Dog Training Update: Herding Challenges

Despite having ZERO time to read for pleasure lately, I’m making my way through a sheepdog book that our herding trainer recommended. It’s called Talking Sheepdogs: Training Your

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Lilly Herding Lesson #2, What Didn’t Go Well

Yesterday, I reported on What Went Well in Lilly’s second herding lesson. Here is a recap of what didn’t go so well.\

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Lilly Herding Lesson #2, What Went Well

Last Thursday, Lilly and I hauled ourselves out to Valdemar Farm for our second official herding lesson. This I know … I’m probably the worst goatherd on the

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Lilly Herding Lesson #1, The Poll

Now that you’ve seen all the videos, read my accounts of other herding lesson events, and considered my ideas on possible causes of Lilly’s relatively poor performance in

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Lilly Herding Lesson #1, Reflections

Let’s resume our discussion of Lilly’s herding lesson with some reflections on the overall experience. As promised, I’ll also clue you into to a couple of details that

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Lilly’s Herding Lesson #1, Part 5

The third and final time Lilly worked the goats during her one-hour herding lesson, we tried something different. Oh, I still played the role of newbie goatherd, but

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Lilly’s Herding Lesson #1, Part 4

After taking a break, during which Lilly smiled and panted wildly but refused to drink any water, we took her back into the training pen. EXCEPT, this time

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Lilly’s Herding Lesson #1, Part 3

In today’s goat herding lesson video, Lilly works the goats in the larger training pen. Again, I don’t want to influence your impressions of what you’ll see, so

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Lilly’s Herding Lesson #1, Part 2

Our herding story continues this week with a video showing Lilly chasing and/or letting the goats go hither and yon. Yes, they ended up spread across three pens,

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Lilly’s Herding Lesson #1, Part 1

Between bouts of silly cold and small-ish snowstorms every 1-3 days, we finally squeezed in Lilly’s second herding lesson on Friday. The weather was clear, with temps in

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