While there are places in the pasture with excellent feed, we felt it was time to move them into a new pasture.
We run with another rancher in this pasture, and his cattle were staying behind. It was good practice for Bravo to “leave it” and be “with me”. The first command is to ignore the cattle he’s looking at, that we are leaving them and only gathering part, not ALL, of the cows. “With me” is to stay close… the neighbors don’t use their dog on their cows much, so these cattle can get huffy/curious/argumentative with a dog. Come here, stay close, I’ll protect you, don’t bother anything.
Not only do those commands come in handy while sifting through cattle, they also helped later as we had to ride through our cows, looking for certain tag numbers to match up moms and calves.
Bravo looks very proud of himself as well he should. He’s learning to be a really good cow dog. Interesting that the cows have to learn to be worked by a dog so they’ll cooperate.
All livestock need to be “dog broke”, otherwise their instinct takes over as they run away from the scary “wolves”.
Love hearing about Bravo’s training. Just helping him be in the right place at the right time – and letting him know when he’s right. And he figures it out. Such smarts!