Seven month pup running off to play with sheep!!

[Cocobananas]

We live very rurally and have sheep and lambs in field opposite at the moment. Our garden is hard to completely secure but we have created a garden within the garden for her to play in. Pup is a crossbreed, I work from home and have spent a lot of time playing with and training her. She is very bright and active and knows her commands. Well obviously she doesn't well enough. We have a lovely wood on our doorstep too and she loves to run off lead in there. Initially we had no problems with recall, did hide and seek, whistle training at home and then in the woods. About a month ago she started recalling for the first half of the walk and then running off to find another dog walker or find the cows still out in a neighbouring field. Today that extended to running back through woods, across our minor road and into sheep field where I found her excitedly chasing round and round sheep and lambs. She eventually came over near enough for me to grab her and put her on lead. I have done loads of recall training where I call her back and then let her go on again and also with playing with other dogs she will come back. Because she is a bit dodgy in the woods, she disappears so fast we often don't know where she's gone, I have been walking her in the morning in open fields and lanes on and off lead and down in our village footpaths where I have to keep a good eye out for livestock but find she is improving. We like to use the woods for her afternoon walk because of short evenings and convenience. Now have decided to go open field or on lead afternoon walk. Any advice?
Don't know if it is pertinent but she doesn't sleep much during the day, hasn't since the day we brought her home. We have worked hard on creating a relaxed early morning,short play, rest of breakfast in Kong , DH goes to work early, then 40 min walk on and off lead...sleep, I ignore whilst getting on with house and work, she sleeps for about an hour then follows me around. I may go out, she is happy to be left, doesn't whine, bark or destroy. Lunchtime we go out in garden, play and train or I play and do training session indoors. She has a snack at lunch and settles for an hours sleep when DH gets home from work at 2.30pm. We play with her and then take for afternoon walk for approx 1/2 hour and then she free ranges in the garden until her tea at 5pm. She dozes and then I groom her long coat for 10 mins, she has a chewy and apart from a wee trip at 7pm and 10pm before bed is settled for the night. I wonder whether she is overtired and this causes bad behaviour on afternoon walk. Sorry for long post.

Unless your dog can solidly walk to heel they should be around sheep especially at this time of year. A dog running in their field can cause sheep huge anxiety leading to miscarriage.

My dog is a retrieve but forgets that around sheep, deer and horses so he stays on a short lead in fields with livestock.

Should on lead around sheep 🙄 I can't type at all this evening, and I'm off the booze!
x post anyway!

No. She will not realise that she is onlead because she won't recall.

However she will be safe and so will everything else.

No idea why you've let her off so many times. Once - ok learn from your mistake but it sounds as if you just keep letting her off. Ffs find a trainer if you can't crack it. Or keep her onlead.

Ok guys, steady on. She chased sheep today and won't again. Recall work good around other dogs and from empty fields and thought we were getting there. Won't make that mistake again.

Total Recall by Pippa Mattinson is an excellent book for sorting out recall problems. Bear in mind that she will be approaching adolescence and it's likely she may well become more unreliable once she hits that teenage phase.

I'd look into starting something like gundog training with her as well. There are trainers who are perfectly happy to take any breed of dog so it shouldn't matter that she's not purebred. Obviously springers and labs are both gundogs and although these days they're in the utility group poodles were historically retrievers as well (in fact some are still worked properly) so she should be able to have a good go at it. You may find that giving her an appropriate outlet for instinctive behaviours helps her training in other areas.

No dog ever, unless it's owned by the farmer who owns the sheep should be off lead around sheep.

I have a small dog, walks to heel beautifully, has fantastic recall and a low prey drive, if we're anywhere near any sort of livestock, horse, cows, sheep, she goes on the lead.

A dog worrying sheep shouldn't be allowed to happen even once, you're lucky she wasn't shot. You have no idea what sort of damage she could have caused.

Lead only when theres livestock around.horse cattle sheep its not ok to chase any of them!but chasing sheep is the biggest issue.
If the farmer who owns the sheep finds out about her "play" Id be expecting a bill for the damage caused by worrying heavily pregnant sheep and lambs....your lucky she wasnt seen and shot!
Its very very cruel to let your dog chase sheep with lambs at foot, the poor creatures would have been terrified and any heavily pregnant sheep will now be at risk of miscarriage thanks to your dog.
Put it on a lead unless you can 100 precent gauratee she will not chase.

I had a young lurcher PTS after he ran wild amongst a farmers sheep (he pushed through a blackthorn hedge into the sheep, sheep who we had walked past daily for four years)
It's safe for me to say that putting down an old sick dog is dreadful, putting down a young, fit and healthy dog is something that I simply wouldn't wish on my worst enemy

Cocobananas, I'd walk the dog near sheep but on her lead. Everytime she even looks at or tries to get towards the sheep, give her the 'leave it' command, very sternly. Praise her when she ignores them. If you use a long training line you can gradually let out a little more line. It might take a long time but she'll understand that she has to ignore the sheep and when she's a bit older she should have the self control to keep to that.

Faintly why did you PTS him?
Why not just keep him on a lead?

I understand that must have been heartbreaking for you, but I don't understand why you weren't able to prevent it from happening again by leashing him?

Faintly wtf?? 😡

Karma - your trainer is talking rubbish.

Yes, I thought what Karma's trainer said was a bit odd.

I knew someone who had a collie and refused to use treats for any training as he felt the dog should obey him because he was the one in charge.

Lovely dog, but it took him ages to train her to do anything. Not sure the dog understood the concept of doing anything out of respect for her owner. I suspect the only way that would work is if you trained a dog by making it afraid of you and then it would do as you say for fear of being abused.

Maybe my dog is a particularly mercenary sort of dog, but I can't imagine that she would have done anything at all just because I said so.

Dogs do stuff for one of two reasons.

To get good stuff.
To avoid bad stuff.

Trainers who talk about dogs doing stuff out of "respect" tend to have dogs who obey in order to avoid bad stuff.

Note to self - stop saying "stuff" 🙄

In short,

• It was over ten years ago when access to internet advice was not so plentiful
• He had torn the throats out of one ewe and had a fairly good stab at another before I managed to rugby tackle him to the ground.
• We live and walk in sheep country. As a young dog who was bred to run for miles (he was a salukiXgreyhound) it seemed intolerable to keep him on his lead for the rest of his life when he would have no concept of why.
• We competed regularly at agility, again mostly carried out on farmland etc. so no more agility for him
• His third party liability was revoked from his insurance so if he had slipped the lead, bolted from the car, I had tripped over etc. any damage he caused would not have been covered by insurance.

Essentially all of the above made him a ticking time bomb. My vet did the deed without a seconds attempt to talk me out of it and while I still regret that it happened, I don't regret my decision at all.

My dad was in the police in a rural area many, many years ago - he was born in 1900 so a long time ago - and I remember him talking about dogs being shot after sheep worrying and the awful painful destruction they would cause to a flock of sheep.

There was never any hesitation about the dogs being shot.

Can fully understand why you had your dog pts under those circumstances Faintly

I found the OP's title about her pup running off to 'play' with sheep ignorant, to say the least. Very much doubt the ewes with their lambs or the farmer having to deal with the fallout from her dog's actions would have seen it in quite that way.

well just echo-ing everyone else..
why would you let it off the lead ?- it will get shot.
Dont get why people live 'very rurally' but don't understand this.

New to mumsnet, playing was poor choice of phrase. My worry over this was and is paramount and I thank some of you for good advice. Obviously I know without being banged over the head that pup needs to stay on lead when being walked in our immediate vicinity and anywhere where there is livestock. She was off lead in the woods quite a distance from our house and the sheep field but doubled back and ran a considerable distance to get there. Woods are off limits at the moment until we have gone back to basics with recall and then I am going to start proofing the recall using a long lead in there and in other places we walk. In the meantime we have a couple of other safe walks we can drive to with no livestock about where she can go off lead. In any event we are not going to try offlead locally until she is a bit older, recall is improved and lambing season is well over cos then the sheep move several fields away in the opposite direction to where we would ever walk. She can't get out of the garden. If anyone has any tips, advice to add then please do, I have already sought professional training help and am waiting to hear from her.

If you could engineer a well-controlled situation where your dog is introduced to a clever bossy old ewe with young lambs in a pen, he will swiftly learn to respect sheep.

I bought two in-lamb ewes from a local farmer when my setter was about your dog's age. I wanted two domineering old bitches girls to teach my dog. They ran fiercely at him and stamped - he backed up in a big hurry. Like your pup, he was young enough to be intimidated. Also, he just had the makings of a light-hearted chaser, not a killer. I wanted to be fully in charge of it so I actually bought them - and sold them back to the same farmer afterwards. Hunts usually do something similar to teach hounds to respect stock.

(I later acquired an unflappable cat who did a fine job at curing a cat fascination and is currently permitting aforesaid dog to sleep on her bed. Hens with chicks will do the same or any farmyard poultry. I imagine that this is what the people do who promise to reform your dog.)

Do not try this with mares/ foals or cows/ calves, very dangerous!

Faintly That all sounds dreadful

Villainous I tried this many years ago. Friends had two caatrated male "pet" sheep one was so aggressive that she couldn't always go in the field to get her horse out without being attacked and she couldn't ever turn her back on it as it would charge at her and knock her off her feet. Her own dogs were scared stiff of it. We let my young dog (who's only 12 inches to the shoulder and a complete wimp) in the field and the bloody sheep ran away and with my dog madly chasing it.
The simple solution is to never let your dog of the lead near livestock.

Happy what a pantomime!
That's why I bought the ewes so that I could stage it properly.
They have to be old and confident (so that they will reliably stand up to the dog) and they have to be penned so that they couldn't run away even if they wanted to. They must have a lamb at foot so that they have something to defend. And you have to have a dog who is impressionable as opposed to a cold-blooded jugular-grabber. With a long trailing line on him so that you are in control. You also need to let him decide to approach or avoid as he wishes, rather than pushing him into a confrontation.
I live on a farm and we have livestock all around us, so if our dog is not to be tied onto me or shut in a yard, he must be stockproof. It's like teaching your child to cross the road versus forever holding his hand. I do realise this is unachievable for most people but it did work for us. Plus both of my ewes had unexpected twins so I made money when I sold them back to the farmer!

Coming on to say the word playing is worryingly inappropriate but OP has beaten me to it

I'm a sheep farmer. The damage and distress caused to sheep and farmers through dogs 'playing' in a field of lambing ewes is catastrophic, even if the dog doesn't actually maul them. I've had ewes strangle themselves in the stock fence trying to escape, ewes aborting, lambs dying post being chased due to the stress. Just reading your post made me feel ill. We work hard all year, caring for our livestock and lambing is the 'harvest' of a years work. To see that being recklessly trashed because someone doesn't feel they need to put their dog on a lead is sickening. Ignore anyone saying you can train your dog not to chase sheep - it will give you a false sense of security. There is an excellent video on utube of a very experienced Gundogs trainer walking his trained spaniel to heel off-lead through a field of sheep beautifully. He then does it again whilst a sheepdog is rounding the sheep up and the spaniel bolts after the sheep and he can't recall it. This demonstrates how strong the chase drive is in a dog and they can NEVER be allowed the opportunity to do this. I have dogs and I would never walk them off lead amongst my sheep unless I was working them. Your dog has now had the most fun it's ever had in its life chasing sheep and he will, without a shadow of a doubt, make it its mission to do it again and again and again..... What you should do now is find out who owns the sheep and then inform them that your dog has chased and distressed his sheep and that you will be responsible for any financial loss he may suffer from this .......but I doubt very much that you will do this.