Border collie eyesight

[Guleesh]

Yeah this is kinda what I do I stop him and move to the side I want him to shift but sometimes he gets confused and I have to call him back a bit.I hate this as if he never saw the sheep and I have to call him back and correct all the time I worry its damaging his trust in me a bit -if I send him to look back I always want there to be something there for him to find, at least whilst he's still learning.
Whistle commands are something I need to learn, at the moment i'm just using voice commands but end up pretty hoarse on a windy day...

 

[Guleesh]

Dont completely discount the idea it could be a confidence issuez I sold one a couple of years ago, on sheep fantastic, but out running it would know exactly where I wanted it to go but it would go steady or stop and look back at me a bit, when it was on song it was great, just it had the outrun issue so I sold it, ended up on shetland with the girls off this farming life.

Yeah i know what you mean about the confidence and this dogs mother is bit like yours was but I can tell by the way he's looking around he's searching for sheep and you see the second he spots them he immediately changes course to go wider and he doesn't look back.

 

[Guleesh]

Kind of hard to explain in a paragraph. If they are running too tight, initially you'll have to stop them, probably call them into you a bit while you walk out to the side you're wanting them to widen out to then give them another flank to get them wider. Soon you should be able to just stop them and give them the redirect without calling them in and hopefully you will be able to get them to cast out on the fly. A dog taking a cast out on the fly is a beautiful thing to my eye and it always kind of irritated me that the ISDS trial rules require a point deduction for any redirects given on the outrun. To my way of thinking a dog that will take a cast out on the fly might be more useful that the lucky dog who guessed right. I think someone told me that Alasdair MacRae had a good video on turnouts but I havent seen it.

If they are running too wide you'll need to stop them, call them into you (without walking out to the side) then give them a flank when they have come in. I can tell my dogs to "come in" verbally on the fly but I've never figured out how to do it on a whistle. I'm sure it's been done though.

Just another note on the vision thing. Canines are coursarial hunters. They are good at seeing movement but not so good at seeing things that arent moving and have poor peripheral vision. Explains why we were able to walk up so close to foxes when I was a kid.

Sorry I thought I replied to this post a couple posts back but managed to muck it up.
You Explained your methods well and I appreciate the lesson

 

[little_p]

Yeah this is kinda what I do I stop him and move to the side I want him to shift but sometimes he gets confused and I have to call him back a bit.I hate this as if he never saw the sheep and I have to call him back and correct all the time I worry its damaging his trust in me a bit -if I send him to look back I always want there to be something there for him to find, at least whilst he's still learning.
Whistle commands are something I need to learn, at the moment i'm just using voice commands but end up pretty hoarse on a windy day...

The one trait that runs through Border Collies is that they "aim to please", maybe the dog is just desperate to make sure that they are doing it right?

Maybe also a little issue with confidence. We used to have a fantastic dog that would work for anyone. If my father sent it for an outrun the dog would go at speed and confidence, like it trusted my dad that it knew what it should be doing and where it was going. If I sent it out (even in the same field) it would occasionally be stopping or looking back for instruction.

If you are on the Isle of Skye, how big are the outruns? And does the dog know the lie of the land otherwise? Otherwise you could be sending the dog up a huge patch of land, where it hasn't been before (looking for something it is not quite sure it is supposed to be looking for).

I was told that sheepdogs don't necessarily 'see' things at distance (like humans 'look' at things) but rely a lot on movement before they actually see things. If that makes any sense.

 

[Dry Rot]

In the OP's post No. 21 above, I wonder how he is "correcting" his dog? Dogs naturally hunt in cooperation with each other as a pack and left to their own devices they are corrected by experience. They learn by making mistakes and going hungry when they do. They are very seldom bad on purpose, just don't undestand what we want and how that can be achieved. Punishment is seldom needed.

Dogs, and many other animals, communicate mostly by body language so when unsure they will check back to their handler for reassurance or a clue. It may be just a glance, but I was taught to always give a hand signal or gesture when a dog glanced back to me. They also want to get ahead or anticipate, so a movement in the direction you want the dog to run will sometimes be enough to send them in that direction. This is probably inherited from their wild ancestors hunting in packs where it would be important to turn prey in the direction of the main pack. (As an aside, the pet owner inevitably runs after a dog that is chasing, shouting in an effort to get it to stop. He would be better off running in the opposite direction as the dog MIGHT just stop chasing and follow the "pack"!).

Another thing I was taught was to never deceive a dog. There is the story of the film crew wanting to get a shot of a collie doing an outrun on "One Man and His Dog". After the trial, the handler obligingly sent his dog to gather non-existent sheep up the field. The dog did a great outrun and the film crew got their shot. But they wanted some more clips from a different angle. The dog was dutifully sent out again. The third time, the dog refused to run. He's been up the end of the sodding field and there were no sodding sheep there and if the handler thought there were, he could soddingly well go and fetch the sodding things himself! Those who have hunted hounds will know about 'liars'. These are hounds which give tongue when they have not found scent. The rest of the pack soon learns to ignore them.

But I still get the eyes checked first.

 

[Guleesh]

In the OP's post No. 21 above, I wonder how he is "correcting" his dog? Dogs naturally hunt in cooperation with each other as a pack and left to their own devices they are corrected by experience. They learn by making mistakes and going hungry when they do. They are very seldom bad on purpose, just don't undestand what we want and how that can be achieved. Punishment is seldom needed.

Dogs, and many other animals, communicate mostly by body language so when unsure they will check back to their handler for reassurance or a clue. It may be just a glance, but I was taught to always give a hand signal or gesture when a dog glanced back to me. They also want to get ahead or anticipate, so a movement in the direction you want the dog to run will sometimes be enough to send them in that direction. This is probably inherited from their wild ancestors hunting in packs where it would be important to turn prey in the direction of the main pack. (As an aside, the pet owner inevitably runs after a dog that is chasing, shouting in an effort to get it to stop. He would be better off running in the opposite direction as the dog MIGHT just stop chasing and follow the "pack"!).

Another thing I was taught was to never deceive a dog. There is the story of the film crew wanting to get a shot of a collie doing an outrun on "One Man and His Dog". After the trial, the handler obligingly sent his dog to gather non-existent sheep up the field. The dog did a great outrun and the film crew got their shot. But they wanted some more clips from a different angle. The dog was dutifully sent out again. The third time, the dog refused to run. He's been up the end of the sodding field and there were no sodding sheep there and if the handler thought there were, he could soddingly well go and fetch the sodding things himself! Those who have hunted hounds will know about 'liars'. These are hounds which give tongue when they have not found scent. The rest of the pack soon learns to ignore them.

But I still get the eyes checked first.

When I say 'correcting' I mean correcting the direction of his outrun so he doesn't appear on the wrong side or be so wide as to miss the sheep altogether. Obviously i'm not chastising the dog for not seeing the sheep. What you're saying about the filmed dog refusing to go after being sent on a fools errand is exactly what i'm saying in post 21.

 

[Spartacus]

In the OP's post No. 21 above, I wonder how he is "correcting" his dog? Dogs naturally hunt in cooperation with each other as a pack and left to their own devices they are corrected by experience. They learn by making mistakes and going hungry when they do. They are very seldom bad on purpose, just don't undestand what we want and how that can be achieved. Punishment is seldom needed.

Dogs, and many other animals, communicate mostly by body language so when unsure they will check back to their handler for reassurance or a clue. It may be just a glance, but I was taught to always give a hand signal or gesture when a dog glanced back to me. They also want to get ahead or anticipate, so a movement in the direction you want the dog to run will sometimes be enough to send them in that direction. This is probably inherited from their wild ancestors hunting in packs where it would be important to turn prey in the direction of the main pack. (As an aside, the pet owner inevitably runs after a dog that is chasing, shouting in an effort to get it to stop. He would be better off running in the opposite direction as the dog MIGHT just stop chasing and follow the "pack"!).

Another thing I was taught was to never deceive a dog. There is the story of the film crew wanting to get a shot of a collie doing an outrun on "One Man and His Dog". After the trial, the handler obligingly sent his dog to gather non-existent sheep up the field. The dog did a great outrun and the film crew got their shot. But they wanted some more clips from a different angle. The dog was dutifully sent out again. The third time, the dog refused to run. He's been up the end of the sodding field and there were no sodding sheep there and if the handler thought there were, he could soddingly well go and fetch the sodding things himself! Those who have hunted hounds will know about 'liars'. These are hounds which give tongue when they have not found scent. The rest of the pack soon learns to ignore them.

But I still get the eyes checked first.

My granddad went on blue Peter and was in the BP garden, they wanted him to show the dog working in the garden with no stock, dog went first time then refused after that as there were no sheep. They also didnt like him wearing his suit (granddad not the dog!) So found him something more "agricultural" from the costume department.

 

[Guleesh]

The one trait that runs through Border Collies is that they "aim to please", maybe the dog is just desperate to make sure that they are doing it right?

To be fair some of them just aim to please themselves.

 

[Dry Rot]

To be fair some of them just aim to please themselves.

I've seen a few that have learnt to do that from (their own) bitter experience! ?