SHEEPDOG
When a beginner approaches the sheepdog activity coming from the agility world, he/she is surprised by the dog’s calmness and absence of anxiety. It is an unexpected condition for whom has always seen a Border Collie greedily chasing a ball, biting the arm of its owner or a track assistant by excitation. Agility is a beautiful sport and at high levels dogs are lead excellently, they are solid minded and know very well when it is time to work and the rules; unfortunately, many inexperienced and sometimes second-rate handlers believe that in order to win in agility competitions the dog needs to be hyperactive, always anxious...and let the dog get exploited unlikely what a handler with expertise would do. Then, when they see a dog working with a herd, they are astonished because generally it gives an impression of calmness, certainty and tranquillity and when it has finished its job, it stays quietly tied at a pole watching the others, it does not get into troubles if let free from the leash and on the whole it obeys without or just a little calls, and fear. With this article I would like to explain why this happens. First of all, I am not an agility expert, since I have not practiced that activity for a long time: secondly, this is not an easy article (and I know that it would make some agility instructor saying something bad about me!) because of my poor ability and also: sheepdog and agility are not comparable in terms of “right or wrong”, simply they are two distinct activities. The first one, however, is more complete than the second one: rather, working with herds already involves, although in a small amount, all the agility dog practice! But let us go on orderly. Why sheepdogs are generally much quieter and controlled? The ultimate aim of the sheepdog is not competition or the dog and owner pleasure, but rather the working animal wellness, which is obtained through a stress-preventive activity. To prevent stress, a communication relationship has to be established between man, dog and sheep, where the dog is an instrument for interacting with animals. The more that "instrument" is quiet, precise and self-confident, the more control on the flock will be easy; it is for that reason that specialized breeds have been born such as the Border Collie and the Australian Kelpie, which are breeds where often biting is genetically inhibited and that manifest -through a posture called "eye" – the attempt to move around the animals with the least disturb. In the sheepdog activity, the prize is not a ball or something else at the end of the race, but the possibility itself to work with sheep, which is for well-bred Border Collies the main objective of their life; indeed, to "punish" an unruly sheepdog, the most common technique consists of keeping the dog away from its desired object: sheep! Denying it to work is a real and very strict punishment. the sheepdog is a complex activity and requires from the dog a whole series of natural abilities: inborn instincts for leading the herd; sense of responsibility and independence together with the ability to obey corrections, robust and pain-resistant physical structure, ability to relax, speed, agility, bravery and – last but not least – intelligence. Moreover, there are other abilities which have to be learned through training, such as a visual and verbal communication system and mainly the conviction that the owner is the best and most admirable creature in the world. An agility dog does not necessarily need to have all those features; it does not need instinct, for instance, or much resistance to pain and fatigue, because it does not have to work all day but only for ten minutes of weekly training or those 35 seconds in competition. Independence is not considered as a positive element in agility, because the dog has to face obstacles in an established order and in a sequence indicated by the handler on the run. On the contrary in sheepdog, often the dog has to decide autonomously; both because no handler is capable of having a comprehension of the flock like a dog through its ancestral hunting instinct, and because it often works at a big distance in situations where the handler is not visible or audible. Therefore, a sheepdog has to decide according to its own instinct and intelligence when to listen to the handler and when to work by its own initiative. A dog should always need the ability to relax and this ability should be increased through training; but often, even in gifted subjects, this ability is neglected and removed because many inexperienced people believe that an agility dog should always be over-excited to be a winner, something that fortunately I have never seen in high level dogs. A sheepdog incapable of relaxing is a useless dog because, instead of keeping the sheep quiet, it scares them; the dog transfers to them its nervousness and makes them surly and uncontrollable; each training session can become an endless battle to dominate the dog. For this reason, the sheepdog training consists of making the dog as cold and lucid minded as possible, in order to be calm and confident enough to keep the situation under control. A well bred Border Collie is a representative of a breed born to work with herds which reaches a balance – that is, to develop in full its nature – through carrying out this activity, which is the most complete one because its the activity that breed has been created for. Of course there are remarkable exceptions: in theory you may have a balanced dog through other activities and different training…but it’s easier said than done. It is visible to everybody that, in fact, great part of agility dogs has problems and compulsive behaviour that a sheepdog (even in the hands of a low rated handler) does not have. Sometimes I go with my sheepdogs to agility courses in the neighbourings; it is evident that by just hearing the shouting and watching all that moving around puts on the dog tension and excitement. That means the dog is not thinking. Sometimes I have handlers coming from agility with excellent dogs which have developed behavioural problems in that activity, such as biting people, relentlessly repeating the same sequence, and too much focusing on the handler. If the dog is intelligent, has instinct and it is caught before the bad habits reach serious levels, it is still possible to correct them; otherwise the dog will never be adult, a complete and self-confident individual, but a "half" dog. My questions are then the following: a) Why not postponing the agility training to an age where the dog is physically and mentally mature? b) Why not letting the dog approaching first the sheepdog activity, so that it can reach maturity before addressing it to other disciplines? For sure, I know that in other countries many people work this way; in Italy, from what I got to know listening to the opinions of some successful handlers, it is thought to be negative for a dog. I could mention thousands of examples to demonstrate that a sheepdog is more complete than an agility dog, but it would be enough to watch a dog working to understand that. A fully trained dog is able to hear whistled orders from his owner at over 1km distance: to stop, to look back and to look for other sheep, to turn right or left, to jump fences or walls, to twist his body in order to go through a gate, and to crawl under a lorry. In agility all these things are "outlined", "excessive" and transformed for sport purposes, whereas in sheepdog they have to be part of the basic ability and must be carried out with "calmness and rapidity". Moreover, as previously said, the aim is communication with the flock through a dog, which has to respond to commands and also to use actively its own brain. And isn’t that what is carried out to a small extent, more rapidly and less quietly, in agility?
Riccardo Borroni
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