SUMMARY: Video of Boost's first herding experience
Here's a Quicktime movie to view. You see us when we first walk onto the field and I drop Boost's leash. She's quiet the whole time; the barking you hear is sometimes Tika and sometimes any of the zillions of other dogs onsite, possibly doing agility or flyball or whatever.
The woman is just trying to keep Boost moving around and in front of the goats and to observe her natural instinct for herding; I'm just there for decoration, I think.
Quicktime herding-instinct video
Boost worked really nicely. That was a long session. Has she done this before?
ReplyDelete/amy
Nope, never. I got her at about 3 months and breeder says she'd never been on livestock before that. But she & her siblings all demonstrate a tremendous amount of eye and circling-herding behavior around just about anything, and they do come from lines with a herding champion or two as--um--don't remember, grandparents or great-grandparents, I think.
ReplyDeleteThey're very funny when they start playing fetch with other dogs. Here's a photo (I always seem to catch them at dusk when I can't get good focus) of Brenn (not sibling) waiting for frisbee to be thrown, and Bette (sister of Boost) waiting for Brenn to run, and Boost waiting for Bette to run-- they keep lining up like this, freezing and watching the other dogs intently, and then trying to out-run each other.
photo of BCs
-ellen
(I'm still in the process of sorting my photos from scottsdale and uploading them; it'll probably be a couple of days til I'm done.)
One of my BC friends said that Boost got a much longer session than her dog did, but ours was only about 4 minutes (I don't know how long is typical); the woman didn't want me interrupting Boost to take off her leash or anything, just told me to keep quiet and just stay with the goats and let her do what she was going to do.