anyone doing herding with their dogs? I think I’m getting a border collie puppy. I’m on the list but not sure exactly how long that list is. Thinking of agility and or dock diving or frisbee stuff.
Very excited but so many people are scaring me about the breed…but I’m super active with my current dogs and want to do more…
Would love to hear about what you do with your border collie and teach me about herding!
[QUOTE=altermetoday;8739293]
anyone doing herding with their dogs? I think I’m getting a border collie puppy. I’m on the list but not sure exactly how long that list is. Thinking of agility and or dock diving or frisbee stuff.
Very excited but so many people are scaring me about the breed…but I’m super active with my current dogs and want to do more…
Would love to hear about what you do with your border collie and teach me about herding![/QUOTE]
We used to train border collies for cattle herding.
Also obedience and agility, but we did that with all our dogs.
We had quit tracking by the time we had border collies.
There are different kinds and levels of herding, your dog may or not have any herding instinct and if it does, you will need to work with whatever traits of that instinct it shows once it turns on to herding.
Your dog may start herding as a puppy, or it may not turn on until mature, many do around five or six months.
Some lines are better than others for herding, some for sheep, some for cattle, generally the ones that are more biddable are trained for sheep herding trials, the tougher ones for cattle, all will work anything, but to compete you need more refined skills and the dog’s instinct will depend what you can do.
If all you want is a herding title from some group, like AKC, that is very different than training and competing in herding trials.
If that is what you want, you should get a dog from proven parents to hopefully have a good chance at an adequate dog for the task at hand.
Now, for agility, most any border collie will be great at that, the handler generally be the one that may not measure up to the dog.
Not familiar with dock or frisbee training and competing, sorry.
Wonderful dogs! But boy, do they need a JOB! See my post below 
I do herding with my sheltie - she took some time to get comfortable with being off leash. Something I hear over and over is that herding is a confidence builder, so you may start out with some pretty embarrassing runs (last week our teacher commented thatI was walking a lot in our last run). Also that it’s not as predictable as rally or agility- sheep, ducks, cattle are all unpredictable especially if you are trialing at a different farm than the one you train at. Sometimes dogs from non-herding lines still turn out to be nice little workers and at worst, it’s a nice weekend outside.
Long and short of it - it’s fun and of all the sports we do with our sheltie, the herding folks are the friendliest.
I took herding lessons for 4 years with my dog. We were failures but I am hooked so I retired my dog and I will be training with a schoolmaster. (!) As others have suggested- it’s really challenging. Training dog and owner and predicting stock behavior and following a course… and, of course, trying not to fall down while walking backwards!
I love BCs and there are some softer ones that are really biddable. I’m a collie person (Lassie-type, but smooths for me) and a good BC is the only dog that could get me to leave my “breed”.
[QUOTE=scruffy the cat;8739349]
I took herding lessons for 4 years with my dog. We were failures but I am hooked so I retired my dog and I will be training with a schoolmaster. (!) As others have suggested- it’s really challenging. Training dog and owner and predicting stock behavior and following a course… and, of course, trying not to fall down while walking backwards!
I love BCs and there are some softer ones that are really biddable. I’m a collie person (Lassie-type, but smooths for me) and a good BC is the only dog that could get me to leave my “breed”.[/QUOTE]
Oh, yes, you need steel toed footwear when you start herding seriously, because you get stepped on regularly as the well trained few hair sheep used to start a dog keep runing over you.
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