Top O’ the mornin to ya Lads and Lassie’s! 🙂
Although this isn’t a GSD, I thought some of you may be interested to see a little clip of REAL sheep herding on “The Emerald Isle”! The filming isn’t great (I was climbing over fences and trying not to step in sheep pies!) but our Son Tom put this beautiful video together for us! The link is at the bottom of this post.
I contacted our Bed & Breakfast Hostess in Clonakilty Ireland a month before we left and she called her friend Dennis who has a sheep and cow farm. Dennis is an 80 year old LOVELY Irish farmer who loves and appreciates his dogs! It was very surprising to us that we use some of the same training methods for agility training as Dennis does for training his new Border Collie Rock!
A few weeks before we got there, Dennis’ companion, a Border Collie of 9 years old, died of a heart attack. A tear ran down Dennis’ cheek when he spoke about it! Needing a new dog for his sheep, and not wanting to disappoint “the couple from the USA” (so we were told), he drove to a suburb of Dublin (not an easy task on the roads in Ireland: see picture!) and purchased a partially trained dog named Rock. You will see that Dennis keeps Rock on a rope as he is still in training and had to give him corrections. Dennis also told us that a dog needs “courage” (he mentions this in the video) to herd the sheep and most dogs that they are breeding now are loosing their courage.
This was the thrill of a lifetime for us to witness! And it was even more thrilling was when 2 sheep escaped while Dennis was showing and explaining to us how Rock had to “walk on” into the herd of sheep without wavering. Not a problem for Rock! He just went and brought them back!
Click on the bottom right corner of the “photobucket” video to see it full screen.
What a breathtakingly beautiful video and photo. Thanks for posting it. Makes me want to take a certain young man of mine to the Emerald Isle for a class or three!
I could hardly breath seeing this dog work and Ireland’s scenery! Even though it was our 4th time there, it was like the first! 🙂
I’d love to see a video sometime of your boy working sheep!
Patti I think you should pay for me to come along to take pictures and video of Fred in action. I can clear my schedule anytime.
Now you’re talking Lee..we’ll take Brody and Fred!!
Karen, your video is awesome. I must have watched it 5 times already. This is Koda’s next task after PSA, herding!
It was truly a site to behold!
I know whenever you & Koda take up herding, you’ll both be excellent at it! 🙂
That is so cool! What an amazing experience. Thank you (and Tom) for sharing it with us.
Karen please give my thanks to your son tom for putting that video together. The photograph is so beautiful. What is it they say about green you don’t know green until you have been to Ireland. Thank you for sharing some of your adventure.
That’s my boy!
I’ll tell him! 🙂