SHEEP DOGS, SHEEP, AND SIGNALS

Dear Clicker Friends,

Like most of us, I've always been intrigued by herding dogs.
Here's a letter from a retired doctor that posed a
clickerly question about herding. Thanks to herding dog
studies I made in New Zealand some years ago, plus a trick Kay
Laurence showed me in England, I was able to offer an answer. See
what you think.

____________________________________________________________________________

Sheepdog overlooking flock

Dear Karen,

We just returned from a visit to New Zealand where we visited many
sheep farms. We were shown several demonstrations where sheep dogs
herd sheep in the direction indicated by a whistle signal from the
dog handlers.

I asked one of the people demonstrating the dogs' skill why, if
the sheep also hear the whistle signals, they do not automatically
obey the signals BEFORE the dogs start to guide them. After all, they
hear these very same signals over and over.

His answer to me was that sheep are not very intelligent animals and
are deathly afraid of dogs.

I am not satisfied with his answer and ask you to help sort this out.
As far as intelligence is concerned, we said the same about cats and
pigs before we found ways to train them. So the intelligence factor
may lie with humans; perhaps humans are not intelligent enough to
know how to train the sheep directly instead of setting them up to
respond to the barking and threatening moves of dogs.

We were also told that one good sheep dog could control up to 2000
sheep. To me, this means that some of the 2000 sheep may NEVER see a
dog but respond to her/his barking. So then maybe sheep could be
trained to respond as we wish by using sounds other than a dog
barking, and dogs themselves are not actually necessary. What do you
think?

Dr. William Reese
Sun City, Arizona

____________________________________________________________________________

So the whistles don't indicate destinations; they indicate
actions.

Dear Dr. Reese,

Thank you for your question about sheep dogs, sheep, and signals.

The question is not one of training but one of logic.

In fact, quite often neither the dogs nor the sheep know where they
are being made to go. It might be to one gate or another, or it might
be to a pen in the middle of the field, or maybe the shepherd just
wants the dogs to gather the sheep and hold them for visual
inspection.

So the whistles don't indicate destinations; they indicate
actions. The whistles tell the dogs, principally, five things: go
forward to the left, go forward to the right, come back (going left
or right around the sheep), and stop where you are. There are other
commands, such as slow and fast, but these five are the main ones.
With these whistles, the shepherd moves the dogs around like chess
pieces, and thus moves the sheep. Since you might be moving two dogs
in different directions, often each dog may have its own individual
whistles for each of the commands. (If you buy a new dog in New
Zealand, you also get a tape of its whistles. If you lose the tape
and forget a whistle, you'd better be able to reach the seller by
telephone, or you're in trouble!)

In New Zealand, where the fields are huge, the dogs may not always be
able to see all the sheep and vice versa; that is one reason New
Zealanders use dogs that bark a lot. Bred to do so, they are called
huntaways. In the smaller fields of, say, Wales, the dogs (called eye
dogs) are silent, and can actually move the sheep just by glaring at
them in a predatory way. In both cases, the sheep probably do learn
that if they move away from the dogs, the pressure will ease.
Therefore, they do not necessarily move with panic.

In the vast terrain in New Zealand, I have seen farmers team up and
use as many as eight dogs at a time. Since the whistles are commands
to the dog, not destination indicators, and since there are so many
whistles that may change from time to time, the sheep have no
opportunity to attach much meaning to any individual whistle.

In simpler situations, such as the smaller fields and flocks in
England, you are right about sheep training themselves without
needing or waiting for dogs to guide them. If there is one flock of
sheep, and one frequently used gate to the field, the sheep can learn
enough about dog whistles to steer themselves. Kay Laurence
demonstrated that to me in England. She parked the car at a roadside
pasture full of sheep. We walked over to the fence and Kay whistled a
typical �~@~\command to a sheepdog�~@~] whistle. Even though no dog
was present, the hundred or so sheep in the field quit grazing and
started calmly toward the exit gate which was downhill near the
farmhouse. They knew what to do.

Is that a more satisfying answer?

Happy Clicking!

Karen Pryor

Sunshine Books, Inc.
49 River St., Suite 3
Waltham, MA 02453
1-800-47-CLICK(2-5425)

© 2006, Karen Pryor Clickertraining (KPCT)TM

I've always been interested in the sheep point of view of herding dogs (both barkers and glarers). I used to own a huntaway cross collie and she was used for some sheep herding in her youth however she would never bark at the small flock of sheep we had only at cattle. I'm not sure why she started this (did it from puppyhood) but it was always reinforced by it's effectivness. With regards to the level of fear sheep feel from dogs I don't believe most sheep are afraid of dogs if they are often herded by them as they habituate to the dogs presence but become sensitised to his movement/barking.

I personnaly think it's less stressfull to use dogs to drive livestock than to use people. I have seen sheep rounded up by quad bikes on the moors without dogs and not only is it less effective but the sheep seem to become highly stressed. I believe this is because the dogs use a form of intense advance and retreat on the sheep. They cut in and out to move them but when the sheep are moving they don't stay close they let them move off this is more appropriate negative reinforcement than the sheep running from the constant pressure to a quad but never escaping it.

With regard to use of dogs versus teaching the animals commands themselfs. I have seen some studies that found sheep and cattle could be tuaght to enter handling facilities and endure stressfull (even mildly painful) procedures such as injections for a food reward on the other side, without the use of pressure. I believe this did take some time to train and the animals were initial driven through with dogs and other aversives bu this could be faded rapidly.

On the subject of sheepdogs there was a programe called natural world on last wednesday about a beardie collie who was a rescue that had attacked sheep in the past. He was retrained by a shepard to work sheep reasonable successfully (no trial winner but very useful). While the training methods were a mixture of positive and negative reinforcement (e'g shouting at the dog to stop) it demonstrated how positively reinforcing herding is to these dogs as he was totaly keen despite her occasional yelling. There was also a destructive blood hound retrained as a tracking dog (lots of positive reinforcement, despite the choke chain it wore) that was very interesting.

Hi Adam

I saw that program too and also found it interesting. That collie was such a star - what amazed me wasn't so much that he was so willing despite the mixture of P, +R and -R but the fact that he managed to fathom out what the bloody woman meant at all! She was an apalling trainer! Her cues seemed to go along the lines of "lie", "lie down", "LIE DOWN", all of above with inconsistent body language, all of the above with an occasional waved stick or rope, "DON'T YOU BLOODY DARE", "YOU LITTLE....." - do you get the picture?!! But the fab little dog seemed to have the opinion that "if in doubt lie down and/or head towards the shouty lady" - which is generally what she wanted even if her cues were so inconsistent. I'm sure there was partially the issue of pressure from having to train to a TV-prescribed schedule (eg she didn't seem to want to enter him in the trial at such an early stage and I suspect that was foisted upon her) but some of the things she said also hinted at her being hung up on the old dominance theories (eg he has to go through the door after her) so I'm not making excuses for most of it.

As for the bloodhound - that was much better. OK, so it wasn't perhaps as +R/empathic as I would have liked but I thought the shaping and timing of the +R/-R was spot-on. And he got a great result.

ETA - and I completely agree with what you say about the herding. It does look really stressful for the sheep to be herded by quad-bike. I guess the dogs are also much better at providing the consistent cues to the sheep than the humans randomly beeping their horns.

Catherine