Training Qwill

Pepper and Qwill

Qwill, my little puppy, is now almost 18 months old.   She has a real natural talent on sheep, and I could (should) probably be working a lot more than I have been.  I did get her out to work yesterday, after using Pepper to bring in the flock and sort them.  

I gave her a more difficult group this time, including the anchor sheep (Decker and couple of heavies), plus a flighty young ewe and two lambs.  I wanted to see how she'd handle that.

We were working in the 100 x 100 paddock, and the first mistake (too close) she made, the three flighty ones split off and ran for the gate.  She went after them and it was a bit wrecky with her taking a nip on a heel.  I yelled "HEY" and she dropped to the ground.  She can be sensitive at times even though she is tough in other situations.  Emotionally sensitive while being physically tough, I would say, kind of like Hank was.  

She started playing it safe after that and pretending the three splitters didn't exist.  This is frustrating, to say the least, but every time she dropped to the ground I took her leash and gently pushed her around the group.   I didn't get mad.   After about 6 times of doing the same thing (patience of a saint required!) she began tucking them into the whole group when they would try to leave.  I told her she was such a good girl (without stopping her or distracting too much) and I had her circle in both directions for a while before letting her balance up and walk a little.  Then we called it quits for the day.   I felt like we had made good progress on that issue of handling flighty splitters that day.