Keep the dog on a straight line, when training it to drive sheep or cattle.
Subtitles: French*, Spanish* or English, click CC on viewer (*translation errors).
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Keeping the dog on line
A seemingly inappropriate command can have an appropriate result!
If the dog you’re teaching to drive has gone off-line, normal flank commands rarely work. This tutorial uses animations, as well as live-action, to demonstrate how body position can bring the dog back onto line; and what to do if the dog has gone so far off line that body position won’t have any influence.
We’re recommending that you use ‘That’ll do’ as a kind of cheat card to distract the dog from a stressful situation. Once the dog comes back onto line you can use a flanking command and your body position to keep the dog moving forwards, walking straight onto the sheep. Though, as with blocking and hand signals, we must phase-out the ‘cheat’ command as the dog’s skill improves.
As the dog’s confidence grows it begins to work in front of the handler – and is starting to drive!
Watch Driving 1 and Driving 2 before moving onto Driving 3, to be sure you understand the technique.
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Unashamed deception?
PART 3. Calling the dog back onto line, when it’s determined to hook the sheep back to you, can be frustrating. As it drives the sheep away from the handler the trainee dog is often so keen to get ahead of them and bring them back that it will ignore conventional flanking commands. In this tutorial, Andy uses what might be deemed an inappropriate command (“That’ll do”) to call the dog back onto line, and keep the sheep moving straight ahead.
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