i'd like to get steve on sheep and see if he's interested. i can't
afford regular herding lessons, but i'd like to see him try. he's very
creepy/stalky/lots of eye but i don't know if it'll transfer from
tennis ball to sheep

The thought of him trying to corral a wayward ball with a little extra
eye gives me the warm fuzzies...
--Glenn Lyford

Rocky wrote:
elegy said in
rec.pets.dogs.health:


steve is a sporter collie


Merle and red BCs are all sporter collies. Never mind that
Maybe is a natural on sheep and that I need to find an extra day
in the week to accommodate her.


A good friend of mine has sporter collies (5, soon to be 7 because the
lady who bred them just died). Of the ones she has, one blue merle has a
lot of sheep sense. The others, not so much. She has 2 reds, 2 blue
merles, 3 red merles (and an ancient aussie).

The problem I see with some (not all) sporter collies (and all colors,
not just merles) in this area is that they have been bred only for
drive, with nothing else considered. Too many are just jibbering
screaming drooling fanatics. I can't imagine living with such a dog,
even owning Cala, who also has too much drive married to too little
impulse control.

Robin Nuttall said in
rec.pets.dogs.health:

The problem I see with some (not all) sporter collies (and
all colors, not just merles) in this area is that they have
been bred only for drive, with nothing else considered. Too
many are just jibbering screaming drooling fanatics. I
can't imagine living with such a dog, even owning Cala, who
also has too much drive married to too little impulse
control.

I see that with a few breeds (often Labs!). I wouldn't have
bought Maybe (a red sporter collie) if I hadn't already met her
relatives, Mom especially, and hadn't held respect for the
breeder.

Thinking through last week's Nationals, there were a few
jibbering screaming drooling fanatics out of the 600 entered. A
few were BCs, but mostly they covered the breed spectrum.

--
--Matt. Rocky's a Dog.

Rocky said in rec.pets.dogs.health:

Thinking through last week's Nationals, there were a few
jibbering screaming drooling fanatics out of the 600 entered.

I also meant to say that many of the jibbering screaming
drooling fanatics had two legs, not four.

--
--Matt. Rocky's a Dog.

elegy wrote:

On Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:27:26 GMT, Robin Nuttall
wrote:


i went to my first flyball tournament recently and boy wasn't that an
eye-opening (not to mention ear-splitting) experience. i wondered how
many of the dogs who were totally wild are that wild at home. oy. i
also wonder how many of those dogs would be different dogs if they had
owners who did not accept/condone/encourage that kind of nonsense.

I tried flyball with Cala, and they kept trying to get me to have her
bark. "She needs to bark! It will wind her up!" And I kept saying, no,
she did NOT need to bark thank-you-very-much, she already did way too
much of that on her own and already gets overstimulated far too easily.

I think some of those dogs are fine at home, and some are not. And in
agility, I do differentiate between those who are nutso in the ring, and
those who are totally unable to contain themselves, ever, in or out of
the ring. I watched part of a very exciting 20" class at our last trial
and the cacophany outside the ring was just amazing, including a BC by
me who I swear was going to stroke out. He was glazed, eyes rolling,
drooling, bark-screaming, lashing at his leash, whirling, etc. His owner
just stood on the leash and kept talking to friends, who finally got
impatient and tried to get him to settle themselves.

steve's parents are pretty sensible dogs, and i hope that steve will
grow up to be a sensible dog. he's not a particularly hard dog to live
with (not as hard as luce was when she was young, anyway) but he's
very motion-sensitive. i don't know if that's a sporter collie thing,
a puppy thing, or a steve thing. we've made huge amounts of progress
on it though, in a relatively short amount of time.

I think it's a very BC thing. But you know, I've seen BCs who got
totally absorbed by the motion in the ring yet were capable of sitting
calmly and watching, and ones who, well, couldn't.

And honest, I'm not picking only on BCs. There are now some Shelties out
there with temperaments that in no way resemble what the standard says
they should be.

Rocky wrote:
Rocky said in rec.pets.dogs.health:

Thinking through last week's Nationals, there were a few
jibbering screaming drooling fanatics out of the 600 entered.

I also meant to say that many of the jibbering screaming
drooling fanatics had two legs, not four.


:-)

elegy said in
rec.pets.dogs.health:

i went to my first flyball tournament recently and boy
wasn't that an eye-opening (not to mention ear-splitting)
experience.

Oy! The noise alone is why I've never considered flyball,
though Friday, in his prime, was scouted.

As a puppy, I took Maybe to many agilty trials - she got to
watch and get uber excited but was out of there once she
vocalised.

--
--Matt. Rocky's a Dog.

In article ,
elegy wrote:


i went to my first flyball tournament recently and boy wasn't that an
eye-opening (not to mention ear-splitting) experience. i wondered how
many of the dogs who were totally wild are that wild at home. oy. i
also wonder how many of those dogs would be different dogs if they had
owners who did not accept/condone/encourage that kind of nonsense.

There's no excuse for some of that crap. My dogs are only allowed to
make noise when in the racing lane. Not in crates, x-pens, outside of
the lanes. People who tolerate it have misplaced ideas on dog
excitement.

--
Janet Boss
www.bestfriendsdogobedience.com