Obedience & Herding: Can You Train For Both?

Taken from the American Rottweiler Herding Fanciers Newsletter

Numerous individuals train their dogs in many performance sports and use them on their farm as well. It isn’t uncommon for some to compete in agility, obedience and herding at the same time with the same dogs, plus use them on a daily basis on their farm. Some feel the key is keeping your tones of voice and vocabulary very clear. Plus, dogs can tell what you are doing by your physical set up..."I’ve never had a dog look for sheep on an agility course!"

One herding instructor advises against the obedience training in which a strong "watch me" is taught and proofed extensively. Especially in the loose-eyed breeds (such as Rottweiler) this builds a very strong handler focus in the dog. She also advises against extensive distraction training. It has a very strong tendency to make many dogs think that the sheep (or livestock) are a "set up" situation and the dogs tend to ‘keep in check’ what they really want to do (i.e., chase, circle, etc.) and have difficulty in focusing on the stock.

The basic obedience commands: sit, come, down, heel and stay are good to teach. In general, the consensus from various herding fanciers is they would rather start a dog on stock BEFORE ring competition obedience is started. The dog then develops a better "stock sense" and also confidence. Many herding enthusiasts feel that overall obedience is enhanced by stock work. The dogs tend to listen much better and stock work tends to improve their confidence level.

General observations are that the dogs that have extensive obedience training prior to their introduction to stock showed less of a tendency to ‘relax’ around stock, and to 'let go' and start to just have fun herding.

In summary, one well-known herding ‘guru’ (and also licensed judge) said its true that a good dog needs to be obedient, but the key to all of this is their relationship with each other. Obedience is not the most important thing. A down is not the most important thing. In the perfect world you would have a blending of natural instinct (ability), ability to listen and the ability to respond to direction. Obviously instinct with no direction isn’t particularly useful except with those one in a million dogs that seem to be born working correctly.

The point is that to get the best possible working stock dog, you first need to develop the dog’s correct instincts and develop a proper attitude so that the dog is ready to listen and learn. A dog with a proper attitude is generally rather obedient, but that isn’t what makes correct attitude. A dog must have a correct attitude because he has to figure out what is the best way to do things; and that the right way is to his (the dogs) advantage. Such a dog will still do things right even when everything else seems to fall apart.

A dog that is made to go right will most likely fall apart when under heavy pressure. That is why an old-time BC trainer kept saying, ‘ask the dog’. It is a nit picky line between asking and telling, but my problem with my dogs did make a turn around when I finally got the idea of asking rather than ordering.

When training my dogs I set up the training experience in such a way that I allow the dog to think that it is teaching itself...that the right way is the dog’s idea.