Working With Spot

Here are some pictures of Spot and me working lambs in a very muddy field recently.  He's not sure about these lambs and they like to stand and stare at the dogs. I'm working on building Spot's confidence with them.

We have shed these two lambs away from  four others. They are starting to turn to move away from Spot.

Spot moving the two along nicely.

I like the 'happy' in this photo, even though it is not well-focused.

Ryme will walk right into these lambs and they move right off of him. I wish Spot had that kind of authority and it is too bad that Ryme is now ten years old...sigh. I used Ryme to work them around a little bit first and then sorted some off to get down to six, to work with Spot and Cap. We had a good session. I made sure Spot was giving me nice open flanks, but also worked close at hand with him so that he felt encouraged to walk into their faces and turn them. With Cap, I am forgiving him a little on the fine points with these sheep because I want him to gain confidence in moving them. It is one of my main goals to get the dogs out on different sheep and not always on broke sheep. Working only broke sheep for so long is the source of many of our troubles. I'm doing all I can to fulfill that goal.