S3, Ep. 3- Think Like a Sheep Dog Trainer with Beth Kerber

Introduction

0:00welcome back to bear.bc.com stock down philosophies podcast i'm your host ty ben joined this time by justin sugar and very special guest for our return beth kirby author beth kirby how's it going it's going well

Getting into Sheep Herding

0:30all right um so how did you get into the dogs and the sheep herding and all of that um it started i got into the border collies um when a friend of mine from college her mother had raised border collies and she had died unexpectedly and so uh she had used the border collies for hoarding um as well as goose work and so my friend talked me into taking a

1:00border collie puppy um and then later i got more than once and then you have to get another one and um i worked with and then um i got sheep about 20 years ago and decided hey let's see if we can get these border collies to herd sheep and now i have lots more border collies and lots more sheep

1:30and put lots of miles on my vehicle yeah yeah it's a hobby that grows really quickly because you know as soon as you have one you're like oh i messed this one up i gotta get another one and i'll mess it up in vans and do all these things and they need more and more sheep to keep training on you know so yeah it's a it's a consuming hobby for sure so how long have you been into it now like how long

Training Experience

2:00you've been training and traveling probably um i started um i started with a rescue border collie and i think it was like in 08 09 um and i struggled for a couple years and then um maybe it was i think it was around 2013 uh my instructor linda foate gave me uh one of her old retired border collies and then i finally felt like i was starting to make a little progress

2:33that's a great topic like i was like i want to come into right here and race into part of the part

Older Dog's Help

2:42later how helpful do you feel that was to have an older dog that has some experience to maybe help you catch up a little bit too so um well that one helped me out by getting started i got her when she about 10 so i only wrote uh ran her like in the pro novice level um and then my friend kay stevens who's also my co-author of the book she gave me um a uh jack who was um still able to run it open and that was

3:19when i started i became an open handler um and he was amazing because he um one helped me you know when you're a new handler and starting off or i was um really nervous and um if you're really nervous it's hard to think about what you need to do um i don't have to worry about him chasing sheep or you know misbehaving or doing anything wrong so i could really think about

3:51what i needed to do um when trialing and also just when working the sheep at home and then the other thing he taught me was what correct behavior looks like like what a good plank like what driving looks like what a good um outrun looks like um and um he also took me to my two national finals i mean he was a really really good dog yeah no it's it's incredible how much you

4:23can learn from a dog it's it's so hard we have some people that you know we try to help train with

Challenges of Training

4:29new dogs we try to give them some of all the dogs to get started with because it is really difficult to start out where you're fresh and you have a dog that's going to figure it out too and things are just moving so fast for you so fast for the dog it's really big struggle so it's great that you had that opportunity we kind of had that opportunity a little bit because when we were young we had our dad dad seeing the down dogs you know a little bit he trained one bit more so now and so we kind of

5:01yeah i think you know if people are starting off it really does help to have you know somebody a dog that uh is experienced um i know some people are able to do it you know you know green on green but um it i think i advanced a lot faster um after i was able to have a dog that was trained um i know

5:35sometimes you know it's also finding that good a good match um because you know you could have a really

Dog Qualities

5:41a trained dog that was really speedy or something like that and it may not end up helping you i don't know so yeah so i brought you to another great topic what kind of dog do you like what do you not quite a few you probably have a bit more about flippers you want to find puppies what are the worst qualities you want to see so um i've usually most of my dogs have been a more a little more um loose-eyed um and i i now have a dog that has a lot more eye and so i have uh i've had to learn to

6:20adjust to that which is good but i want my next dog to be more loose-eyed no i don't understand like when you stray from what you like it's like this is hard to get used to just do just give it back you know well i think when you start off you don't really know like when i started off i didn't really know um what it is i like about dogs and now that i've had several you know i think i'm a little uh more careful about saying okay this is what i i like in a dog um so and i you know i like a

7:00dog partner up with me and um you know i i i would rather have a steady eddy type of dog um you know rather than one that's really flashy all that so you know i tend to agree with you a lot i think a lot of sport is consistency so it is great to have a dog that has these you know tons of speed big stops and does all these things but just to have

7:30a dog that's consistent and you can count on and uh like that we said about being being your buddy that's a huge part of why this sport's so amazing because you get out of these deep deep connections

Sheep Work and Farming

7:42with with dogs and it's such a great it's a great thing yeah i you know i have sheep at home and so i i use the dogs a lot for farm work and so i i do want a dog that i can count on to to help me out how many sheep do you have um i went out and counted them today because people ask that question and a lot of times i don't know um so there i think there's about 60 out there okay that's a pretty good size one

8:21yeah i mean so i usually keep um i have some wool sheep um they're mostly uh cheviot crosses about a dozen of those that i just keep for dog training and then i have um katadins that i breed and um so i i have finally it took me a while to kind of work out a system so i always have fresh sheep to work and so i usually in the fall i work my ram lambs until they go to market and then uh over

8:54winter and spring i work the ewe lambs and i don't breed my ewe lambs until they're yearlings so uh it does it helps to um at least provide me with some uh fresh sheep and as well as being able then i have markets to sell those sheep too so that helps yeah that's a problem we have we don't have a great way to rotate our sheep all the time so we get some pretty spoiled sheep to to training and doing all the stuff with them so they sometimes

9:28cheat us to like leave a little early on the outrun stuff like that but it is nice in the in the spring whenever we lay them we bring back just the yearlings and they give us a fresh look at things so it's kind of nice in the ways well i you know the more i do this the more i think i realize that you know having good sheep to to train on is is really hard uh to find and to kind of system it but it makes a huge difference yeah but i asked i got better too

10:04yeah i think the good sheep to work make you better because when they're honest it allows you to start learning how to read your sheep better understand what your dog's doing and and i think it allows you to see if your dog's inefficiencies are somewhere you need to work on to help them it allows you to see those things that you may not see on really broke sheep sometimes yeah and sometimes whenever training like trying to work on this with a dog i think they're trying like to

10:37isolate this and the sheep are making it really hard to isolate and i want to work on that variable but it's really difficult to accomplish the task of working to fix with the dog too yeah and like one thing i i see like with uh you know people i i work with is a lot of times the sheep learned to leave and start walking towards the person um during the outrun and a lot of times

11:08you will see that the dogs learn that they don't really have to complete their outrun to get the sheep to move yeah that's what uh that's what ours do in the house a little bit is we throw out some food sometimes or we have luckily we have the benefit of having you know us three together so we'll hold the sheep back some dogs have to go alone and so there's ways to work around it but yeah we have that

Competing at Nationals

11:31problem for sure so you said kind of going back your your dog the second dog you had took you to the nationals um what did it feel like the first time you were competing at the nationals i know when i first ran and i had to land in a bunch of trials it kind of felt pretty good with my dog and the first time i sent the post in the nationals i was like shaking i just felt so nervous and it was uh definitely a tough thing to fight through

12:03well i was i was pretty nervous too because i think i was like running either right before or right after tommy wilson you know so uh i was like oh people are watching this uh-oh yeah that's the worst but you know i guess you know that's part of i think dog trialing and i think i've gotten over the years i got a little bit better at the mental game of you know just kind of blocking that out and it's just you and your dog out there um and uh but i you know i still find

12:41myself getting nervous but i'm not like shaking like i used to and i think that's nervous but um you have any like aha type of moments where you uh you had a really successful run or you did you accomplished something somewhere that made you feel like okay i know what i'm doing i belong a little bit here i'd love to hear you know some story that you made uh um yeah i mean i've had some some good haha moments or ah aha moments um when i've been running

13:19and um and then i've had those moments in which i've you know realized that oh my gosh my whistles are are sounding really bad and then i have to kind of stop and readjust um and all that i don't think my best moments have come at the nationals though so yeah mine neither um we'll get to whistles in the world but if you have your whistle we'll get to and uh inconsistent whistles is something that we focus on a lot we're talking about just maybe we're gonna hear that

13:51hey my dogs tend to listen to them most of the time okay even if they're not consistent consistent yeah um so i can't remember when you and kay wrote the book timeline wise i have read it my dad brother have not um i kind of quick real quick i want to jump something in here because i love to jump on justin whenever i can he he purchased the book several years ago okay we've been at

14:27multiple trials where you're at including uh at angie's new park right next to us yeah he's been like and he had the book he's been too shy to come up and ask you to sign the book and you know and you know angie's pay and i were both there yeah i know and he's willing to go do it he wouldn't go do it so next time we'll have to make it happen so i will tell you a story about like um when kay and i were working on the book we were

15:02um figuring out okay are we going to self-publish or are we going to go with the publisher and um so when i trial up in wisconsin patricia mcconnell was up there um and she's obviously written i don't know does probably over a dozen dog training books and she trials in that area and i was so nervous to approach her and ask her um if she could give me some advice and so friday went

15:34and saturday went and finally on sunday it was like this is my only chance to ask her and she was the nicest person and it was just like i don't know why i was so nervous about that so um but i know some people have been nervous about asking me to do that and you know i'm just i'm just a sheepdog you know trainer struggling through trying to coach you know yeah no definitely you got a question about the bogies so i don't remember how long ago you guys wrote the book but there were some

16:08fantastic parts i loved about it because there's a lot of trained things that we're learning now as we go we've been to a few clinics here and there as audits not always as uh we were able to do the bruce folk clinic once my dad and i but it was the packed pen and some of the other stuff i had never heard of or you know seen done some of that stuff was really interesting to me but how did you guys determine your layout for the book are you talking so are you talking about like the order of what we

16:40were going how we put the um the chapters together yeah yeah so um well it changed multiple times um i think that um but i think early on we we you know said okay we're going to have sections where we have to talk about the sheep and we had talked earlier tonight uh tonight about how the sheep are such an important part of trying to train your dog um and i we changed it multiple times we went to an

17:17editor we changed it again like the order and then when um the publisher we submitted it to the publisher they had changes that they also um wanted uh to do like in the order of the book um but we were pretty um certain early on that we wanted to have um like short sections with um headlines or sub subheads so that um the information we wanted it to be easy to find if you were looking through something

17:54because when we're looking on okay how do we teach a dog to drive and we have this specific thing um we want to be able to find it easily so i think that's um one thing that we had decided early on to do um little shepherd stories um i'm a writer by trade and so i have writing friends um who are also dog friends and um you know that they they wanted to put you know little stories in they thought

18:26all that will make it so much more readable um and so we did take that suggestion and we did have fun coming up with different um stories about our experiences and all and what was your favorite um i think it's chapters or section that you were able to do in the book what was your favorite part of that

Book Writing Experience

18:46um wow that's a good question um i worked a lot on um the sheep chapters uh i think what i brought to the book uh i i consider you know kay to be a lot um she's been training a lot longer and um you know she has more of the training background so a lot of times i would she would either give me something

19:20or i would interview her and um my strength was probably in the writing and the editing part um i also did the illustrations and i'm not sure if that was my strength or not um but somebody had to do it and it was ended up being me i thought the illustrations were really good i enjoyed the book because there was so much knowledge of the explanations of each part you were doing uh from the driving and doing this with the

19:55diagrams that went with it and i i thoroughly have enjoyed the book i recommended it to a handful other people and they bought in the book as well um just because it's it's just something you can go back to time and time again and with each new dog or with the same dog and you've got this something you're wanting to fix or work on you can have a training guide to help you is so nice with it and uh this summer we the the opportunity to go through it once again because it is um

20:29being made into an audio book and um oh there we go i know so hopefully um i think within the next month or so it should be um available as as a body so that when we're driving around we can listen to it yeah that'll be great we like stuff you can listen to don't we guess yeah well just on my own voice the narrator um the narrator is a voice actor out of texas and you asked me too quickly that um

21:14i will think of his name he's great so one thing i want to ask kind of to wrap up with the book here is i think it so whenever i named our podcast stock dog philosophy podcast i thought that with stock dogs with all the sheep with the dogs everything it does require philosophies there's not like you know a set of

21:46rules it's about changing the way you think about it right the same way that i'm a history teacher the same way that aristotle socrates changed the way people just thought about life right so i think that uh what we're trying to do here is give people some different thoughts about how you attack these dogs how you try to you know train and and do all these different things and so the title of the book is think like a sheep dog trainer so what made you guys call the title uh just look over that as well

22:18so um well when you are we came up with the title because as you know when you're doing working on training sheep dogs um there's not a lot of resources available usually nearby um and that's one of the challenges is that um you're often training without um you know instruct an instructor with you or it may

22:48not be easy to get to an instructor um and the other challenge that i find is that there are so many variables um that you cannot give a lesson for um like when you're teaching a dog how to drive you know sometimes you're going to have to tweak those lessons because your sheep may not be the right sheep or um you know this just because you know there could be a lot of other reasons for your situation so um so i think that that's one of the reasons we came up with that title is is like okay

23:24you know if you're going to be a sheep dog trainer you're going to have to really you know think about um you know how how do i have to set up this lesson um and we tried to give a lot of tools so that um you could set up a lesson and you know sort of how to set up a lesson and we gave samples for teaching you know anything from the outrun to um the flanks and driving and all that um and then we also you know i think like when i was growing up you always have that idea that oh

24:02somebody's a natural dog trainer somebody naturally knows how to do this and um a lot of those skills i think you can develop and so that's one of the triggers is you know okay this is what good trainers do and skills that you can have um and develop and i think that was an important thing that we put in the book yeah no i agree completely that's something that that i really love last year i did a professional development day at the school that i work at and i brought the

24:36dogs in and i brought in the sheep and working for the people and talking about like what the dogs do why we should do it but i focus most of them on like mental side and the way that you know athletes and coaches could and other sports could take take away from that because they're like so focused you kind of have to have various things it's like when you're handling in a trial and you know maybe having a really good run this makes you go up and so it's like really focused on all these variables what your dog's doing you know what the sheep are doing each one how they're reacting

25:10and you're kind of the point where you have to figure out like what the sheep are going to do before they're going to do it so that you have to so you're there to fix it before they get off line and have a problem so that kind of like true so-called just really i think is a really great thing you kind of just described that yeah i think another great thing is just the trust you have to have in the the dog in your training at the same time the dog's talent of getting things you know

25:44bringing the sheep to you doing certain things that trust you have to believe the dog can be able to go 500 yards if you've never done it before you know um that's something i love is just the trust we have in the dogs and such a partnership it is with them you know and that's probably one of the the things that i really love about doing the sheep dog work and um you know i remember when i was first starting off when i got jack who was the fully trained like open dog and um i was doing a clinic with uh fonzie

26:20and he's like you know you're not going to really change a lot of this dog's behavior but i'm going to teach you how to run this dog and we were on you know he was talking about the outrun and you know what i needed to be doing and observing and um you know when i was sending the dog i was always like oh my gosh isn't he the most amazing thing look at him running out to get those sheep and you know i still think of that you know when the dogs are working and how amazing um they are to

26:54work at such distances and um when it all comes together it's it's sort of like a dance out there um yeah and it's it's what i you know one of the things i really love about doing the sheep dog work sometimes it's not like a dance it's really bad but uh well that's like how we dance over here you know i'm bare mountain really bad but we're moving you know but yeah i think i think one of the things that's so beautiful about the sport is that it is like

27:28art artist art like engineer trying to figure this out like you know kind of be so focused about like this line and moving this way but it's also you know an art form and how they have to handle the stock that we're working so yeah it's something so great about the sport and when your dog you know doesn't take that one flank it might be because it's like no i'm not releasing these sheep they're going to get away yeah yeah that's a problem we've had quite a bit

28:01sometimes that's the best part of having a friend or somebody that's there watching tell you sometimes you don't see it in the moment it's like why didn't he do this or that because you're just so focused on something else so why didn't they take this flank or the pressure points and sometimes it's nice to videotape it or have someone else go hey this was what was going on and you say something and that's why joy is so many people are willing to help each other in their sport and talk to each other and it's such a nice environment to be in because everybody's just genuinely friendly

28:34and you know that that's a really good point is that i think we all need to have you know somebody observing what we're doing because a lot of times you know i find myself missing things and you know i have a friend that i work with and she's she always says it in the nicest way of like oh well do you realize this and or and you know i i miss it um and uh so i think yeah it is really important to have somebody also watching you and you know willing to kind of say

29:12hey um do you realize this is going on yeah and you brought up a key part about that too is uh when you have somebody comes in there and you know maybe you know you'll be accepting of it sometimes sometimes we you know i'll watch chess and like why don't you do this and i'm like yeah or vice versa so make sure you offer something to come in a good way and that you're receptive as well

29:42so we we've we've hit quite a few you know little philosophies along the way as we kind of wrap up this interview and again thank you for being here with us uh what would be kind of your one of your biggest philosophy or lesson um you've taken away from working with these dogs uh wow so i think it's really important to uh have a relationship with your dog um and realize that

30:21each dog is a little different um and i um well kay always tells me that you know the thing that you love about your dog is also the thing that can frustrate you about your dog yep but i think you know um one of the things i i would say that i've probably learned is um you know if things aren't going going

30:55well to to stop and and really try to break down um the lesson that you know maybe i have to step back and decrease my distance um of where i'm working um or my difficulty or you know i've taken too big of a leap um and i just sort of need to go back and find that place where things are working and then gradually um either increase my distance or difficulty um i i find that that's probably uh

31:27helpful for most people yeah i think that's the one that's something i like to do most of the time is try to find the small successes and little increments of growth over time and instead of making the big jumps i want to see my dog you know go from doing circles to a hundred yard outrun and it just takes time sometimes you're going to a 25 yard outrun and back to a 15 and you know it's to be willing to take those steps back to better the dog and help them out to understand things

32:00yeah and then um the one thing i probably have you know i'm doing trying to do more and more of is recognizing when the dog is um doing something correctly and focusing on what the dog is doing correctly um i i have found that that makes me a lot happier with my dog and um we tend to i think having more of that positive outlook is um good for both of us that we tend to progress a little more

32:33instead of i'm focusing on everything that is going wrong so yeah that's uh one last thing that i learned from the show called heartland there's a great character jack harvard there's a scene where he goes out and there's a hand on time trying to train this horse and just everything quickly and it's just not going well at all he tells him that you go out there for 15 minutes it's gonna take you all day you go out there for the cab all day you've got 15 minutes just the idea of like going out there

33:07with a good positive attitude good vibes and you'll you know crush things a lot quicker than you if you try to do it really fast before something yeah and you know i also follow the rule i think that like when you're doing farm work it is a great opportunity to get some training in but um if i know i have to get something done in a hurry and i don't have time if you know i have to do a training session i really try to to remember to take my experience dog um to get it done yeah yeah that's a smart move

33:45for sure

Whistling Techniques

33:46so we're gonna you know wrap this thing up with little whistles it's kind of always fun with him to see how different you know ours are from other people or uh how hard they can be to blow sometimes and uh yeah so i'll let you kind of jump in and give us some of yours and i'm gonna go i'm gonna have to grab my whistle though okay i'm going to have to as well

34:17i usually don't bring whistles to interviews oh yeah i know uh we like to always do it though we like to be a little unique over here yeah okay so waiting on justin to get back he's trying to find his what kind of whistling is often i i would say is something that i do struggle with because i'm a little bit tone deaf and i'm a little bit nervous so but we'll do with

34:50um yeah you got it i'm gonna try to keep moving here sorry we're trying to find whistles i wasn't talking about either my actual logan whistle is the one i use and it is at the house um so i'm gonna borrow one of dad's whistles here because it's the same regardless for me i i started on using um a plastic boulder bluff whistle was what i started learning on

35:26and i gradually grew into using a a1 whistle from logan is what i use now mostly just because i like the tones a little bit sharper um my dad still prefers the plastic boulder bluff the bb whistles uh he does a fantastic job been using them and consistently my brother we both learned on the plastic whistles he preferred not to use them once he was able to get a logan whistle he's able to blow

36:00it better use it better um and just be more consistent which was roughly i think about the same time i think he lost a tooth and got a new one um just let me know whenever you got your whistle and we can go through some while we're waiting okay i do have my whistle so i i will add my two comments about whistles um early on i learned to carry two whistles because when i went to blow my one whistle it had hay chaff in it nothing came out um

36:31when you go to a trial always clean those whistles because there's a it's a very horrible feeling to realize you don't have sound coming out of them yeah yeah and then i i used a logan whistle a metal one um and in the winter time in ohio it does get kind of cold and it just sounded a little bit it sounded the tone sounded different when it was cold outside um and so now i i have i think it's a corian

37:07whistle um that i got uh last month at the uh trial at the sandrock trial so um and i like it okay you get to go first though let's uh we'll go through all start we'll go justin and we'll have you go uh we'll just start with your your come by okay well i have two come bys okay perfect justin you're up you see how like you would think that as you know we've lived around each other in the same land for

37:4628 years now we learned from the same guy we had the same whistles not even close that's interesting yeah me and my dad match justin like you know i just picked it up i picked it up by following him watched him do stuff justin just was barely sleeping i guess so go ahead your your come by whistles here's both of them still there yeah you you had cut out but all right sorry you we couldn't hear you so

38:33oh okay yeah we've uh we did ours let's let's hear your come by whistles okay so my i have two come by whistles depending on which dog so one is and the other one okay how hard is it uh here like to to change up your whistles for a dog i feel like that would be really difficult for me to do just on like reflexes you know

39:07you know it is difficult and i had always learned the bob white and then i got a dog that had the two low notes um but the dog who i had trained with the bob white she figured it out too um okay yeah i think that's on quick that's for sure because with my first dog that i when i was first learning to whistle um she was already on the whistles and i had real a lot of trouble doing the their away whistle which was a high low i could just get out

39:39the high note and she just learned to respond to the high note she was like you can't whistle i'll work with you okay yeah all right so now i want to go with away all right justin take it away i'm gonna give it to you justin they were actually pretty close to each other at the time

40:10normally does this and his two whistles couldn't sound any more apart so okay that's yeah do you have two ways or the same for both of them it's the same one okay perfect perfect all right so we have again i feel like what there walk up lie down all kind of about the same well walk up a little different but kind of go there to walk up let's do kind of go together so

40:41there we just go along i mean walk up but those are probably pretty standard i feel like yeah justin see if you can replicate it justin oh you want the there walk up or yeah because those would go together hopefully yeah not even the standard one can get the same one he can't do it like us uh come on justin all right go ahead and see you for this

41:14okay so um my there is uh just uh and then a walk up is okay there we go all right that's uh do you have like a look back whistle or anything else or um i have a recall whistle and usually with a look back um if i'm doing a look back i'll do two hard lie downs and then i just give verbal look back yeah yeah but usually the lie down signals to the dog um they they kind of learn to to start looking back yeah so

42:06let's hear the recall let's hear the recall okay here's my recall there we go there we go there we go there we go there we go justin does his recall without his whistle he whistles like just with his mouth not using his fingers or anything i can't even hear hear his whistle but somehow he claims his dog is listening to it i don't know it's kind of confusing to me but uh but again thank you for doing this this activity with us thank you for this interview

42:39once again this has been beth pervert old foot handler ran at the national finals several times and author of thank you she found a trainer the guide to raising and training a hurting dog again thank you so much beth thank you so much beth for joining us on this podcast it went on c yeah appreciate it i can sign your book there we go there we go there we go now he's gonna talk to me and sign it too there you go there you go appreciate it I mean

43:10honestly you there'm there you go there you go aton letter get get get get get get get get see get get get get to get get get get get get get get get get get get