Dry work, the key to success

The Sheep moving off JJ

There was an interesting conversation not to long ago in regards to "Dry Herding", I had to laugh as old time group members poo poo'ed the idea of putting training effort into their dogs and/or themselves without either livestock or their dogs.

Dry Work is an important part of my training program, this afternoon and tomorrow I will begin leash breaking our 9 week old pups, the way in which I do it will be relative to the way we will communicate when it is time to go to livestock. I will teach them left, right, forward and stop. No, it has nothing to do with stock right now, but it has to do with me and building a line of communcation that can be flung wide open when the time comes that they are our working stock. It's not only about what they can do with livestock, it's about what they can do with the livestock while following my direction.

Dry Work comes in many shapes and sizes, when you visualize what a flank should look like in your brain before you ask for it. It is also dry work when you yourself goes out and moves around the stock applying pressure in different locations to see how the stock responds.

Pressure is pressure, regardless of who applies it, what is different is the level of respect that is held for who ever is applying the pressure. Then there is the case of fear, if the applier is feared or is deemed unpredictable the reaction of the stock will also be unpredictable. We want our dogs to be predictable and to treat livestock fairly, if the do so the livestock will respond in kind.