Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[Southern by choice]

OK. My border collies should be highly trainable and yet "come" is not even a suggestion with them. Sit, stay, down, quiet, show me your tummy...those they follow and yet "come" has never been in their vocabulary.

@Mike CHS I certainly wouldn't hesitate loving on those LGDs. They are beautiful.

Rita definitely acts more like her mastiff/pyr lineage... come is like a foreign language to her.
I plan on really working some obedience in now.
She responds well to when I need to correct her... she will drop, sit, down.... but more so when she knows she is in trouble. LOL
She has these eyes... you can never stay mad at her for more than a second IF you look at those eyes. Sometimes I have to avert my eyes... or I'll break into a pile of mush.
I love Rita. Everyone loves Rita. She is the most kissed on dog ever- sometimes I feel bad for her.

 

[Mike CHS]

SBC I know exactly what you mean. The Aussie is kind of goofy but she doesn't anticipate what needs to be done as well as the Border Collie but both of them have gotten some kine of training every day of their lives and will as long as they are working.

Babs - the Aussie was in a 'stay' the whole 1/2 hour we were out there moving netting.

The LGDs were calm but they don't let the Aussie out of their sight.

 

[Mike CHS]

I love Rita. Everyone loves Rita. She is the most kissed on dog ever- sometimes I feel bad for her.

Maisy gets more loving than the herd dogs and those two live in the house.

 

[Baymule]

It's hard to beat Big Hairy Dog Hugs!

 

[Pastor Dave]

It amazes me the sets of dogs can work out ok to do the jobs they are both supposed to do. I can't imagine a LGD or pair allowing another dog or set to come in to herd them for you. It is two different jobs of course, so what do you do to the LGDs to allow your herders to work?

 

[Mike CHS]

My LGDs aren't ready for that yet but they will be (but it's a slow process). We know a bunch of people that train their dogs for herding trials. The pup isn't there yet but I can put Maisy in or near her hut and tell her stay and she will not bother the Border Collie when he is in. All bets are off though if she sees something that she thinks she needs to check out and she will be off and we don't try to stop her since we are in "Her" paddock. If we want to just train we use the training pen but if we are in one of the big pens we stop working until Maisy is comfortable with whatever alerted her and she goes back to or near her shelter and usually just sits and watches. If she thinks there is danger she will stay out and we either stop working with the herding dogs and if there is something that needs to be done with the sheep the BC gets taken out and I get the feed bucket. The puppy wants to help the BC herd the sheep so he has to be put up for now. Maisy had to be put up the 1st couple of times until she figured out the sheep weren't being hurt.

If you want to work herding dogs that the LGD does not know they have to be put up and normally completely out of sight so they can't see the working dogs move the sheep. I've had experienced trainers work with us over the years but this is our first time to actually implement the process.

 

[Mike CHS]

@Pastor Dave I didn't mention that until recently I couldn't get the Aussie anywhere near the electric netting because Maisy doesn't like the ghost eye the Aussie has and I don't want to put Maisy in a situation where she might think she needs to challenge the netting. It has been a ton of baby steps with those two.

 

[Bruce]

Figured I likely knew what "ghost eye" was but looked it up. I was right but found some interesting facts on Australian Shepherds ... like they aren't from Australia and never were!!

• Most likely their predecessors came from the Basque region of the Pyrenees Mountains.
• Their origins may be hazy, but the breed was perfected here in the U.S.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/70628/11-active-facts-about-australian-shepherd

 

[Mike CHS]

Bruce - I've read all kinds of guesses about how they got that name but they definitely didn't come from there.

 

[greybeard]

Catahoula hounds also have what we always called ghost, merle, or glass eyes.
lots of different names for them in the deep south.
Some of those have more than one color in the same eye--a 'cracked' eye.