Yeah, I know I ended not only a sentence with a preposition but a headline, but it’s appropriate to this story . . .
It’s a tale of getting in a bit over your head and having trust in your dog that you probably haven’t earned.
A few weeks ago I went to do some work in a very large open field near Norco. The photo below gives you a small idea of how open the field was. No fence in site either in front or behind for many acres.
Cheryl works her border collie in the open
This in and of itself was not a big deal at all. I had no issues with long, say 100-150 yards, outruns and fetches. I was doing great until Terry threw down the challenge of a really, really long outrun. I’m talking something in the neighborhood of 3-400 yards. Too far for any voice command to be heard even by a dog. And they can hear WAY better than you think they can.
If you lose the sheep here, it's a lot of work getting them back
As you can see from these photos there is a lot that can go wrong. And for my one and only mongo outrun, it did. Scot and I were on the top of a knoll probably 300-350 yards out and about 100 feet below. I made sure Scot saw the sheep I wanted him to gather and sent him out on a big ‘awee’ (away to me or counterclockwise relative to the sheep).
It started great, he got way out and was coming around nicely when another dog and it’s handler distracted him and he once he picked up the sheep again he was heading straight into them rather than around behind them. This is not good for a couple of reasons. The first is that the sheep will start moving, but in the wrong direction. And since his speed was high he spooked the sheep. It doesn’t always happen but this time one ewe broke out from the group and Scot took it into his head he had to get that one back with the group. but now there was another dog.
Wide open spaces
And there was a deep ravine cutting along the back of this section of field complicating things even more. Of course I was WAY to far away to effectively call off Scot and the other dogs down that way were making the sheep jumpy.
Well after 3 humans and 4 dogs searched for about 39 minutes in and around a 2o foot deep brush filled ravine, one of the more experienced dogs went into the ravine and rooted out the missing ewe.
After everything settled down I got suitably chewed out. But I think the best lesson I got out of this is to make sure you can do middle distances well and have a KNOWN way to communicate over that kind of distance even if it’s nothing more than the ability to call off and have to the dog to return. All in all very solid learning experience in not-so-much-fun happening.