Greetings from Logan's Land

[SageHill]

While it is structured, flexibility is allowed in the French course. The graze is just an area to graze, doesn't require furrows or a specific delineation. The area can be defined as simple as posts in the ground. It is much more like AHBA Large Flock. It is truly based on a typical day. C course is very much structured whereas French course not as structured, and much more free flowing. Like placement before the flock -- C course requires the dog to stop before entering the graze, and then stop 3 more times inside the graze without turning the flock until the last stop. Truly artificial. There are other things that are artificial throughout the course. Things that, when actually DOING that type of work in real life make no sense. But that is the way it is. When one chooses to compete or judge it's those rules that you sign up for. AKC says the dog will do XYZ then I will run my dog to do XYZ, or if I'm judging that is what I judge, not what I think is better.
The graze in the trial says the handler will be opposite the side the dog is on. Another artificial. I do this almost every day in real life, I do not stand on the opposite side of the graze area (which is more define by the dog and the sheep based on what the sheep are eating and need to eat). I'm any where I want to be, quite often yanking up bad weeds, trimming trees in and around that area, fixing stuff, etc.
All that said, while I have trialed my dogs on all the courses and titled up to and including herding trial champion, I have found that when I decided to trial my regular work with the dogs suffers because I change what I do to match up to what AKC wants. Now living here on the ranch, work here is more important than trialing, so I stopped trialing a couple years ago.

Your dog not going around the graze - not required, she only needs to be in a position to keep the sheep INSIDE the furrow (or whatever the club has set up as lines) that defines the graze. She only needs to be in a position to maintain the sheep in the graze without going into the graze area. Since she's a rescue, goodness only knows what or how she was handled or the sheep she was exposed to. Tough sheep can turn a dog off just as easily as training that doesn't match the dog and its temperament.

If you go to the SageHill Ranch Journal ---
Forums>Social>Member's "BackYardHerds" Journals>SageHill Ranch Journal
there are tons of pics of my dogs working. Mostly Obi (now 10) and Zo (now 3).
Link is:

SageHill Ranch Journal

First - I wish I'd found this group years ago - I'm loving reading everyone's journals and learning a lot as I do. You all rock and thank you for sharing! It's HOT here in So Cal - and I've been staying cool inside reading, and decided - what the heck jump into the journal pool under the AC vent...

www.backyardherds.com

 

[Logan's Land]

While it is structured, flexibility is allowed in the French course. The graze is just an area to graze, doesn't require furrows or a specific delineation. The area can be defined as simple as posts in the ground. It is much more like AHBA Large Flock. It is truly based on a typical day. C course is very much structured whereas French course not as structured, and much more free flowing. Like placement before the flock -- C course requires the dog to stop before entering the graze, and then stop 3 more times inside the graze without turning the flock until the last stop. Truly artificial. There are other things that are artificial throughout the course. Things that, when actually DOING that type of work in real life make no sense. But that is the way it is. When one chooses to compete or judge it's those rules that you sign up for. AKC says the dog will do XYZ then I will run my dog to do XYZ, or if I'm judging that is what I judge, not what I think is better.
The graze in the trial says the handler will be opposite the side the dog is on. Another artificial. I do this almost every day in real life, I do not stand on the opposite side of the graze area (which is more define by the dog and the sheep based on what the sheep are eating and need to eat). I'm any where I want to be, quite often yanking up bad weeds, trimming trees in and around that area, fixing stuff, etc.
All that said, while I have trialed my dogs on all the courses and titled up to and including herding trial champion, I have found that when I decided to trial my regular work with the dogs suffers because I change what I do to match up to what AKC wants. Now living here on the ranch, work here is more important than trialing, so I stopped trialing a couple years ago.

Your dog not going around the graze - not required, she only needs to be in a position to keep the sheep INSIDE the furrow (or whatever the club has set up as lines) that defines the graze. She only needs to be in a position to maintain the sheep in the graze without going into the graze area. Since she's a rescue, goodness only knows what or how she was handled or the sheep she was exposed to. Tough sheep can turn a dog off just as easily as training that doesn't match the dog and its temperament.

If you go to the SageHill Ranch Journal ---
Forums>Social>Member's "BackYardHerds" Journals>SageHill Ranch Journal
there are tons of pics of my dogs working. Mostly Obi (now 10) and Zo (now 3).
Link is:

SageHill Ranch Journal

First - I wish I'd found this group years ago - I'm loving reading everyone's journals and learning a lot as I do. You all rock and thank you for sharing! It's HOT here in So Cal - and I've been staying cool inside reading, and decided - what the heck jump into the journal pool under the AC vent...

www.backyardherds.com

I'll have to look into this. Any web sites you'd recommend, or books? In addition to your site? I looked online and in AKC but couldn't find much of anything. The thing is Skye does keep the sheep in the graze and in fact we take the sheep out into an unfenced pasture because that area needs grazed but it's too wet here to mow so we are doing real tending. Now, I only have 10 sheep so she is smart enough to figure out she can keep track of all 10 without zooming around the border. But others have made the comment that she needs to be more active on the border. She also has to hold them at the gate in the fenced pasture while I open the gate which C course doesn't require. So I've been frustrated that she is not more active on the border and tried all sorts of things, putting hay outside the border, praising while she is walking the border, not sure what else to do, maybe we just need to switch out what type of herding she is doing? So this is what we did the last 2 days with my sheep - Focus was on penning and the graze outside the fencing. We penned, walked a narrow road, turned around re-penned, opened the pen gate then walked onto the open road turned to the bridge road then to the gate that opens out to the unfenced pasture. Stayed on the graze about 30 minutes, cause it's tall, then brought the sheep back into the pasture and re-penned. The last re-pen was textbook! Beautiful!. I've also been thinking about doing D course ,because the instructors out at Terre Norte last July all asked if we had trained/considered that. One of my issues here is I have 3 sheep that came from a gal that did A & B courses with a BC and they are very light, nevertheless they start settling down the more we do. It's just so frustrating to want to do C course (which I did with my previous GSD) but get stuck in one area (the graze) with my current dog. She does get better each time we work so I am at a loss as to what to do. Keep trying C, move on to large flock or move to D (she doesn't have an outrun and I don't know how to teach that, although she does go out on a sharp flank to get the sheep so we can start herding but I know it's not the light bulb shape, or large C I've seen when I've scribed?

 

[SageHill]

But others have made the comment that she needs to be more active on the border.

Wellllllll - IMO they are wrong. If the sheep are right, the dog is not wrong. I feel this way on all courses. Why fix something that is not broken and in real life - where you're out for hours - that constant covering of ground that is in no "danger" of the sheep leaving the defined area is pointless. My dogs will do a lot of the constant movement, but through the years they have figured out they don't have to expend that much energy. It's work getting them back to the turn out pasture or barn.
I swear the dogs easily cover 12 miles of more working, esp on the roads (we do have a dirt road that runs through the ranch) up and back on the sides of the flock. At 10 yrs Obi has figured out he can stop and watch on his own and watch "the kid" - ZO - do the work - but here's the thing, Obi stopping and watching actually seems to have taught Zo to stop and watch. Grazing is not mindless herding as seems to be the thing in AKC C course, but rather working the borders of the graze and (key point here) reading their sheep. Seeing them grazing toward a side or edge and moving themselves to to quietly and calmly prevent the sheep from leaving. In the real world the sheep here may be leaving the area (as they graze - not running or leaving for who knows where) because they need a different plant/vegetation, which is acceptable in real life, OR and this is big - the dog decides that the current area needs to be left because the vegetation is being grazed to heavily. Yeah - definitely not in the AKC playbook. But something that I have watched time and time again. My ranch was an avocado grove that was let go 20-30 yrs ago. Nature retook the land - so the cover that is here is quite varied and the sheep seem to know what they need to eat. It's more transhumant type work.
My original flock had 2 sheep that were trial sheep - they would take awhile to settle in to graze and then for no apparent reason take off and head for the hills (we have HILLS). They'd look up, then take off - the rest of the flock would look at them watch the bolt away and go back to eating. Obviously, those two had not been handled properly either in training or from a bad draw of a dog at trials and learned to run away. Obi would run out - and I had to patiently wait (not easy - it was leave the flock or run to see what was happening - the HILLS here are steep and can be treacherous with rocks and boulders). After awhile the two errant sheep would crest a hill coming back, make it halfway down the hill and then Obi would crest the hill. He'd been a good boy getting and bringing them back.
They did that several times - at which point I decided one of these times Obi may get hurt. SO those two went to the auction. Dangerous animals - for whatever reason - are sent to auction. Not worth the cost of feeding or someone getting hurt or worse. Sorry - I've digressed.
There aren't any books that I know of for the herding like this. I'm guessing the Ulf Kintzel may have some books. I can check around and see if anything else comes up.