Timing is everything they say. And indeed, if you are going to be successful chasing or as we do, herd-chasing geese with success, timing is so important. That means you and your dogs if you have them, are where you need to be when the geese show up. That means in some cases, early mornings, or it means, being ready when the geese first show up in the Spring. Sometimes timing with goose control means you and your Border Collies need to be prepared as soon as the geese show up for the day. Timing and the type of scare can mean the difference between success and failure.
But there is another type of timing as in time and time and space. Without understanding how geese think and react and if you’re using herding breeds of dogs, like Border Collies, all the time in the world is not as important as timing. There is a debate that time and space are not real at all, the way we understand it. But if you’re on the same page, so to speak with your Border Collies and sheep on the farm and wild geese you may want to control, you need to have a relationship with your dog or dogs, understand each other and each other’s perceptions.
To keep it simple, space is the distance you need to position your dog from the sheep or geese. Time is how long the sheep or geese think they have until the Border Collie gets too close for comfort. You can say it’s time management or time and space management when working Border Collies. How fast the Border Collie is traveling calculating in the distance between the dog and sheep or geese is part of your job. How “nervous” you want to make the sheep or geese is another thing. Typically on the farm, we shepherds want our sheep low stress, so we keep things quiet and calm. We don’t let the Border Collies intrude too much into the sheep’s flight distance. Wild geese flight/flight distance is another thing.
One day last Spring I was practicing herding with our most experienced Border Collie, Skye. We were getting ready for a sheepdog trial in Massachusets. These trials are not only fun and challenging but increase our skill for the goose control. Skye is now seven years old, but she still has an issue rushing her herding with sheep and over working at goose control. Therefore I was practicing with her on her timing with the sheep that day. It was about taking her time, not rushing so much. I was trying to let her know she could do a great job without moving so fast with her herding and sending the sheep in an undesired direction, in the space we had in that field. She could do this by slowing down and leaving more space between her and the sheep.
Skye is learning to see and feel space and time a bit differently. But she still at times rushes things. Space and time are individually perceived after all in dogs and humans I guess. I make allowances for Skye’s individual perception and way of doing things as I, we, do with all our dogs. Individual sheep and different sheep breeds have individual notions of what is comfortable, what is not. You can see this in geese but not as readily. In the end, we are teammates with our dogs, and we work together on the farm and with goose control.” Good dog, Skye!”