In our last blog we reviewed the notion of BALANCE in a heading dog’s repertoire. I asked the questions: Do you fully understand the purpose for BALANCE? Can you identify when your dog is on-BALANCE or off-BALANCE? Can you use BALANCE to load a pen or chute?

My intention was to get you thinking about BALANCE when training your dog, as this will then allow you to more easily read the situation between dog and stock. For example, is the dog covering the lead sheep’s head or is the dog back level with the rib cage. The dog and handler’s position on the stock will cause the stock to either move forward or turn around.

When doing practical chores such as penning sheep in a corral or loading a trailer, you can use your dog’s natural BALANCE to your advantage.

In fact, if your dog is correctly reading the stock, he should be able to do most of the work for you. If your sheep scatter everywhere, then the dog’s lift and approach is too far into the flight zone. If the sheep move back away from the pen, the dog isn’t applying enough pressure on the flight zone.

This exercise will quickly show you the “sweet spot” that your dog needs to be.

Check out the video I made for you called Using Balance to Pen (I know, super creative title!).

I would love to hear what you think!

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