"Trainers" ...

Finding a Trainer: This is usually one of the most difficult, although most important, areas of stockdogging. Finding the right trainer. A good trainer. A trainer that knows your breed. A trainer with experience doing what you are wanting to accomplish. Someone who can read your dog. Someone who can read you. And someone who is good at communicating to you what you need to know in order to accomplish that goal.

All too often, the person looking for a trainer is way too much of a novice to recognize a poor trainer when they see one. Or they figure that because someone trains, let's say, Corgis, that the person can also train a Border Collie. It's a common novice error and eventually, the person figures it out and moves on.

But I have seen some really scary things out there. There are trainers that take in Border Collies and "train" them even though they don't own one themselves and it's not even their breed of choice, or they will take on students with Border Collies and blow smoke up their ass about how the person has the next great trial dog when, in fact, not only is it too soon to tell, but the "trainer" wouldn't know a good Border Collie if it came up and bit the "trainer" in the ass.

Of all the scary things I have seen, this is by far one of the scariest ones, though. If you ever go to a trainer, and the trainer sends you home with this kind of practice, RUN ... do not walk ... RUN far far away.

DO NOT EVER DO THIS!

(I have written to the owner of the video and asked her to remove it. So if this video disappears, it may be because it was taken down.)

This is what is referred to as "Dry Training," not something you ever want to do. There are many many things wrong with this, but just to mention a couple of real obvious ones:

There is no livestock present. When you are training flank commands, at the very least, when you say "come bye," you want your dog to be looking for livestock and trust you that it is there EVERY time you say it. Could you imagine being at a trial, saying "Come bye" and having your dog run out five feet and turn around waiting for you to throw a little treat for it?

The Clicker. Those of you that know me know that I am a fan of the clicker ... for teaching basic obedience. There are various problems with using a clicker for training stock work. First off, it shifts the "reward" from sheep to you. The dog will continually be looking for its reinforcement from either hearing the click or getting the treat, rather than for being right in relation to the stock, and feeling what right is. Beyond that, what happens when you are training outruns or driving at a distance? Do you need to buy a really big clicker whose sound will go for a long ways?

I could go on and on, but I am sure I don't need to.

Happy tails,
JD