Fee makes a nice jump into the hold pen...


and prepares to take the sheep out. We will open our work diary; and let you read about one of our grazing sessions:


Today, the grass had become blindingly green and shin-high along a strip about 75 yards long and maybe 12 yards wide. Since the grass sprouts seed heads that are very uncomfortable for sheep, dogs and humans, we needed to take that patch's height down a bit. So we took out the 38 sheep (left the rams in their pens) and Fee was tapped for the dog work today.

Fee's sire is line-bred on Karl Fuller's old HGH trial bitches from a few years back. And her dam is an American bred that was a pioneer in establishing the herding program here in the U. S. Fee got a lot of the right stuff hard-wired in there.

Even so, her ability surprises me at times. She settled in right away, picked up the not-so-visible border and patrolled, keeping would-be escapees in the graze, no matter which way they wanted to trespass the border.
Of course, that ram lamb did not want to stay inside any border. He is very willful! Fee would patiently run around the corner of the graze, stalk him quietly and surprise him into hopping back within the assigned borders.

After a while, she found he was really getting bold and just ignoring her stalking approach. I just watched, trusting her good judgment. She bounced at the lamb, bumping him and turning him into the graze. She followed him with her head over his neck, her mouth not even open. Just being very bossy, but gentle.

Finally, when it was time to put the sheep away, I walked to the very narrow gate back into their loafing lot. She saw me and without a word or signal from me, she moved in from the border and started wearing alongside the flock, all
the way to the back to put a bit of pressure on the sheep that still wanted to stuff themselves with grass. As soon as she felt movement in the flock, she would flip around and run back to head them so that there would be no crush at the gate.

Then back to the rear of the flock to give the impetus toward the gate, and again a fast break for the head to prevent any rushing at the gate. She did it all on her own, not one command to go, stop, turn, etc. The sheep filed in at the gate at a gentle trot, not one even touched the sides of the 6-foot wide opening.

On another day, we got a picture of Fee's calm confident work with the sheep. On this particular day...

she travels around the flock in a pattern marked by a tilled strip. She can move along quite close to the sheep without disturbing them, because she knows it is "dinner time" for sheep and she is respectful of their needs.

In the scene below, Fee shows a younger dog, Khan at 18 weeks of age, how to behave around sheep. Fee has stopped patrolling the border of the graze and is just watching over her sheep. Khan is on a line with me. The lesson did not stick with Khan, and he is still in training at age 18 months!

Fee is very protective of her people and her sheep. When she was still very young, we were grazing sheep out in the open countryside. A stranger stopped his vehicle on the road near our graze (no fences) and started toward me. Fee immediately ran out to hold him and bark until I called her back to me and told her it was okay. Then she went back to work with the sheep and I could talk to the man.

Sometimes Fee sees the need to hustle around and make sheep stay in their assigned place for grazing, not just wander around getting into crops or gardens. Here you can see that she can turn on the juice when it is necessary:

Fee is a very good shepherd dog. We enjoy our work together.

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