Sheep Herding 101

A weekend clinic for beginning shepherds and their dogs!

A fun and educational two day clinic with Kathy for those interested in learning more about stock handling and teaching their dogs to be effective shepherd's helpers.

Event Summary: You will learn and practice skills designed to shape your dog's natural herding abilities while you also learn about the sheep. Kathy's methods focus on keeping your dog in a calm, focused, eager-to-learn state of mind - which helps the dogs learn, and helps the handler to learn too!

Dogs will be started on a long line and reinforced for calm, quiet behavior in the presence of the stock. A clicker will be used to mark the "good moves" and the dog will be allowed to move towards the stock and make natural moves to control the sheep's movement around the pen.

Kathy's methods, which are based upon developing clear communication and partnership, are effective and positively reinforcing to dog and handler alike! The focus of the weekend is on developing a good working partnership between handler and dog, teaching dogs the foundation herding skills, and learning about handling the sheep. The partnership you nurture with your dog this weekend will go way beyond sheep herding!

The Dancing Hearts farm is beautiful, the school sheep are wonderful teachers and the learning is fun! Each team will have several practice sessions with sheep over the weekend, and there will be many learning opportunities all weekend through active discussions, demonstrations and watching others work.

Who should attend: Herding breed dogs with their handlers who are interested in learning a positive method for teaching their dogs herding skills for fun, for competition or for farm chores. Teams who have recently started training with Kathy using this method and would like to practice their skills in a weekend clinic setting will deepen their knowledge dramatically.

Includes lunch each day ~ Limited to a small group