{"id":2101,"date":"2018-02-14T18:26:53","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T00:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stockmanship.com\/?p=2101"},"modified":"2018-02-14T18:26:53","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T00:26:53","slug":"teaching-a-dog-to-guard-the-gate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/?p=2101","title":{"rendered":"Teaching a Dog to Guard the Gate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question:\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 One thing that I wanted to quiz you on Bud told me he could teach a dog to watch an open gate in a day, I would like a few tips on this please.<\/p>\n

Answer:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/em> This is the way Bud inadvertently trained two different dogs to guard the gate.<\/p>\n

In about 1960 we were working on a sheep ranch back in the hills in Northern California.\u00a0 One day a timber cruiser stopped at the house looking for a line-marker.\u00a0 Bud and he got to talking about dogs and we had a Border Collie pup Bud was pretty proud of.\u00a0 Patsy was only about 8 months old but was already well on her way to being a very good dog.\u00a0 The entrance to the sheep corrals was a narrow spot between two houses.\u00a0 It was a very difficult place to put the sheep through.\u00a0 There were about 50 sheep in sight so Bud sent Patsy to bring them in.\u00a0 She had a little trouble getting them through the gate, but she really impressed our visitor and managed to do the job.\u00a0 As soon as they went in the corral, Bud sent her to bring them out again.\u00a0 He fooled around with her putting the sheep in and out of the corral while he talked to the timber cruiser.\u00a0 A week or so later, we had to corral the sheep.\u00a0 We had about 800 ewes with their lambs heading right for the gate when Patsy ran to the lead and turned them back.\u00a0 After regrouping we got them going again and she did the same thing.\u00a0 We finally had to put her on a leash in order for the other dogs to be able to corral the sheep.\u00a0 By sending her too quickly to bring the sheep out of the corral when they went in, Bud accidently made her think he didn’t want them in the corral.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to about 1970 . . . We had a young Border Collie that just didn’t have enough force for cattle so we gave him to a friend who ran sheep.\u00a0 In about a week Tommy brought Moss back along with a trailer load of sheep and said “This is a great dog and I don’t want to ruin him.\u00a0 Will you get him started on sheep for me?”\u00a0 After a couple of weeks Bud could stand in one spot and direct Moss to put the sheep in any pen in the corral system.\u00a0 He was hard-pressed to find anything to challenge him with so one day we opened the people door to the barn which led into the area where we kept the saddles and grain, etc.\u00a0 It was pretty dark and full of stuff.\u00a0 The sheep gave Moss a real work-out but he was able to put them all in.\u00a0 Since we really didn’t want the sheep in there Bud quickly sent him around to bring them back out.\u00a0 When he asked him to put them back in again, Moss would hold them right at the door, but would stop any that tried to enter the barn.\u00a0 Remembering what caused Patsy’s problem Bud put a leash on Moss, helped him put the sheep in the barn, stopped for just a few seconds and said “Good boy” then sent him in to bring them back out.\u00a0 All it took to make the correction was to let him know he was right to put the sheep in the barn…\u00a0 Now, new project … we want you to bring them out of the barn.<\/p>\n

People often think they want a really smart dog, but a dog that is a little slower is often a lot easier to handle.\u00a0 If it takes 5 repetitions for a dog to “get it” chances you won’t make the same mistake 5 times in a row that is inadvertently teaching something you don’t want.<\/p>\n

Sorry to be so long-winded, but I guess by now you can figure out how Bud would teach a dog to guard the gate.<\/p>\n

Eunice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question:\u00a0\u00a0 One thing that I wanted to quiz you on Bud told me he could teach a dog to watch an open gate in a day, I would like a few tips on this please. Answer:\u00a0\u00a0 This is the way Bud inadvertently trained two different dogs to guard the gate. In about 1960 we were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stockdogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2102,"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions\/2102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}