Lucky herding

Starting to read this and knowing Lucky I’m sure you have as high expectations as I had. But I don’t have much (good) to tell you.

I had loooong planned to introduce to Lucky sheep, so we participated on Sheep and cattle dog club’s herding day.  Isn’t it very romantic to think about Shetland isles and little Shelties herding there? To add there  couple of documentarys like Lassie and Babe :-) it’s almost all I knew about herding before. Well, reality was a little different. When I was child my grandparents had friends who had sheep. Every time we visited them, we had bag full of bread for sheep and sheep
loved us. I expected something similar to happen so we bought bread so Kelli could get the same sweet memories from her childhood. But guess what, sheep didn’t want bread. They were afraid of dogs they saw walking not even near to them. Not to be surprised, considering part of our Lassie’s and Babe’s were more or less agressive (which was called good herding instinct???). So when it was our turn with Lucky, the sheep were standing like glued to the fence and we just couldn’t get them moving even one millimeter. The trainer told to make dog to go between the sheep and fence and here’s the part I’m shamed about – I tried to do that. I went with him, but still, forcing isn’t what you do when your Sheltie is supposed to like what you want from him. Thinking back on it (better late then never, as I obviously didn’t think at all when we were there)– 5,8 kg dog should push himself between 5 animals (at least 10x his weight) he saw first time???... Well, after that Lucky lost all the interest to be there :-( . I’m

proud Lucky isn’t agressive to other animals so if that means he has no herding instinct, then OK, very good. But still, I have seen him with different animals and to me it seems he could have that Lassie or Babe kind :-) of herding instinct and I would like to see it. Other Shelties were in better situation, the sheep was moving when it was their turn and it was really nice to look at them there. And how should we find it out with Lucky now? Considering we have my 2 dogs, Kelli’s rat, Tikker + kittens at home, why couldn’t we take 2-3 sheep too? :-) :-) :-). Well, I won’t go home asking it, because after that I could be homeless with my dogs :-). But who knows, maybe we will think something else up some day :o)