, that's square, and is around 25 square metres. It's kind of dark, so the corners can be a little daunting, but we made do.

After walking Jock in around the sheep, and right into the corners, he realised that he could actually get in behind the sheep. A couple of my sheep were rather stubborn and refused to budge. They'd backed their bums right up into the corner and they were not moving.

Rather than push Jock into a situation where I was worried he'd get bowled over by the sheep, I stopped him, and sent him around behind me to come in on the other side of the sheep. This worked beautifully, and the sheep flowed out of the corner. After he had done it once, he decided he could do it every time, and within minutes, he had the sheep into the middle of pen up against me.

Unfortunately, some of these ewes weigh more than I do, so I struggle to remain on my feet a couple of times, but we got the job done.

This is Violet. She's a 7 year old Purebred White Dorper Ewe that tips the scales at almost 70 kgs, and is always the one to lead the charge when getting away from the dog, or past the dog.