A few years ago I read a post by one of the top working Border Collie People here in the North East, Carol Campion.In the post, she talked about a “three species relationship.” Carol Campion was trying to get her readers to think about how working with Border Collies, or any herding or stock dog, and the sheep make up a three species relationship.
Border Collies were initially bred to “work” sheep in Great Briton and Ireland. However, as we do here on our homestead, they can “work,” herd, poultry, and other farm stock as well. The implication is that You, the being in charge of the situation, supposedly, should well understand your dog, and not forget that You need to understand the sheep. Of course, people should “get” themselves! Without a handler thinking about and even contemplating his or her actions and thoughts when working with a dog and livestock, failure will be close at hand. But, back to the dogs.There is a lot to know about dogs, to be in a “working/living” relationship. A handler should have a deep understanding of the breed he or she is working with, Border Collie, Kelpie, Aussie, for examples. And that individual dogs are, well, individuals. And to make things more complicated, sheep are much more variable than most people think. If you farm sheep, you know there are many different breeds, all with a variety of instincts, behaviors. Instincts make “working” with sheep very interesting. Some breeds are “high strung,” some breeds are “Mello.” These variabilities mean that when You are trimming sheep hoves or giving them medication, what sheep you are working will be either easy to handle or complicated or very hard to restrain. It is important to know, understand sheep when herding them with a dog. Flight Distance in different breeds can be huge. If a handler and dog rush some breeds, the sheep will run so hard that they will end up on a hill somewhere completely out of bounds. Sometimes sheep “turn” and face a dog.This is a challenge to the dog. And Your Border Collie needs to have the skill to handle the situation properly.
When it comes to goose control with our Border Collies, and our one mix breed, it’s a bit less complicated than sheep. Canadian Geese are instinctually pretty much all the same. Or at least that is how it appears to me in the 16 years we have been chasing geese for clients in New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Geese on a pond or a field react to being worked, herded/chased by our dogs pretty much the same way.However, there are variables. How the sheep and geese respond to herding or herd/chase, all depends on the experiences the sheep or geese have encountered. For instance, if someone tried to scare off geese in the past and it was not competent enough, I call this a “weak scare.” Geese will become resilient to being chased. Imagine that? If sheep have been handled/herded roughly, they will take off quickly, and you might have a mess on your hands. You may have sheep that are so hard to work with that they can never be adequately taken care of and take up too much of your time. We have neighbors who had sheep that were so out of control that they could never be penned and would go around unlocking gates to pig pastures, letting all the pigs run wild all over the nearby hills. If geese/sheep are not convinced from experience that someone who is herding or herding-chasing them “means business”, they will not move off and even can become resilient to future efforts.
However, there is an added layer of relationships during goose control client visits.It is not just handler and dogs and geese. We take two or three dogs on each client visit. We also have relationships with all the people and wild animals and birds in the environments we are working. We encounter people fishing, riding bikes, pushing baby carriages, driving cars, playing ball, picnicking.Working in public environments makes goose control complicated, and my sons and I assess the situation on any property we work before we start actively herding-chasing the geese.
All this comes down to what anyone on a farm or herding/chasing geese can do legally and ethically. And I am convinced that people who are “rough” on their dogs and animals, to use old-time words, are the “poorer” for it. What goes around comes around, cause and effect. The best teams of human handlers and dogs are those that have very good relationships. Both the human and dog have made an effort to study each other and the sheep if its farming or geese if its goose control. Working and living with our border collies, and yes that mixed breed Nash( see the “Our Border Collies” page) has been full of lessons hopefully many learned. Its been a joy doing this with my Family, I think we are a good team( see the “About Us” page.)
And above all, as another one of the top working Border Collie handlers, Chris Bowen said to us participants at what is called a learning sheepdog trial. ” Work on your relationship with your dog.” This response was about someone’s issue with their dog, but of course, that applies to all our relationships.