I’m always looking for opportunities to help with the training of Gus and its not just about being out there on the hill hunting.
I had a job that I’d been wanting to do for a while now and that was a fence line that went down and across a gully through the scrub that had places where the sheep could get through so I decided to take the old fence down and put a new fence in lower in the gully where it was not as step and there was less scrub. The first job was to pull one wire down then with a pick remove all off the scrub where the new fence line was going. Once the scrub was clear then the fence Could be erected. Most of my fences are netting but this fence is being designed to be the sheep training fence. A seven wire fence with electric on the top wire and the third wire up. This is to discourage the sheep from trying to push through any of my fences. With having pigs on my property they always find weak spots on fences and once the wire has been lifted the sheep are the next to push through so this fence with its 8kv shock I’m hoping will discourage any sheep from pushing through any fences. While I was constructing this two hundred meter fence the dogs were hanging around with me and the sheep were also about. At one point I was alerted to some quick movement in the scrub above me where Rastus, Bro and Gus were playing and out came a sheep running flat out down into the creek with Gus chasing. Rastus and Bro knew what was happening and returned to me while Gus followed the sheep into the creek below me. At this point I could see that his intent was not to attack the sheep but to play with it. Now this could be a big turning point in the training of Gus in how I react. If I was to react negatively and give him a shock straight away this would discourage him from chasing sheep but it may also discourage him from being confident around sheep to the point that he avoids them and I don’t want that I want him to not be shy around them.
Gus was in the creek with this sheep for two minutes not quite sure what to do and I waited untill he was looking at the sheep before I gave him a tone on the collar at which point he returned to me not scared, not shy but with another learning experience to help him going forward.