A Herding Pup Takes Its First Steps
Kili finds her own way round the flock at age 14 weeks
All parents know how thrilling it is to watch a baby take its first halting steps -- in fact, the baby, too, often will show its real delight by laughing aloud as it manages this human accomplishment of walking on its own two feet.
I enjoyed a similar experience with one of my pups last week. Kili has been exposed to sheep every day of her short life from the age of four weeks to her present age of three and a half months. She has grown up in a pen immediately next to ewes and lambs in our barn. Since Kili was five weeks old, several times each week she has accompanied me as I walk through the sheep paddocks and pastures with about 50 sheep spread out and grazing. The pup noticed the sheep as part of her natural world, along with birds (which she chased) and gopher holes (which she sniffed).
As we entered a field, all the sheep would flock together, sensing the presence of a dog. The pup did not wear collar or leash and was not commanded to do anything nor was she prevented from doing anything that came into her head. I simply let her herding nature take its course. At age five weeks, Kili was content to stay near me most of the time as I walked alongside the grazing flock. She would occasionally stop and look intently at a sheep which was standing slightly apart from the rest of the flock. The single sheep, feeling the gaze of even a young pup, would move closer to the flock. Kili would then come running to me, very pleased with her "work."
As the weeks passed and Kili grew to ten weeks old, she became more independent and often became totally engrossed in sniffing out a gopher hole on one side of the flock; I would leave her side of the flock and quietly go to the other side. After a while, she would look up and see me far away with all those sheep between us. Her wish to be with me would overcome her momentary independence and she would come running directly toward the flock to get to me. I let her figure out which route to take to get to my side of the flock, because I knew that I would learn something about her attitude toward the sheep if I just stayed quiet and observed how she solved her problem.
Oh, Joy! She would come flying around the large, now spread-out flock of sheep. She did not bolt through the flock but stayed outside the flock's safety zone so that the sheep stood quiet and content as she came along an invisible boundary line around them. Now I had her number. I realized that I could use her instinct to stay outside the flock in order to teach her something more about sheep work. She was trying to take a few baby steps and it was up to me to "hold her hand" until she was ready to try a solo performance.
From age ten weeks, as we entered a pasture, Kili would leave my side and go out toward any stray sheep that had not immediately gone into the flock as we entered the area. As she approached a group of strays, they would begin to move quickly toward the flock. The pup would stop pursuing them as they reached the large group of sheep, and then she and I would walk up and down the whole length of the flock as it moved toward the gate of its home pen. We did not pressure the flock so that it went fast or scattered. Kili would run ahead of me to the first sheep in the line; then she would turn and come back to me. She would pass around me and go back to the last sheep in the line. For a period of three weeks, we continued this conditioning for her later work.
Then one day when she was fourteen weeks old, we were in a five-acre pasture doing the exercise described above and Kili decided it was time to do something on her own, something totally new, which we had never even done as a team. She left my side, running to the head of the flock. She did not stop and come running back to the rear of the flock as she ordinarily would have done.
As she reached the head sheep in a flock of more than 50 adult ewes, she paused a moment; she eyed a particularly stubborn ewe at the head of the flock and stopped the forward motion of the line of sheep. Then she crossed the head of the flock, reached the opposite side and ran quietly along the line of sheep, not scattering, splitting or disturbing the flock. When she reached the rear of the line of sheep, she crossed over to my side of the flock, again without disturbing the flock. She looked up and saw me, pinned her ears back and came galloping alongside the flock, grinning widely and saying with her puppy body language, "Was I just great -- or what?!!"
I was as pleased as she was, of course. Kili had demonstrated that she understood the concept of the safety zone that must surround a flock. When a dog trespasses that visible or invisible line, the sheep often panic and scatter. A tending dog recognizes that sometimes invisible, but always inviolable boundary of its flock.
We celebrated Kili's success and left the field in triumph. She had taken a giant baby step that day in her progress toward Herdengebrauchshund.
The picture below comes courtesy of Beth Johnson and Ulf Kintzel. It shows the goal that Kili was working toward by taking her first baby steps in the work of a Haupthund, the "main dog" that can work at a distance from the herdsman.
Contact Ann Garner at Herdenhunde vom Weiher with your comments or questions
Register Your Pup in Millennium Foundation Stock Database
Add Your Comments to our German Shepherd Web Board
