Sunday, January 2, 2011

Merlin goes herding

Merlin is proudly owned by Wayne Seward. Merlin is about two years old and Wayne has done an excellent job of raising him. He came to visit as a pup and was the cutest Rottie pup that I have ever seen! Rigby, the cat was fascinated by him and followed him all over. Even as a puppy, Merlin was twice the size of the cat.

Wayne has taken great care in making sure that Merlin has great manners. As a results, Merlin is a fine ambassador for the breed. He is kind, gentle and affectionate. He listens quite well and gets along with the Border Collies, cats, poultry, LGD and other animals at the farm.

Wayne and Merlin started their herding in October. They first started out in the round pen but since Wayne had done such a great job with Merlin (listening and commands) they quickly graduated to the big field. The sheep at first were terrified of Merlin but soon realized that even though he was big, he was kind to them. They are easily worked by Merlin.
Merlin in the back lawn pasture working the lambs and a couple of the old ewes. Usually lambs are quite skittish but he had them under control. Merlin is doing small gathers.

Check out the ear expression!

Look how happy he is!

A nice walk up.

Merlin is well built.

Doing an outrun and bring about 25 lambs and two old ewes to Wayne.

I love the expression in this photo.

Learning to pace and tuck the sheep.

"WHAT? What do you mean that we are done now??!!"

1 comment:

wayne said...

Thank you, Diane for this post. I love to see Merlin enjoying himself and working a job he was born to do. Tierney is very patient with me as I'm learning how to see what the sheep and Merlin are doing. It's not as easy as it looks!

I have a video of the last lesson. It's long, but in it you can see the good and the bad!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=57fLJnqTTe4

We did learn how to get the sheep out of a corner - Merlin pushes his way through the sheep! That is fun to watch.