This dog - THIS DOG is showing so much promise as a good and intuitive and helpful farm dog. We don’t live on a farm (yet!), so she doesn’t get all that many opportunities to show her stuff, but she goes to work with me at the dairy and gets to be a farm dog there.
Well, the other day the cows found a hole in the fence, and most of them escaped into the chicken yard/old round pen area after milking. They report that the grass was greener over there. Boss & Son were, uncharacteristically, both gone for the whole day, leaving me (creamery worker - does little with the cows), one milker who’s been there a few months (very competent, though new), and a teenager we hired recently to help out. None of us had dealt with this sort of thing before. But oh! There was also Omie.
So we humans all went to try and shoo the ladies back into the much less enticing area they were supposed to be in (there were complicated fencing reasons they couldn’t just be released back into the main pasture yet, but the area we needed them in is basically a dirt lot holding pen) and I thought, why not bring Omie? What a great opportunity to try her out! And damned if she wasn’t super helpful. She gave extra oomph to our inexpert shoo-ing, was easily directed here or there, and generally seemed to just want to help out - a classic breed trait I’m so pleased to see in her! When a cow escaped back to the grass, she was right there running to return her (she doesn’t realize she needs to circle out and around, so she ran right at the cow, but she’ll get there). When a cow wouldn’t go, she offered to grip her hocks (had to stop her, though - good instincts for sure, but no teeth on my boss’ expensive dairy cows). That spotted cow, Pantoufle, did give her some trouble. She’s our bossy lady, and not overly fond of dogs, and she turned to face the dog, lowered her head, and refused to move. One day Omie will be able to turn a cow like that, but for now she’s young and needs her confidence backed up. Getting charged would not be great at this stage, so I stepped in and made the cow go.
We got them all back in, and Omie helped. I was/am so jazzed.
And as a bonus, I got permission from my boss to practice & train Omie to herd the cows! As in, regular practice moving here or there, so she’s good at it when we need her for actual work. Mostly it’ll be the dry cows and the calf group, but sometimes the milkers, too. Obviously I know nothing, and will be consulting my local ES authority on a good lesson plan. I’ll need to be extra gentle with it, as these cows need to not be stressed with running about the way lesson animals often are. Lessons 1-3 will be walking and chilling with the cows in the pasture, to reinforce that most of the time we don’t herd them - only when I say so.
