How to tell if your dog has herding instincts?
Rigoberto Zboncak
2025-06-28 13:34:33
Count answers: 6
To determine if your dog has herding instincts, consider that herding breeds were developed to gather, herd, and protect livestock such as sheep or cattle. That shared heritage means they all have the instinctive skill and drive to control the movement of other animals. To a herding dog, however, other animals means the humans in the house, too. Dogs will express their herding drive with whatever is available, including other pets, kids, and even you. Since these hardwired instincts are triggered by movement, herding is usually not something your dog is doing just to get attention or to deliberately misbehave. When it comes to herding breeds, dogs exhibit the early parts of the predatory sequence more strongly than the others — specifically, the search, stalk, and chase. Dogs aren’t confused about whether or not kids are sheep, and it’s doubtful your pant legs look like cow hooves, dogs are simply doing what comes naturally to them when movement catches their eye.
Morgan Fisher
2025-06-28 12:39:03
Count answers: 10
Herding instincts and trainability can be measured when introducing a dog to livestock at a young age. Typically, farm bred collies will be put with livestock from a young age and their level of engagement will be assessed. They retain their herding instincts and may sometimes nip at people’s heels or bump them in an effort to ‘herd’ their family, and may need to be trained not to do so. The herding instinct can be hard to live with. Other examples of herding include the way a young collie engages with other dogs out on a walk. They might look as though they are taking part in a ‘chase’ game and running around after another dog. However, this will very quickly become a case of the collie trying to drive the other dog and snapping or barking at it if it doesn’t go the right way. You can see it when a dog is focusing on you and what you are doing and is very aware of other animals, he wants to take control, to be in charge and drive away the other dogs. But some puppies clearly do have more of a drive for this than others. Robbie, Ounce’s brother, has been described as having a strong herding drive.
Read also
- How do I stop my herding dog from nipping other dogs?
- How do I stop my Border Collie from reacting to other dogs?
- How to train out herding instincts?
- How to stop aussie nipping?
- Are herding dogs aggressive?
- What command goes against a herding dog instincts?
- Why is my Border Collie so aggressive towards other dogs?
- How do I train my dog to not be reactive to other dogs?
- How to play with a herding dog?