Well I got my sample copy of the Stockdog Journal. This publication is very nicely put together, starting with the quality of the paper used, to the photos, articles, calendar, trial results and writeups.
One particular section I found very interesting was "A Discussion with Tony McCallum." This is a question an answer style discussion with Tony. He is asked about young dogs that body bite and whether they are biting out of fear. Tony says, "I will not keep a body biter ... I don't even like a dog that slides up the flank, behind the eye to bit a head ..." and how "body biters lack stock sense." Now I know Tony works cows, and I am strictly sheep, but I understand the type of biter he's talking about and completely agree with him about them lacking stock sense. I had one. Her name was Kiva. I've previously written about her in this blog. But there are tons of these types of dogs out there, and people proudly display their photos all over the place. There's a photo I saw that sticks out in my head that illustrates this very well. In that photo, you can see the lamb running at a good clip, and the dog is obviously running along side it and biting it just to bite it. If the dog had more stock sense, it would have kicked out, gotten in front of the lamb, and there would have been no need to bite the lamb at all. Kiva did this kind of stuff quite often. I was always afraid that I would be stitching sheep up after working her. Someone was always needlessly bleeding.
The rest of the article discusses lots of useful training techniques, mostly dealing with working cattle, but very practical advise that applies to sheep work as well.
There is also a short, but very well written article by Robin French on "What is a Correction?" Simple. Effective. To the point.
The photos are great! I love seeing the photos of dogs whose names I only read about in trial results, etc. There is a wonderful watermark photo of Don Helsley and Cap. The photo was taken by Laura Esterman and is a lovely backdrop for the National Finals Nursery Results.
Excellent job on the magazine, Nicole! I look forward to the new issues!
Happy tails,
JD
p.s. - Oh, Ms. Empathetic ... I voted. I hope you did, too.
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