A Sheepdog in the family

We have been away over the last week packing up our other house amongst other things. On Saturday me and my friend Charlotte together with the help of Conor, did our first proper wedding. It went very well and the weather held off which was great but it was such hard work and felt like a really long day!

Anyway onto the dog stuff, yesterday we all headed down to Diamond Dog training in Somerset for another day with Mike Bacon. Conor and Heidi had an agility lesson with Claire which went very well but me and Meg did something very different.

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We were booked in for an introduction to herding session. There were four dogs, two collies a Kelpie and Meg and let me just say she was a little star! We started off by practicing getting the dogs to go into the down then getting them to walk forward a little and then down again. Lets just say Meg needs to work on her down! Next we were getting them to run around an imaginary pen of sheep (See above) but Meg again wasn't overly interested and I thought to myself that this was going to be a very long day!

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After a short break we headed over to the field with the sheep in, they were already in a pen but the idea was to let each dog go and to see if their natural instincts lead them to herd the sheep. We went first and Meg went up to the pen and then off she went, running around them in circles getting them to move around in the pen, she was actually doing it without any instruction. I was very surprised, as was Mike I think. The other dogs had their goes and Meg was straining on her lead the whole time to get another go and again when she was allowed to she did exactly the same again, it was brilliant to watch.
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We had another break and Mike told us about how Belgains Shepherds can go across to Europe to take part in a herding assessment and he said Meg would definitely have no problems at all in passing it as it test natural instinct rather than skill and she definitely has it. He said it was one of the best herding from a Belgain that he had seen. He also said he is trying to get the WBSDS to conduct a herding test and is trying to get it set up so if he is successful I will definitely put Meg forward for that.

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All in all it was supposed to be a fun day doing something different and it certainly was, I don't think we are likely to go out and get a flock of sheep or anything but it was great to see how much fun she was having and doing something that comes naturally to her.

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As for the other dogs there, one collie wouldn't go near the sheep, the other wasn't overly bothered by them either. The Kelpie took a while to get into it but then displayed very similar behaviour to Meg so again, the Belgians beat the Collies!

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(Look at that smile!)