Teaching respect for sheep

[Tiddlypom]

We are a month into teaching our new-to-us 3 yo townie JRT from Bolton about country ways. She’s a lovely dog to have around, but her horizons have been rather limited up to now. It’s very important to us that she’s steady around farm stock, as we live out in the sticks in dairy country. Currently the cattle are indoors in winter housing, but instead the fields are being occupied by overwintering welsh sheep.

Our own resident sheepy winter visitors in our hay field are scatty silly things which bolt as soon as they see me, never mind a dog, so we’ve kept her well away from them.

This little group that we see every morning about half a mile away on our regular walk are however thankfully the perfect training set up. We usually walk past their field just before they get fed, and they hurl themselves enthusiastically at the gate when they see us, baaing loudly and hungrily. Penny from Bolton has learnt to be very respectful of these animals, she gets a treat for ignoring them each day. She’s still on a lead all the time on walks. She’s no longer scared of horses in fields, either.



Progress .

 

[Ranyhyn]

Well done, that is progress

 

[Bradsmum]

Well done. We are planning on getting a JRT this year and we too live out in the sticks and very much in sheep country so will watch out for your progress along the way. I'm hoping we will be able to teach him/her to ignore live stock. I will probably start with my chicken, then the horses and then sheep.

 

[Tiddlypom]

Ah, Bradsmum, while we are getting on well with ignoring larger animals, I think that small furries and feathereds are still apparently considered fair game . We have only met 1 rabbit and 1 chicken out on walks, but she was 0 - 100mph in the blink of an eye, just as well that she was on a lead, so no creatures harmed. Never seen a chicken standing in that driveway before, didn’t even know they kept them, so I wasn’t expecting that! She’s great with other dogs and with humans though, especially children.

This won’t be a problem at home, as we don’t keep chickens but we do have pesky wild rabbits, who need to be dissuaded from residing at and digging holes in our land. JRTs do have this inbuilt chasing instinct, but if you can get one bred on a farm with cats, chickens, horses, livestock etc you're on to a good start. This is what we’ll look for when we get our 2nd JRT (a pup) in the next few months. They are brilliant little dogs (but they are only small on the outside!)

 

[Moobli]

Well done on your success so far.

I have made decent progress with my 16 month old male German shepherd in terms of his learning that sheep are taboo, but then decided to make my life more complicated by adding another prey-driven midget in the shape of a German shepherd bitch puppy. She is now six months and is learning the hard way at the moment that sheep are not her business.

My old GSD helped around the farm and loved working alongside the sheepdogs, moving the livestock around, in the pens etc but for a variety of reasons I have decided these two youngsters won't follow in his footsteps but instead will concentrate on tracking, searching and scentwork and sheep work will be strictly limited to the border collies and working beardies. As they are both quite prey driven I am using mild aversives to persuade them that sheep really aren't even worth looking at. Thankfully both are quite biddable and so I don't have to be too hard. Having had a sheep worrying GSD many years ago it isn't something I wish to repeat and so I need these two to understand it in black/white. I do reward and praise for ignoring livestock too - so am not a total witch

Good luck with your training.