Beginner's FAQ

In my totally impartial opinion, the best site on the web for general information about border collies is the All About Border Collies web site. For specific information for those considering the breed, check out their BC Basics page.

In general, yes! (If you're totally blind, probably not, but that's the only physical limitation that I can think of that would be a complete show-stopper.) Several people well into their eighties compete successfully in sheepdog trials. One of the things that I love most about this sport is the fact that even a completely unathletic, out-of-shape person like me can compete on a field along with real athletes. In a trial, the dogs do the running, and (except while penning and shedding) the handlers mostly stand at the post and tell them what to do. Good handling requires all the reflexes demanded of athletes, without the actual physical exertion that sports require. If you're physically challenged in any way, you'd do well to consider a trained dog, rather than trying to train a puppy yourself. (Training a puppy does require lots of agility and moving around, whereas working with an already-trained dog requires much less.)

There's no question that it's easier to start a dog at eight months than at eight years, both for physical reasons and because young dogs are more ready to soak up new information than older dogs. But all dogs are capable of learning, and you can certainly learn much from your older border collie. Just be prepared for slower progress than you might have with a younger dog and enjoy the journey for the journey's sake.

Yes and no. It's certainly a help if you've trained a dog before, because a large part of any kind of dog training is learning to read a dog for signs of stress or understanding. But training a herding dog is not like training an obedience dog: you're attempting to shape an instinct that the dog already has and get him to understand the big picture much more than you're trying to get him to react to a series of commands with absolute, unthinking obedience. You'll need to acquire the wisdom to learn what is transferable from obedience and agility and what you'll need judiciously to forget. No matter how successful you were in other dog sports, you'll need to have the humility here to realize that you're a novice in this one.

Check out the Recommended Resources page on LittleHats.

You've come to the right place! All About Border Collies (our sister site) has a forum on all issues relating to border collies, including sheepdog training and trialing. Sheepdog-L is a US-based sheepdog list that has been around for years; although discussion on this list goes in spurts, most running orders and trial results are posted here--you'll need to subscribe if you want to trial. To Novice and Beyond is an active Facebook group for sheepdog newbies.

Not necessarily, and not right away. But you probably won't be trialing for too long before you end up belonging to a club or two. For more information about clubs, check out our clubs page.

Frankly, it helps. I know a few people who have managed to get to Open by taking lessons and bumming sheep use off of friends, but such people are very few and far between. It's hard to ask people to use their sheep if you don't have any return invitations to offer them back--people tend to be very protective of their flocks, and the more those flocks get worked, the faster they become useless for training purposes. Constantly taking lessons is also much more expensive than supporting a small training flock, and if you're serious about the sport the time will come when you'll want to have the flexibility of being able to work at your own convenience. It's probably a good idea to find out whether you and your dog really enjoy herding before plunging into sheep ownership, but you'll almost certainly end up with sheep if you want to become an Open handler.

Very expensive if you import three trained Open-level trial dogs, buy a motor home, buy a farm and a large flock of sheep, sign up for weekly lessons, go to every clinic that you can find, and enter every trial within a 500-mile radius of your home. Pretty inexpensive if you go it alone with a puppy, use of your neighbor's flock, and a few borrowed books from helpful clubs and friends. For most of us, the truth lies somewhere in between: this hobby isn't as prohibitive as, say, showing horses, but it's not exactly a game of pickup basketball on Sunday in the park, either.

The short version is to go to trials, watch dogs work, talk to breeders, and try to get a puppy from parents who work in a manner that you find pleasing. You should only purchase from breeders who register their dogs with the American Border Collie Association (ABCA) or one of the other working border collie registries, and not those who register with the American Kennel Club (AKC). At this point, the AKC stud books are still open, which means that some working-bred border collies are registered with AKC and the distinction between AKC and non-AKC is a little murkier than it ultimately will be. But for now, stay away from breeders who talk about "titles," since USBCHA trials don't have them.

No, they're not, not even all working-bred border collies. But working sheepdogs have been selected strictly for their working ability, and AKC border collies have been bred to a conformation standard, often with show parents in their background. Breeding for conformation has ruined many a breed, and I'd like it not to ruin this one. Since I believe that, I'm going to discourage people from buying dogs from people who support AKC, both for political reasons (because I think AKC is bad for border collies) and for practical ones (because I think you're much more likely to get a good working dog from a non-AKC breeder than you are from an AKC one.) So if you have an AKC border collie that you love, I apologize in advance if you're offended by anything on this site; it's nothing personal, but that's just the way it's got to be. For what it's worth, I truly hope that you and your dog are the herding exception that proves the rule. (If you want to learn more about the so-called "dog wars" in order to understand some of the underlying passion behind all this, you can check out All About Border Collie's short history of the border collie and AKC.)

It does sound weird to people who are used to other canine performance sports like obedience and agility in which the training experience is paramount. I started in obedience, and for a long time I really didn't get the concept of purchasing a dog trained by someone else. But what I, like many obedience and agility people, failed to understand is that handling is an art in and of itself, quite apart from training. It's possible to be an excellent handler and a poor trainer, and it's probably even possible to be a good trainer and a not-so-good competition handler. But unless you know the basics of handling, you'll never be able to train a sheepdog. (Imagine trying to teach a dog to heel if you had no idea yourself what the proper heel position was!) Someone explained it once to me with an analogy that made a lot of sense: some singers write their own music and lyrics, and other singers just sing other people's songs. Even though the former is the better all-round musician, you wouldn't disdain the latter if she had a terrific voice. Bottom line: it's no small accomplishment if a novice manages not to ruin a trained dog, and starting with one may well be the best way for you to get started in sheepdogging.

It's not hard to find a trained dog for sale, but it's hard for a novice to find the contacts to get a good one. The classified section of The Handler's Post regularly has advertisements for trained dogs for sale. Beyond that, go to trials and talk to people who have purchased trained dogs, and let it be known that you're interested in buying a trained dog yourself. Dogs are bought and sold all the time in this business, and you'll definitely find opportunities to purchase one yourself. Finding the right dog, however, is a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and having good advice.

Glad you asked! Check out our Finding An Instructor page for more information.

Sure you can! Lots of people have gone it alone, and many of them are successful Open handlers now. Many people only take occasional lessons, or attend a few clinics during the year. It's certainly possible to train your own dog using only books and videos, but it might take you longer and be somewhat more frustrating. If you don't have your own sheep, however, training a dog without lessons probably isn't very realistic: for many people, formal lessons are a gateway to livestock, at least at first. You can train a sheep dog without lessons, but you really can't train a sheep dog without sheep!

A clinic is sort of like a nineteenth-century Chautauqua: some Big Hats occasionally travel around the country giving short-term classes (usually ranging from one day to as many as four or five days) to interested participants and their sheep dogs. You may attend a clinic either as a spectator (and watch the Big Hat work with other handlers and their dogs) or sign up with your dog yourself. (Note: it's been pointed out to me that "sort of like a nineteenth-century Chautauqua" is not a very helpful description, since few people know what a Chautauqua is, and that I ought to delete the reference or risk sounding like a pompous ex-academic. Nope, won't do it--I'm interested in the Chautauqua Movement, and you should be too.)

Although sheepdog whistles appear to have been fiendishly designed by a sadist for the sole purpose of confounding, it actually is possible to get a sound out of them--even a whole range of sounds. I'd love to be able to write something explaining in clear, logical language how to learn to blow one, but it's really something that you'll need to fool around with for yourself. My best advice is to surrender yourself to the whistle and not think too hard about it: just let your mind drift while your mouth moves it around, and eventually (seemingly out of nowhere) a sound will come, followed by another and then another. Sheepdogging can be a very Zen-like sport, and one of the first Zen lessons you can learn lies in your whistle. The sound of one hand clapping is nothing compared to the sound of one note tooting! I suggest you beg, borrow, or steal (or even buy!) a plastic whistle and start practicing while you're driving your car (preferably without dogs!). I started practicing with my whistle long before I ever got a border collie, and it paid off in spades when I did. When you can whistle along with the Beatles, you'll know that you have it mastered.

I don't know anything about cattle, and I don't want to know anything about cattle. They're big! And scary! But if you're interested, visit the USBCHA cattledog page.

The ISDS is the big enchilada, the United Kingdom's registry for working sheep dogs. Unlike the USBCHA, the ISDS both registers dogs and puts on trials. (Imagine a combination of the ABCA and the USBCHA in the United States, add about fifty more years of history, sprinkle in some UK flavor, and you'll have the ISDS). The ISDS is responsible for the four national trials held every year in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, as well as the great International Sheepdog Trial, rotated every year throughout those four countries. The International is considered the premier dog trialing event in the world.

Primarily because I believe from the top of my head to the tips of my toes that the other sorts of trials are bad for the breed. No, you're not going to kill off the working border collie if you choose to fool around with your dog in an AKC or AHBA trial. But if everyone did that, breeders would cease to have reasonable criteria for selecting breeding stock. I don't want to help support that potential situation with my time or my entry dollars, and I don't want to encourage anyone else to do that, either. USBCHA-style trials are certainly a lot more difficult for novices, and success will come a lot more slowly to you if you start out in them. But USBCHA-style trials have made the working border collie the magnificent breed that it is today, and these trials are also better for your development as a sheepdog handler. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you ought to start out on the easier AKC and AHBA trials before plunging into USBCHA courses. It's sort of like learning to drive on a stick shift: if you don't do it from the very beginning, if you promise yourself that you'll learn to drive a stick after you learn on an automatic, chances are you'll never get around to it. It's much better to jump into USBCHA trials first thing, and never think about the easier world of AKC and AHBA trials.

For one thing, AKC and AHBA trials are explicitly designed so that many different herding breeds can participate in them. USBCHA/ISDS trials, although technically open to all breeds of dogs, are so demanding at the highest levels that few non-border collies would be able to complete a course. But possibly the primary difference is that USBCHA/ISDS trials are strictly competitive events: dogs who compete in them are not attempting to earn titles, as they are in both AKC and AHBA events. If you participate in a trial that gives qualifying legs toward a title, you have the right to expect that the conditions of trial A are pretty much like the conditions of trial B: it wouldn't be fair if your leg was much more difficult to achieve than someone else's leg. And that means that title-granting trial organizations need to minimize the differences between the sheep and the different courses as much as possible. Inevitably, this situation leads to trials on sheep that are very used to dogs, strict judging rules, and firm regulations about the size of a course. USBCHA trials, on the other hand, are designed to expose dogs and handlers to many different kinds of livestock (from the very dogged to the wild range ewe) and many different courses. The difference from one trial course to another doesn't matter: the challenges are roughly the same for every dog competing in a particular class on a particular day, which is all that is necessary to come up with placements. As a result of this non-title, competition emphasis, USBCHA/ISDS-style trials are much more demanding than anything you'll find in AKC and AHBA. And demanding trials help us determine what we should use as breeding stock in order to ensure that the border collie remains the premier herding dog in the world.

Sorry to hear that; I hope you'll change your mind. Most of us think that it's fun to be beaten down by despair regularly. But if you really want quick satisfaction without having to work too hard, you can visit the Border Collie Society of America for information about AKC herding and the American Herding Breeds Association for information about their club. But really, don't do it--if you go slither over to the dark side of the Force, you might well be lost forever. You don't want to limit what you and your dog can become before you even start.