The following are suggestions on starting your in HGH boundary-style herding. All suggestions are based on Manfred Heyen’s methods.

I. PUPPY SELECTION
Select the best dog you are able to find for herding. If you are in a position to start with a puppy, look for a little out of proven working lines and test it as described in my article “The German shepherd Herding Dog” under the section “puppy Testing”. If you are not in a position to be test the puppies on a lamb, I have found that selecting the most dominant pup in the litter, which also shows strong possessive instincts towards you, works very well. This requires observing the litter, as well as interacting with the litter yourself, over a reasonable period of time before making your selection.

II. RAISING THE PUPPY
Once you have selected your puppy, devote your time to building a good, trusting relationship with it. Let the puppy learn from the tones of your voice what pleases and what displeases you. Learn to ignore unwanted behavior and to praise desired behavior instead of using physical and verbal corrections. Let the puppy learn for itself how to earn your approval. Familiarize the puppy with useful words like “come” and “Stay”.

II. KNOWING WHEN TO BEGIN BOUNDARY WORK
It is not necessary to expose your puppy to sheep before it is 7-9 months old if you do not have access to sheep. If you do have sheep or access to them, let the puppy discover its interest in sheep on its own. Do not put the puppy in a position to have a bad or painful experience with the sheep by forcing any kind of interaction just to satisfy your own curiosity. The puppy will tell you when it is physically and mentally ready to begin to learn to work sheep. This will develop on its own sometime after the pup is 7-9 months old.

The best way to check a puppy’s level of interest is to let it free outside a square enclosure full of sheep and watch its behavior. There may be no apparent interest at first; there may be avoidance; there may be excited, frantic circling behavior; or there might be calm but intense watching of the sheep followed by back and forth movement by the pup along one or more sides of the pen while watching the sheep. Obviously this last behavior is a clear indication that the puppy is ready to learn the boundary.

III. STARTING THE BOUNDARY
Put as many sheep as you can into a large enough area that they can spread out to graze. Try to set up the graze so that least one side has a natural boundary like a low stone wall, a dirt road, a path or a ditch. If you can, have an experienced herding dog hold the sheep in on 3 sides of the graze while you and the starting dog stay on the fourth side behind the natural boundary. It you do not have an experienced dog, set up the graze with 3 sides enclosed so that the sheep cannot leave it.
The first time you bring the dog to the graze, bring it on a short line and stand quietly on the natural boundary while the sheep graze. When the dog is calm and focused put it on a 50’ long line. You should remain standing just inside, or on, the boundary facing the sheep and ignoring the dog completely. What you want is for the dog to begin moving back and forth on the boundary while watching the sheep. This may happen right away or it may not. The important thing is that you DO NOT try to influence the dog to move back and forth-the dog must want to do this on its own!

V. TEACH SMART
When you start the dog on the boundary, you want to avoid corrections. You do not want to set the dog up to fail. You want the dog to learn positively from its successes, not from failures resulting in corrections.
The short line at the beginning is to restrict the dog only-not to punish it. If the dog is excited and boisterous in the beginning, you just calmly stand on the boundary holding the dog, ignoring the dog, ignoring the dog, but NOT correcting the dog. The dog will eventually calm down as long as you IGNORE it. When the dog calms down and focuses on the sheep and you have put on the long line, the dog will gradually learn that calm, focused behavior will earn it more freedom. Let the dog ask you to allow it to work.

VI. RESPECT FOR THE BOUNDARY
The first and most important thing the dog must learn right at the beginning of its education is to respect the boundary. Respect for the boundary is the foundation upon which the dog’s entire future HGH herding education will be built.
There are two ways to teach the dog to understand and to respect the boundary: (1) by using voice direction; and, (2) by using physical restraint and corrections. The way that the dog is taught will depend on the dog and on the way it behaves when it is brought to the boundary.
If you have built a strong relationship of trust and respect with your dog-a relationship that flows both ways; if your dog has learned to look to you for approval and fair dealings in all it does; if your dog has learned to pay attention and respond to the tones of your voice; and, if your dog has learned to accept your leadership and to work in cooperation with you THEN chances are good that you can teach your dog the boundary with voice direction only. If, on the other hand, your dog does not respond reliably to voice direction then you will end up having to use whatever physical restraint and/or correction becomes necessary to teach the dog to respect the boundary. THE DOG MUST LEARN TO RESPECT THE BOUNDARY BEFORE IT IS ALLOWED TO GO ON TO LEARN ANYTHING ELSE. Before you bring the dog to the sheep in an open graze, it is helpful to be able to first expose the dog to sheep in a square dog-proof enclosure. There you can let the dog free to run around the pen on its own and to begin to get used to sheep on its own terms, at its own pace and in its own way without interference from you or any danger to or from the sheep. Yes, sheep can severely injure or even kill an inexperienced dog-it is not only the dog that can do damage.
When you see that the dog has learned to feel more settled and more confident around the sheep inside the pen, and, when you are able to call the dog away from the sheep in the pen consistently, then it is time to take the dog to sheep in an open graze. The sheep should already be in the graze when you bring the starting dog to them. In section IV I have already explained how to start the dog on the boundary in an open graze.

VII. LEARINING TO USE THE DOG’S NATURAL BEHAVIOR TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
One big mistake that many novice herders make is to think that barking & lunging behavior directed at the sheep by a dog on line is a sign of high drive and confidence. To the contrary, this behavior in a dog when first exposed to sheep more often than not indicates that the dog is both very attracted to the sheep and very unsure and lacking in confidence toward the sheep. A dog like this must be let free on the outside of a dog –proof pen full of sheep and allowed to build confidence at its own pace. If you ignore the meaning of this behavior and by-pass this exercise, you will pay for it later when the dog develops a gripping problem. A dog attracted to and confident around sheep will exhibit calmness and intense focus on the sheep in the pen-there will be NO hectic behavior. This is what you want to try to achieve before you take the dog to an open graze.
When you first take the dog to an open graze without a fence between it and the sheep, even a dog which was confident around sheep earlier outside an enclosed pen will in all likelihood exhibit some loss of confidence and some insecurity around sheep in an open graze. This is normal and should be expected. You should be prepared to take full advantage of this situation because it will not last long if the dog has the proper drives and instincts. You want to use lapse in confidence to your advantage. It can be used to help teach the dog to learn the boundary without having to resort to physical corrections in the following way. The principle is the same as letting the dog free on the outside of a sheep pen to learn and to build confidence around sheep at its own pace. The dog’s natural attraction to the sheep “pulls” it in to the sheep. While lack of experience with sheep causes feelings of insecurity and lower confidence in the beginning dog which serve to “push” it back away from the sheep. The fence lets the dog learn to express its drive to run in to the sheep by moving along side of the sheep and eventually around the sides of the sheep without going into conflict. Take the fence away by taking the dog to the sheep in the open graze and you bring the dog into conflict again. Once the dog learn that the boundary functions the same as a fence –that it forces the dog to express its drive to run in to the sheep by running back and forth along the side of the sheep-the conflict is eliminated. When this happens, the dog’s drive and confidence around sheep increases constantly. As Manfred Heyne says “Based on his experience a good herding dog will only get stronger & stronger over time”.

VIII. THE GRIP
Now is probably as good a time as any to discuss the importance of a proper education on the grip in a HGH herding dog. The most important thing to remember is to let the dog build confidence and drive on the boundary before putting it in a position to have to grip sheep. A good dog will instinctively know how and when to grip sheep appropriately out to confidence. And, when it does, the grip will be full and calm.
Any dog can try to grip a sheep out of fear or insecurity if forced into a position to do so. But, when it does, the grip will in all likelihood be shallow, hectic and damaging to the sheep. The quality of the grip is 100% determined by the degree of confidence in the dog. I base this statement on my own experience in schutzhund training and large flock boundary style herding, as well as on my observations of puppy tests on my own and Manfred Heyne’s litters over the years. Without exception, it is the most self-confident puppies, which consistently grip the lamb appropriately with a full-mouth grip. So, no matter how high the “prey”, “defense”, “flight” drives might be, if the dog lacks self-confidence, courage and sound nerves you will see it is the quality of the grip as early 8-12weeks old.