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Training of the Shepherd Dog
by Gerard Lop, (from the RACP Bulletin, First Trimester, 1988; the RACP -- Reunion des Amateurs de Chiens Pyreneens -- is the breed club in France for the Pyrenean Shepherd.)

One day a lady who had a flock of 200 animals said to me, "I have a mongrel bitch who is very good with the flock. The puppy that I gave away and also the one that I kept from the same litter are very poor. Why is that?"

"How do you breed your bitch?"

She responded, "Oh, I don't watch her, I let her be bred by whoever she chooses."

"Well, there's the reason why your puppies are not very good. If you had looked for a good herding dog for your bitch -- and there is one not very far from you -- you would have had good puppies, at least 80%."

Myself, at first, when I learned my career, I had bitches that gave me litters where the puppies were not so good, and others where they were both good and bad. When my bitch was bred to a herding dog, I had dogs that were good with the flocks, and it is like that that I learned I have to save my bitch in order for her to have good puppies. If I've told you all this, it's to make you understand that it's always necesary to confine the bitch when she is in heat, and then breed her, whether it is a purebred bitch or a mongrel. At the beginning of my career, I didn't have any confidence at all in the idea of a purebred dog. One day, there was a shepherd to who told me, "I have a puppy bitch left from my purebred Beauceron bitch, if you would like to have her, I'll give her to you. I don't know what to do with her, but I already have enough dogs like her." I took her and I trained her and she was excellent with the flock, and since that day I have never used anything but purebred dogs.

To make a good herding dog, the puppy must have the instinct to herd the flock. He must be conscious of the role that he will play. He facilitates the rapid passage of cars on the roads, he has to know and understand the temperament of the ewes, he has to keep the flock together merely by his presence. He has to be intelligent, wise. He must bite moderately, which is to say to pinch the animals at the hock, not to do them any harm. He must have an excellent style, not too fearful nor too aggressive, but courageous and capable of lots of initiative.

The shepherd dog plays a great role in the herding and driving of the flock. He eases the work of the shepherd by half. Whether the dog is a mongrel or a purebred, he can be very good, merely good, or bad. There are those that bite too much, others that never bite, and others that do just what is necessary. The dogs which bite too much risk ruining the animals, but for those that don't bite at all the moment does arrive where he has no power over the animals. The recalcitrant animals will learn to challenge the dog and he won't be able to make them obey. Ideally, the dog just pinches the animals on the hock but as this is very difficult to do, we understand and accept that if they pinch them on the side it's okay as long as they don't do any damage.

It's necessary that the dog be trained by his master, because everybody has his own manner of training and if the dog is given commands by several persons, he won't understand what each one is saying, so one sole master suffices.

The first thing that the shepherd has to do to train the dog is to get him into shape around the age of four or five months. That is, he must learn his name, he must learn his place, he must come when he's called, he must stay at the feet of his master and walk on a lead. When the puppy has learned to do all that, the master will judge whether or not he will be suitable for herding the flock.

The shepherd must be very patient with his puppy, he must not give him too many treats or pieces of bread or candy. The day will come when you don't have any candy or bread, and you certainly can't carry ten pounds of it around with you, and you will have to use your voice and your hands.

The first time that you put the dog with the sheep, he will go turn the flock, but if he sees that you don't give him anything or do anything for him, he'll go once or twice but then he won't do it any more. To make him understand that he has worked well, and to reward him, you must pet him, talk to him, and above all make him understand that you are happy with him.

The puppy notes all the gestures of his master and looks at him almost all the time. He believes that what the shepherd does is always right, so it is very important to pay attention to your gestures. Never cut across the flock but always go around it, the only exception being for a sick animal or one with a thorn in its foot or something like that. You must make the puppy understand that he must assemble the flock in order to faciliate the shepherds's catching one sheep for taking care of it.

1. From the time that the puppy is given his first training and he can follow the flock when you lead then, you must pay close attention that the puppy does not become too tired from his long day's work. If he's too tired in the evening, you must be careful to wait awhile and give him good rest periods, or to take him only every other day or every third day to make sure that he gets enough rest, and gradually work up to taking him out all the time. I've had puppies which always came home very tired, and had a good night's sleep with quite enough rest, but the next day they didn't have enough strength to follow the flock, to keep up. Thus I learned that I must take them only every other day, and gradually work up to taking them every day.

2. You should take the puppy with an older dog which is already well trained. (There are other shepherds who tell me "Me and my dog, It teach it just myself, and that's what makes a good dog." If I had had a person to teach me my job as a shepherd, and they didn't show me exactly what do do, I would have made stupid mistakes and I would have ended up being a bad shepherd.) The puppy will see the work done by his elder (it's very important that the shepherd not play with the pupy, otherwise the puppy will want to play all the time and not work with the flock). Watching his elder, it depends on the puppy -- there are those who have the natural instinct to go to the flock right away. There are others who don't look at the flock in the beginning, but one day you see him sitting there on his rear end and looking, precisely observing what his elder is doing. When you see that, pet him a rather long time. And then one fine day he will follow his elder, first one time and you praise him and encourage him by showing him that you are happy, and he will go twice, three times, and finally he will follow every time that you tell your older dog to turn the flock (each time that the puppy follows his elder, you must show him your happiness and pet him).

3. The shepherd can judge when the puppy is ready to herd the flock alone and will be able to say to himself, "If it doesn't work tomorrow then the next day Ill take the older dog along and keep him working with the pup a little longer." You are going to say to me, "Why not finish training the puppy with the older dog around?", and here is the reason: the puppy believes that everything the older dog does is perfect, and he will pick up both his good points and his bad points. If the puppy makes the same mistake that the older dog makes and you correct him without having corrected the older dog because he's a finished dog, the puppy is not going to understand. So when you take the pup by itself, you can teach it to work better than the older dog, and you can teach him what's good and what's bad.

If you see that the puppy is inclined to follow the flock when he is alone from the beginning, then one can continue to train him by himself to herd them. You must punish him fairly, which is to say that when he makes a stupid mistake, he understands that. On the other hand, when he does well you must reward him and pet him all the more in order to make him understand that he has done something very good. It is just as important as him understanding when he's done something wrong.

I've met shepherds who say, "I can't catch him, you've got to grab him at the house when you can catch him in order to correct him," and they do it after having already put the sheep away. If you correct your puppy who has made a mistake one or two hours earlier, when you get back to the house, all that does is give you a fearful puppy. If you call them, they will not come to find you, and if you chase them, they wll run away from you as far as they can because they know that you are going to call them in order to punish them.

4. It is necessary that the shepherd, when sending his puppy to turn the flock, make him see by a gesture of the hand wehre he must go, whether it's to go all the way around the flock to turn it to the right or to the left, and you must give him a spoken command with a clear loud voice, "turn the flock to the right, to the left, go behind, stop, stop in front," etc., all to make him understand by hand and arm gestures. That will help him perceive where he should to, to the right or to the left, to the front or the back of the flock. It takes a long time for the puppy to learn, but one day he will know his left and his right solely by voice.

5. It is necessary that the puppy stops when you tell him to, and that is to say with the voice. If he does not do it, I'll give you two methods for teaching him.

(a) If you are in the mountains or some other regions, it is necessary to have rocks in your pocket. If he does not stop at the first or second command, you throw a rock at him but in such a manner that he doesn't know that it is you who had done it, and then you call him back; when he comes back you pet him and praise him and show him how happy you are that he came back. That lets him understand that he worked well in stopping and coming back. You encourage him to come back the next time, and you do it several times. Your puppy will end up stopping on a voice command, and it works very quickly.

(b) If you are in the open plain, in a field where you want to let the animals graze or if you are in front of a wheatfield or fruit orchard, that is to say places the flock is not allowed to go, if it is possible take a long line and attach it to the collar of the puppy when you send him. Then you let go of the line just wehre you want it. When you want him to stop, you call him and if after two or three calls you can see that he is not going to stop, you put your foot on the line, the puppy goes tumbling head over heels and you call him again until the puppy stops on a voice command.

Each time that the puppy comes back to you when you call him after having turned the flock, you pet him. Very quickly with the long line he will stop on a voice command.

7. When the puppy is not working, when he is just watching over the flock, he must stay at the shepherd's side. If allowed to run off, he may not be there when you need him.

I have had dogs which took a very long time to train, other times that depended on the temperament of the puppy. I"ve always seen whether it was necessary to work the puppy gently or more severely. This is a question of the dog's temperament which the shepherd must be able to pick up on when he is first getting the puppy into shape.

All the dogs that I have had have made mistakes. I've corrected certain ones very violently, others very little, but always at the time of the mistake, and it is for this reason that my dogs have always stayed right with me, without fear of me. One thing that I've always done while the animals are grazing is to talk to my dogs. It seems to me that they'll be much happier to be with me if I talk to them.

And this is my personal method for training puppies. It's necessary all the same to have a notion of how to train a shepherd dog. According to the region, each shepherd has his own manner of training his puppy.

'd like to add that as long as there are flocks in France, the shepherd dog will be useful whether it is for the transhumance, for the pasturing, or for moving animals from one place to another.

I'd like to add a few anecdotes. One year I had a Pyrenean Shepherd bitch which disappeared one day while I was grazing the flocks. I asked myself where she had gone. It was the first imte that she had ever left the flock. A moment later, I saw her return bringing with her a ewe which had been sleeping too far away without my seeing it. The ewe wasn't sick, but had wanted to eat there and hadn't seen the rest of the flock depart.

The same bitch ran after cars and motorcycles each time that we put away the flock. Whlie the flock was in the fenced-in area, I was obliged to tie her up. One day the landowner I was working for told me that I had to work at a particular place. I went there, and there was a road where now and then a car would pass. I brought my bitch and every time that the cars passed, I called her to me and praised her and petted her a great deal, telling her that, "You don't have to run after the cars, you have to stay here at the side of the road," and I made her see that I was happy when she stayed at the side of the road. I did this for a long time. One time I was talking to someone and forgot to call her to the side of the road, and I saw that she had already gone to the side of the road by herself and was waiting for her reward; ever since that day she never ran after any more cars or motorcycles. But I've had other dogs and bitches that I've never been able to train not to chase cars and motorcycles, they've done it their entire lives.

One day I bought a Beauceron bitch from a policeman in Marseilles. I believe that the animal had never seen a flock of sheep before in her life, and yet I took this bitch along with another bitch which was already trained and I never had to train her or correct her, she educated herself. All I did was reward her for a job well done as if she was completely finished in her training. I was stupefied. In forty years of work this is the only dog that I've ever come across like that. I told the policeman and he took her mother to an excellent Beauceron male which was working with flocks, which was the dog of the master shepherd of the Le Merle shepherd school. Clearly this bitch had kept the instincts of her ancestors.

When I was at another place, I lived in the barn where they had fixed up one of the stalls for the shepherd, which had two doors which the dog could come in through on its own but you had to open the door in order for it to go out. One day I was taking a siesta; it was in July, it as very hot, and my bitch scratched on the door of the room. Thinking she had to do her business, I opened the door to let her out and went back to bed, but she came back in and as she saw me not moving she grabbed my pants leg and gave it a tug. In looking at my watch, I understood that she wanted me to get up and get to work because I was late.

 

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