A good outrun is essential if a sheepdog is to work efficiently
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Fortunately, it’s not difficult to train a dog to do an outrun, and the training process itself improves other aspects of the dog’s work, such as flanking and the stop, so we use short outruns very early in training to improve the dog’s all-round performance.

Part 1 features Jed, a large, headstrong male collie with far more enthusiasm than skill. We filmed an actual training session, warts and all, to show how to start teaching the outrun, and how to make the best of it when things go wrong (as things, inevitably, will).

Part 2. Andy demonstrates how positioning yourself, your dog and the sheep, in relation to each other, is the key to success when you’re working on lengthening or widening your dog’s outrun. To prove the method works we see Carew at an early stage in her career – when she’d “cross over” at the prospect of even quite a short outrun – and, just a few months later, tackling a 500 metre outrun for the first time.

Part 3 shows how we use a simple technique we call “The Slingshot”, to make the dog go out much wider on its outrun or when flanking the sheep. “The Slingshot” is one of the most important and highly effective techniques we know of for quickly improving the dog’s outrun.
If you can get your dog’s cooperation, it will absolutely love doing “Slingshot” outruns – and it’ll go out much wider, too!
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