Trainer q&A
little tickle and give a short, sharp but soft stop whistle. From then on, every time I feed my pup, I will call him to my leg. I make sure he is carrying himself correctly, and once he is, I give the tickle and the stop whistle and then he gets his food. You have to feed your dog every day, so why not use it to your advantage! By practising this, I can get a stop, come and the beginning of sides all at the age of about ten weeks, using very minimal pressure. Once you go to stock, most of your training techniques to get sides, stop and a call off have already been imprinted. The other big thing is that you are opening clear lines of communication with your dog from an early age.
JA KE NO W LA N Jake Nowlan is a young stockman based in New South Wales who works predominantly Kelpies and Huntaways. He has had a successful work and trial career including winning the Ultimate Stock Dog trial in 2015 and the All-Round Stock Dog title at the Stock Dog Spectacular in 2018. Jake has spent a lot of time working with and learning from top stockmen, including a recent stint in New Zealand for two years where he learnt a lot of different training techniques. Jake regularly travels to teach dog training schools all around the country. How do you teach a dog to stop? I have two stops. The first is a check whistle that stops the dog but enables it to keep working. It is handy for a lot of situations including trialling or if you are working in steeper country, and you need to take the weight off and just be a bit more cautious. The second is a hard stop that means the dog will not move until commanded to do so. The dog must remain on its feet with both these commands. I start imprinting these commands as soon as I get a young pup. When I teach him to come to me, I have the pup standing at my leg. I wait until it is in the right frame of mind – cool, calm and collected, showing no signs of anxiety in the forms of tail wagging, licking, jumping on me, sitting down etc. Once it is correct, I will rest my fingers on his back in between the hips and the last rib and give a
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AWSDM www.stockdogs.com.au
Getting the stop on stock. I will go into the yard, and I will call the pup and make it stay at my leg until I release it. So, walk in, call the pup to your leg and once it is in the right frame of mind, I will give it the stop whistle and the light pat/tickle between the hip and back rib. They already associate this contact with a calm mind because you have imprinted it with food from when they were a little pup. The next step is to get the sheep in a corner and create a stop with your body pressure. You want to use the smallest amount of your pressure that you can, so make sure you are not facing your dog when you stop it. If you are, I believe you are desensitizing your dog to your pressure. So, move it around and get into a position of control which is in between the dog and sheep, ideally in a corner. Use your positioning to create a space where the dog can go where it will feel comfortable to stop itself and not feel too much pressure once it has stopped. Once it gets used to stopping off the minimum amount of your pressure, just add the command. The hard stop. Once you have the check stop, it is easy to teach the hard stop. You just put a little extension on your stop whistle that sounds a touch harsher, and do not let the dog move at all until you ask it too. The key to a good stop is consistency. Like any command, if you cannot enforce it, do not ask for it.
