While the dog sport world might be filled with Gen-X and Yers who make their pets a significant part of their lifestyle, there are also a lot of younger folks involved in animal husbandry. One site that is catering to that market is Dogged Juniors:
Dog’ged Juniors is a website for kids who love dogs. Our members come from all over the world, and are involved in mushing, agility, disc, flyball, dock jumping, musical freestyle, herding, search and rescue, obedience, conformation, tracking, volunteering for local shelters, guide dog puppy raising, and more.
Our quest is to create positive experiences and support for junior handlers around the world. We are here to make a difference in someone’s life. By guiding kids to become more involved with their dogs, not only does the dog’s quality of life improve, but so does the kid’s. This keeps dogs out of shelters and kids of of trouble. We hope that our members will be involved in training their dogs twenty years down the trail, and if not, they will remember this learning experience and pass on to the next generation.
While the Dog’ged Juniors tareget audience is the under 18 crowd (I don’t suppose too many of them read this blog, or are allowed to), the site has great information for handlers of all ages.
One piece in particular is some advice from Donald McCaig to Novice Sheepdog Handlers that appears in the interview section:
Name: Donald McCaig
Location:
Farm Name: Yucatec Farm
Books You Have Authored: Nop’s Trials, Nop’s Hope, and Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men. A Useful Dog will be out next spring.
Can you tell us about yourself? The first thing to remember is that every expert was once a novice. The second thing is there’s nothing new under the sun. Stockmen have been breeding and training stockdogs for at least three hundred years before clickers and shock collars were invented. Nobody sensible uses either training stockdogs.
The Lifestyle
Why participate in herding? How can someone get started? There are two reasons to get involved in stockwork: you want to have fun with your dog; or you want to work livestock. If the former, many dog breeds will more or less chase sheep and most can be trained to stop on command. There are hundreds of instructors offering “herding” lessons and any number of events sponsored by the American Herding Breed Assn, the Australian Shepherd Club of America and the AKC. Find them on the web. You’ll have fun, your dog will have fun and you’ll probably learn a thing or two. Next, you’ll want an instructor. Traditional sheep and cattle trials are listed at www.USBCHA.Com. Attend a trial, and talk to the handlers. Most are willing to help novices and many give lessons and clinics.
What is the best breed to work with? If you actually want to work livestock, your choices are narrower. You’ll want a Border Collie, McNab or Kelpie. There are a few working Australian Shepherds but you have to know where to find them.
Training
Can tell us about the training involved? Training and handling a stockdog is very easy and very difficult – easy because the dog is bred for the work and will, if you don’t mess him up, do the work in a rough and ready fashion. What’s difficult is that third species: the sheep, cattle, hogs or poultry you’re working. If you can’t read sheep, you won’t get far with the best sheepdog in the world.
Trialing
When is a dog ready to trial? The scots say, a sheepdog is ready to trial when it has as many years under it as legs. They also say it takes ten years to make a handler. Half true – it took me that long. But as you get better you and your dog will have tremendous challenging fun in beautiful country locations, among some of the most dog savvy people on the planet. It’s a friendly country culture and everybody wants you and your dog to succeed.
Do you have any advice for a Jr. handler? And sometimes young people – those with horse or livestock backgrounds – abbreviate the learning curve. Derek Fisher ran in the top twenty at the National Finals Sheepdog Trials and Haley Howard competed at the World Trial in
Good luck, stay calm, and have fun with your dog.
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Donald McCaig writes, “everybody wants you and your dog to succeed.” I am a little doubtful of that claim. In the conformation dog show a border collie owner will often tell a newcomer that their dog is “pet quality”. This normally happens when the dog is good. If the dog actually were pet quality then the newcomer would be told, “your dog is great! I hope you come to the next show.” The reason is that at conformation shows the more dogs that are there the more points the winner receives. So any normal person who wants their dogs to win will try to keep the lower border collies around while discouraging the attendance of the best border collies.
To the best of my knowledge this is the culture in every breed of dog. If you take any breed of dog to a conformation show and five “experts” on your breed come up to you and politely tell you that your dog is not show material you should take what they say with a grain of salt. That is what you should expect would happen if your dog is competitive with the best dogs at the show. Your competitors would assume that if you look like you don’t know what you are doing that you don’t know if your dog is good or not.
If herding people are better than that then congratulations to them. But I doubt it. People are people. If a conformation person gave Donald McCaig’s advise to juniors I would judge it to be extremely harmful. If Donald McCaig’s advise is wrong on the goodness of herding people, and if he is aware of his advise being wrong, then it is heinous for him to give that advise.