Various Spring pics

[WyomingRancher]

This dog lived a good long life and was great till the end even though he had almost no teeth, three legs and one eye. He got blind sided by a new Charolis cow and was killed by her at 15 tears old. I tried to let him stay at the house but he was determined to do his job till the very end and he died doing what he loved to do! I was not allowed to take him on patrol after he was 10 and I gave up K9 rather than replace him.

I have several OK dogs now and have had several OK dogs over the years but one great dog will spoil you!

Well that's just it, you hate to get them injured/killed, but they still want to work, and are miserable if they can't. My Ed dog who I put down last fall gathered heifer calves the morning I had him euthanized. I'm now going down the same path with Casey. They live to work!

Last week I needed to gather 4 heifers which weren't with the others. I was on the wheeler, and thought it would be an easy/safe job for Casey since the distance wasn't too great. Anyhow, I sent her to gather them, and she had them trailing behind me nicely. The next thing I know, she was turned around, chugging off into the horizon :shock: :?.

Now, this dog is built like a tank, and moves as fast as a tank... now with arthritis. Even in her prime, she was never known for speed, but her forte has always been her thoroughness! I've never had a dog with such an exaggerated outrun... you'd send her, then make lunch and eat while she chugged along.

SO, back to my story... so she's chugging along over the horizon, heading for heaven only knows what, when it dawns on me she's planning to gather some black boulders. The poor girl can't see very well anymore, and her hearing is just as bad, so there was no turning her back... in over a decade she'd never left a cow behind, and today wasn't going to be an exception!

I wheelered over to her, picked her up, and put her back on task. We got the heifers corraled, and Casey got a Rimadyl tablet and dog bone for her efforts. She was very happy with herself, and I was happy we got the job done... even with a slight detour .

 

[Faster horses]

I'm so enjoying reading about all the good dogs.I so wish we could
have visited Dylan and seen his dogs when we were on our trip
last fall. It's pretty awesome that they moved the cows off that
berm without any of them thinking they had to run.

Mr. FH thinks there
isn't much better than a good dog and his always mind so well, even
when other dogs are present. We've had three at a time and they knew
who was who and what he wanted of them. I was always impressed that
if they started to run after a deer or a rabbit, that he could call them right
off. He never let them run the wild animals and they always listened to him.

The best dog we ever had was the yellow dog, Zip.
The line of dogs she came from, the fellow that raised them
swore up and down he had a male that could count. When working
cattle in an alley, he would tell the dog to bring him the third one
and the dog would bring him the third one. :shock: I thought he
was exaggerating, but if he was, he never let on. He was so proud
of those dogs. I know that Zip knew what one you wanted...and she
never missed.

When we were on the Powder River and he ran a trap line, when we
were checking cattle, coming home we would be close to his trap line.
The dogs could smell the bait, but he would tell them to 'stay behind'
and they would not detour off the road. They'd have their nose in the
air smelling the bait, but kept trotting right behind the horses.
They were good loyal dogs. All were blue heeler or blue heeler cross
females and all had something they were best at. We thoroughly
enjoyed them. Right now our dog is a fat male blue heeler Aussie
cross and he's probably the most worthless of all the dogs we have
ever had. But he's a good friend.

 

[turkey track]

Thanks Dylan for the offer on a dog but i have two females 3 and 4 along with my older male who can't do much but help with calves in the corral he is 13, and a 7 month old who will take his place working first and if good enough used for breeding. Just sold my last pup of big litter of 9, so its time to spend more time with the younger one. Again good pics nice to see dogs getting used to there potental.

 

[Dylan Biggs]

Dylan

When you are using three dogs at once. Are they trained well enough to do things themselves or when you give commands does each dog have its own (but different from other two) command so you can control each one seperate. I see in one of your pictures the dogs seem to be holding but one is standing and one is down. Just curious how you control the dogs at the same time?

They are awesome. I could look at your dog pictures all the time. I just love good dogs.

Howdy1, the dogs are getting to the point that I can work them seperately, a long slow process, especially since the two black and whites are full sibs and I didn't get them until they were 5 months old, so they were totally bonded to each other. As far as being able to command each dog seperately with different commands for each dog for the same thing, my mind is not quite up to that task. I have a tough enough time just using "come-bye" and "way to me" straight in my own mind even after 25 years. My strategy is just to use there names before the command and slowly they are responding, in addition the dogs themselves are learning to work together strategically by working at different locations. If a guy works with these dogs enough, these border collies are intelligent enough that they figure out the job and the best way to get it done over time more than benefiting from my suspect training. If the dogs are socialized so that they accept you as the leader and they never lose their desire to work because of some one flipping out on them when they don't understand and when they make a mistake, and they are only working when they are with you and not on their own when you are not around, then a few basic commands and lots of chance for them to do what they love to do and they get helpful.

Don't know if that answers your question.

 

[Dylan Biggs]

This dog lived a good long life and was great till the end even though he had almost no teeth, three legs and one eye. He got blind sided by a new Charolis cow and was killed by her at 15 tears old. I tried to let him stay at the house but he was determined to do his job till the very end and he died doing what he loved to do! I was not allowed to take him on patrol after he was 10 and I gave up K9 rather than replace him.

I have several OK dogs now and have had several OK dogs over the years but one great dog will spoil you!

Well that's just it, you hate to get them injured/killed, but they still want to work, and are miserable if they can't. My Ed dog who I put down last fall gathered heifer calves the morning I had him euthanized. I'm now going down the same path with Casey. They live to work!

Last week I needed to gather 4 heifers which weren't with the others. I was on the wheeler, and thought it would be an easy/safe job for Casey since the distance wasn't too great. Anyhow, I sent her to gather them, and she had them trailing behind me nicely. The next thing I know, she was turned around, chugging off into the horizon :shock: :?.

Now, this dog is built like a tank, and moves as fast as a tank... now with arthritis. Even in her prime, she was never known for speed, but her forte has always been her thoroughness! I've never had a dog with such an exaggerated outrun... you'd send her, then make lunch and eat while she chugged along.

SO, back to my story... so she's chugging along over the horizon, heading for heaven only knows what, when it dawns on me she's planning to gather some black boulders. The poor girl can't see very well anymore, and her hearing is just as bad, so there was no turning her back... in over a decade she'd never left a cow behind, and today wasn't going to be an exception!

I wheelered over to her, picked her up, and put her back on task. We got the heifers corraled, and Casey got a Rimadyl tablet and dog bone for her efforts. She was very happy with herself, and I was happy we got the job done... even with a slight detour .

Great, great story WR!!!!

 

[Dylan Biggs]

I'm so enjoying reading about all the good dogs.I so wish we could
have visited Dylan and seen his dogs when we were on our trip
last fall. It's pretty awesome that they moved the cows off that
berm without any of them thinking they had to run.

Mr. FH thinks there
isn't much better than a good dog and his always mind so well, even
when other dogs are present. We've had three at a time and they knew
who was who and what he wanted of them. I was always impressed that
if they started to run after a deer or a rabbit, that he could call them right
off. He never let them run the wild animals and they always listened to him.

The best dog we ever had was the yellow dog, Zip.
The line of dogs she came from, the fellow that raised them
swore up and down he had a male that could count. When working
cattle in an alley, he would tell the dog to bring him the third one
and the dog would bring him the third one. :shock: I thought he
was exaggerating, but if he was, he never let on. He was so proud
of those dogs. I know that Zip knew what one you wanted...and she
never missed.

When we were on the Powder River and he ran a trap line, when we
were checking cattle, coming home we would be close to his trap line.
The dogs could smell the bait, but he would tell them to 'stay behind'
and they would not detour off the road. They'd have their nose in the
air smelling the bait, but kept trotting right behind the horses.
They were good loyal dogs. All were blue heeler or blue heeler cross
females and all had something they were best at. We thoroughly
enjoyed them. Right now our dog is a fat male blue heeler Aussie
cross and he's probably the most worthless of all the dogs we have
ever had. But he's a good friend.

Thanks for sharing that FH, what you said "and all had something they were best at" is so true.

It is very easy to underestimate the intelligence of these working dogs.

You will never get two dogs the same but you can get plenty of help from all sorts of different dogs.

Trixie from day one always had a natural tendency to work singles. So I have done my best to encourage her to work singles. Very frustrating when she was young and you wanted the whole bunch and still today she tends to be singles focused but I have learned to work around that so as not to compromise her skill at working singles. And once she figures out you want a buch she can do that to.