Herding sheep is the work border collies were originally bred for. They used to help their shepherds at every days farm work, one border collie replaced five persons. For nowadays this kind of work is not needed in a normal pet dog home, the breeding lines split in ISDS border collies (the working lines) and FCI border collies (the show lines). You can't compare a show dog and a working dog on sheep or in the ring, they are bred for different purposes. Even though our dogs are not necessarily needed at daily farm work, it is still very important to us to keep their "sheep sense" and to preserve the herding instinct for the following generations.
Even though the nearest herding trainers are about 2 hours away from us, we try to work our dogs on a regular basis.
Borderline Country Palucca "Lucy"
The picture gallery shows the first lessons of herding. Lucy. our multi talent, did a good job, she is very alert and interested, with a lot of drive, even though she is a bit stubborn sometimes, thinking it's better to do it her way ;). But she learns quickly, eagerly and easily, as always trying hard to give her best.
In 2018, Lucy did her FCI working exam and took the first place with Excellent (94 points), being the only show dog among the working bred dogs :)))
She also entered a trial class 1 in 2018, passed with 54 points and took the 7. place out of 10. (54 points first run, dis secound run, unfortunately we had to skip the third run for I had to leave earlier for my night shift that day....).
But still not bad for a show dog on her first ISDS trial :)))
 fci herding instinct test |
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 first time on sheep |
Lucy - training and herding instinct test
Borderline Country Winningstyle "Joyce"
Joyce enjoys herding sheep like any other of our dogs, she is very interested and always excited to work. She always gives her best on the sheep, but our other dogs still have a tad more talent than her. We still take her to the sheep because she loves it, but her passion is rocking the show ring and stealing others the show.