How cattle and ducks are different from sheep.

So we got rained out of lessons, and there was an interesting discussion prompted on one of the discussion boards I frequent that made me think, hey, this is a great opportunity to discuss flight zone and dog safety. So, here we are.

Some of you may be wondering why everyone always trains on sheep. Or perhaps not, but if you live in California, the ratio of cattle to sheep has got to be something like 100:1. Now, it didn’t always used to be this way – I learned in my animal science courses in college that the sheep industry tanked after WWII because the soldiers were fed mutton all the time and it was nasty and reminded them of war. When you get home, you don’t want to eat sheep. And don’t get me started on how expensive it is to have wool sheep around these days.

And while this breed was developed for stock versatility (they even used to have a “hog” trialing division), nowadays, your real ranch dog is going to be working cattle. So why sheep?

For one, they’re cheaper to maintain, buy, and need less space. Two, they are not very dangerous for people or dogs compared to cattle (or not likely to get easily squashed like a duck would).

Definitely folks on ranches start their dogs on cattle, but most of us in this little world are hobbyists and it makes sense to start on sheep. It’s also WAY easier to train.

You cannot reach over a group of cattle with your stick to get your dog to take pressure off. You can’t walk through a group and get your dog and stop him when he’s bad. If he’s really bad and he’s fetching, you have a herd of cattle headed straight for you. Capice?

Now, with ducks, as I said, they get sqaushed pretty easy, but there’s another reason why sheep are still better.

Sheep are the ideal stock to teach your dog to fetch on, and, as I said before, your dog probably mostly wants to fetch to start anyway.  And you want to fetch a nice, manageable sheep.

The other interesting thing is that many times, your cattle will be a lot less tame than your sheep. What this means is that they will fight your dog less, need less overall space, and be able to handle you fetching. Many times, unless you use lesson cattle, in trials or in real life, you’re getting cattle pulled off the hills or from some dairy operation that have never seen dogs. That’s part of the reason why in ASCA, the advanced dogs go first – so they can break in the animals for the beginner dogs/handlers.

Ducks are like cattle in this way in that they’re mostly just terrified of what’s happening so, like cattle, you as a handler do best staying way out of the way and letting your dog read the animals and work accordingly. In trials, you’ll see dogs mostly driving both cattle and ducks, whereas you can fetch some sheep.

I’ll get into this later when I get Rips on cattle and sheep, but it’s just a good point of reference to understand. It’s all about your flight zone affecting your dog.

The other thing that’s important to note that’s different in cattle than the other stock is that your dog doesn’t have to concentrate on the stock as much. With sheep, there’s some forgiveness. They aren’t as sensitive as ducks (you’ll see some dogs get lots of eye when they usually work pretty upright because of this concentration), and your dog can see you like she can’t with cattle (often times, when you’re starting your cattle out on a fetch, the dog will overrun the flanks to check to see where you are).

But, like sheep, you want to teach your dog how to work those animals with a fetch, first. If you spend your time directing them on what to do, the dog doesn’t learn the nuances he needs to keep him, and you, and the livestock safe.