Month: February 2019

In parts #1 and #2, I talked about the relationship you should work towards with your Border Collie or any herding breed during the early stages of training. I will now cover the practical approach to take when working with geese or even sheep and other farm animals and poultry. It is essential to understand the speed, the intensity of the work you do with these animals. Border Collies have been bred over a long time to work with sheep, calmly and productively.

Good farming requires handling animals well, whether the animal is a dog, a cat, sheep, cattle, poultry, lamas and so on. You may have an aversion to farming with animals from a postmodern perch, but farmers and people through the thousands of years before us could not have survived well without kindness toward their animals. Dogs and cats will not want to “work with” you and sheep, and other livestock will not thrive unless treated with compassion and understanding. And so, sheep are herded quietly with just enough “force” utilized by the people and dogs that move, handle them throughout the farming year. There is a lot of background and experience or at least lessons farmers have, or new farmers need to understand these relationships. Every breed of sheep is different, and individuals in the breed can be different too. Dogs are individuals, inside a breed like the Border Collie and a handler needs to be a good student of the animals and to partner with a dog.

Goose control with Border Collies is not as complicated. I have not found geese not as a variable in nature as sheep so that they can be worked about the same most of the time. There is the odd overly aggressive male during nesting time, but after a while, a new person to goose control can catch on well. There are different seasons to goose control to consider, and that requires handling your dog or approach with the geese differently. Always read the geese reaction to you and the dog and work with that. Don’t over scare the geese and don’t lay off your approach too much or you will not be effective. I call working wild goose, herd-chasing as opposed to herding. It’s herding but done with a bit more intensity. With sheep, you gently move them into, say, a barn, with wild geese, you are moving, herd-chasing them into the sky, for which you need to get your dog to work more enthusiastically.

Working with herding dogs, like Border Collies is implementing a modified predator-prey relationship. It’s a mind game. On the farms, sheep are just wary enough of the herding dogs to move to where a farmer needs them to go, peacefully and efficiently. Believe me, without a good system on a farm or a good dog lots of time and hardship, can be spent moving sheep or cattle or even pasture poultry.  Goose control can be very effectively done with the Border Collies. Geese can not become resilient with useful dogs working them. And if you make the geese nervous enough without overdoing it, you will cause them to think very seriously about coming back to the property you are working.

We have a banner we use for our herding demonstrations. It has a nice picture of a Border Collie herding sheep and our logo and the words, “Collie means useful in Galic.” There is good evidence that the name collie, as in collie dog and then Border Collie meant that a farmer had a useful dog. This means a farmer, or shepherd wanted and used a dog that was helpful on the farm, for herding. I can’t think of a better way to handle our sheep and poultry at home effectively and stress-free and to convince geese to leave clients properties. This is no matter where we work, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. It would work for you too.

I covered in Part #1, the importance of staying calm and connected with a Border Collie. This post will cover early training — your relationship with either a pup or young or new dog to any handler/owner.

As our young pup, six months old Moses grows a bit more mature in body and mind/emotions; I am teaching him to respond to a few simple verbal “commands.” Moses seems like a “late bloomer” but six months is just about the age to start this training.  Some handlers start full out training on sheep or ducks at this age, but you need to be careful about that. The biggest thing to keep in mind when working livestock or even with goose control is what is called ” good stockmanship.” Yes, that’s an old term that should maybe be turned into “good stockpersonship.” But working with herding dogs, sheepherding is a heritage going back generations. Most importantly it is farmers treating their animals kindly, with respect, and we should do that with wild geese too, no matter who may be annoyed at them. Puppies even if they can actually herd, are too playful on livestock, scare the sheep or poultry too much.

Moses has been raised like any pup we have had. With Tara our two-year-old sweetheart of Border Collie it was the same, except every pup, every dog has its personality, its learning curve. The relationship you establish along with the love and security and confidence you nurture your pup within its first year is very important. You can, of course, suffocate the pup or young dog with love and not allow him or her to explore the world and learn about the animals it will work with, the environment it will live and work in. The pup also needs to learn about good social interaction with humans and members of his dog pack and dogs outside, as well.

The simple verbal  “commands,” I mentioned are the bases of you and your pups or adoptive herding dog’s relationship beyond the bond you share. The pup or dog’s name and a stop command “lie down” or “lie” and the recall ” come” or come here” should be thought and practiced until both you and your partner feel comfortable with the interactions. Having a Border Collie that ignores its name is a sign that you have a bad connection with your pup or dog. Border Collies are a very willing breed. And a goose dog or farm dog that does not stop when asked can lead to dangerous situations. A dog that can not learn how to handle his or her job with care and respect is not working at all properly. A  recall command will save you a lot of time and aggravation.

In his excellent book on working Border collies, ” The Sheep Dog”, David and Charles, 1976,  Tim Longton ( as written with Edward Hart) says that Border Collies were developed to save time and human resources on the farm. The breed was selected into a superior herding breed. And when the book was written it was getting harder to get farm hands or the ability to pay them in the UK. A tradition developed, that is how to handle these “collie dogs” and work with them. These herding techniques are time-saving with other efficient applications as well. All this applies to goose control. Border Collies are an effective, time-saving, human resources saving way to tackle  problem populations of wild geese. Good goose control practice does not matter what State you are in, New York or Connecticut or Massachusetts…to name the ones we operate. Above all, as Tim Longton underscores in his book, practical and caring practices with Border collies, go hand in hand.