By Dorothy DeLisle
I find that my puppies often will show herding instinct on ducks before they will sheep. Sometimes months before. If you want to get an early idea of whether your puppy has any herding talent, ducks is the way to go. However, I don’t advise further training of puppies on ducks unless they have a lot of natural rate. Most pups don’t have the control needed to properly work ducks. You’ll have to put on too much pressure for a pup to keep them from bounding into the ducks and may end up turning them off to ducks althogether.
You can even start older dogs working on ducks. After having read my sheep article, you are probably thinking that if GSDs are too powerful to start on many types of sheep, what chance will ducks have. The answer is that ducks tend to not excite GSDs like sheep do. Thus, they can often be successfully started on them. Furthermore, in non-rural areas, poultry may be the only livestock one is able to keep.
As they get older, GSDs will often thumb their noses up at the ducks they worked as puppies. They seem to have a “Real Dogs don’t work ducks” attitude. But some will continue to work ducks. And if you see interest waning, it may be time to switch to Indian Runners, a really fast breed of duck to get the excitement level back up.
Be careful about which ducks you work in springtime. Drakes’ hormones are way up then, and they are very protective of their mates. A low confidence dog may be adversely affected by their aggressiveness. But a high confidence dog will have the assertiveness it takes to handle spring drakes.
Ducks don’t orient to the handler like sheep and are much more sensitive to a dog’s position. So, have to be worked with more finesse. I’ve often heard ducks referred to as having power steering. Don’t allow your dog to grip ducks (unless the ducks are directly challenging the dog) or run over them. Ducks will quit the program (lay down and refuse to move) if mistreated this way. If you keep ducks, try to work them every day to keep them in condition. Ducks worked only infrequently lack stamina. The heavy meat breeds also tend to be short on stamina.
Formerly, AKC didn’t allow championships on ducks. The argument was ducks don’t require power to work, and a dog shouldn’t be able to earn a Herding Championship where it doesn’t have to show power because (unquestionably) a dog without power is useless as a real ranch dog. The irony of this is that I have seen several dogs without power earn championships on Barbados, the very light sheep so prevalent in trials that usually don’t take any power to work.
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GEESE
Geese can also be worked, but tend to be much more aggressive than ducks, especially during the spring. But some can be placid outside of breeding season or when the gander has no mate to protect. Also, I’m not aware of any Indian Runner equivalents in geese. They are also much larger and nosier than ducks. AHBA only allows a dog to earn three championship points on ducks, but there is no limit on goose points.
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GOATS
Debbie Burnette, who has Cardigan Welsh Corgis, highly recommends goats for starting dogs. When I questioned this because their groups break apart very easily. She responded that yes they break apart, but they don’t take off. So, the dog can easily put them back together again. A good alternative when there are no appropriate sheep available. Also, although sheep are known for grouping much better than goats, so many sheep we see today, actually group worse than goats. In some areas, it seems like there are not heavy wooly sheep available to work. No one wants to sheer. Therefore, only light haired sheep which are bad for starting GSDs on are available. However, haired goats can be heavy and therefore are a much better choice for GSDs than haired sheep. If all you have is light sheep in your area, seek out goats.
Cow dog folks often start dogs on goats and then progress to cattle. They find this produces a much better on dog then starting on sheep. Goats behave much more like cattle than they do sheep and aren’t as intimidating for a starting dog as are cattle. After they have a handle on the dog and it has gained in confidence, then they move on to cows.
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CATTLE
Again, this is a stock that doesn’t group very tightly, but cattle make up for this by being very heavy. Indeed, they are much more suited to being worked in small groups by GSDs than are most sheep. On cattle, you can let the GSD use the power it was bred to use on livestock. You don’t have to be always telling them to hold back. As cattle won’t freak as easily as sheep, you can work your beginning dog under much better controlled situations. I’ve worked the same high drive starting dog on light sheep, heavy sheep and cattle. With light sheep, I needed a very small pen or a larger pen plus a line, to keep everything under control and I had to be very proactive. With heavy sheep, I could work in a larger area and without a line, but I still had to be pretty proactive. With cattle, I could work in a larger area and could kick back and not have to do much active handling. This was because, the cattle temperament did not overstimulate the dog as did the sheep. On cattle the dog was calm, and I could let it work naturally without much interference from me. On light sheep, there was too much a chance of a wreck, that I generally avoided them with this dog. (Plus in this situation with cattle, the doesn’t have to work so hard and doesn’t have to be as good a handler.) However, after a year of foundation work on cattle, this dog is now doing nicely on light sheep
The GSDs wearing style is well suited for cattle. By being able to wear heavily, the dog is able to move at the pace it wants to move at. GSDs were bred to work at a trot, and many tend to be frustrated if they cannot go at that pace. And their uprightness and size puts them into the cattle’s visual zone in many more places than most breeds, giving them many more spots in which they can control the livestock. I highly recommend cattle as a livestock for GSDs. Much, much better to work a small group of cattle than a small group of sheep.
Incidentally, being “upright” doesn’t mean that the dog doesn’t crouch when it works. It means that the whole style is based on acting tall and staying away from the ground. This is why GSDs generally don’t down when working stock and this is why they generally “heel” on a cow’s upper leg. They simply turn their head and grip, rather than crouch down and grip. Now most would tell you that a dog should heel low or it risks getting kicked, but GSDs come in from the side (rather than behind as most other breeds would) when they heel high, which keeps them out of the kick zone.
Incidentally, if you’re initial training is all telling your dog to hold back and tone down (which you have to do when you start a power dog on light stock), you may rob it of its full potential. You may be training in an inhibition. When it comes time to work stubborn or heavy stock, your dog may no longer be up to the challenge. However, if the same dog were started in a situation where it was allowed to cut loose, it will reach that potential. It is relatively easy to tone down a dog after it has had a lot of training on it. But it can be almost impossible to put back in power that you trained out of a dog.
As always, start your dog on cattle that are well dog-broke. That is, already trained to respect and move off of a dog. If you put a beginner dog on nondog-broke sheep or goats, the livestock may go bonkers and injure themselves running into fences. But if you put a beginner dog on nondog-broke cattle, especially range cattle, it is the dog that may end up injured. It is not recommended that particularly slow or nonreactive dogs be worked on cattle; a dog has to be able to read the situation and dodge cattle.
There are many good breeds of cattle to work. Angus and Herefords are common and work well. Purebred Brahmas are awful light to start dogs on. If your goal is to work Brahmas, I’d advise a heavy breed at first, then progression to Brahmas crossed with heavy breeds, before finally working pure Brahmas with your now more advanced dog. However, if your dog is of low power or low keenness, you might want to start on Brahmas. And then move onto heavier stock as is confidence and enthusiasm build.
Avoid all Mexican type cattle; they are bred for bullfighting, i.e. aggressiveness. Also be wary of doing your initial work on cattle that have been many generations on the range. Survival of the fittest on the open range leads to a tougher temperament cow.
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