3TCFarm

🗣️Calling for registration, waiver and payments for our last clinic of the season: Oct. 24-25, 2026
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Why 3TC Farm does not have goats…🤣🤣

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Don't miss out!!! Payments and registration paperwork are due now!

No cancellation refunds after Oct 10, 2026.

We have, on average, 23 sheep, here. Their job is to train dogs, and they KNOW this. They all have names, and they know their names.

I did a post on this several years ago as well. Most people don’t know this.

What Sheep Can See and Remember

I used to think sheep were fairly simple animals, but I was surprised to learn how good their eyesight and memory actually are. Sheep can see colors, although they do not see them in quite the same way as we do. They see blues, greens and yellows quite well, but they find it harder to tell the difference between reds and greens. There is no exact number of colors that sheep can see because they see a range of different shades.

Sheep are also very good at remembering faces. Research has shown that they can recognize at least 50 other sheep and remember their faces for more than two years. They can recognize people too, especially those who regularly look after them. In one study, sheep learned to recognize photographs of four different people and could still identify them when the pictures were taken from different angles.

I found this really interesting because it shows that sheep are much more intelligent and aware of the people and animals around them than we might expect. A sheep that sees the same farmer every day will probably know exactly who that person is.
Reni McNabb Melvin

The International Sheepdog trials are extremely challenging!

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO COMPETE IN A WORLD TRIAL? Our resident shepherd- and keen triallist – Cathy Cassie thought some followers might be interested in seeing the hugely challenging courses competitors and dogs had to complete last weekend at the World Trial in Scotland. Both the single Champion one, and the Brace Champion one, where a handler must run two dogs at once – surely one of the most testing feats in this pursuit.

“Most courses follow pretty much the same format,” says Cathy; “an outrun either side, fetch, triangular drive, shed, pen. Or pen then single (where the dog must separate, then drive away, one particular sheep from the main group). With the only significant difference being whether it’s a right hand drive or left hand drive.

“Mistakes that can occur,” she adds, “are generally either turning the wrong way round the handler post, and setting off when it’s, say, a left hand drive but heading to the right hand gate, or taking the sheep accidentally through the fetch gate instead of one of the drive gates. And I have been known to do both! You can get so ‘in the zone’ that you make these errors, or sometimes the light makes some gates stand out more than others. But it’s rare the more experienced you get.

“It’s also worth mentioning that for the World Trial final, the first lift point was 800m from the handler, and the second lift point was nearly 1000m from the handler, and out of sight of the dog. So the dog had to turn and go back for the second packet of sheep entirely blind as to where they were, and totally reliant on taking command and direction from the handler to locate and then move them.

“There was also a big dip in the ground on the second fetch, where sheep and dog disappeared from sight of the handler for a significant chunk of time. So here, again, the dog needed to be able to work without command and still keep the sheep coming at the right pace and on line. The sheep were also tremendous. Fit and feisty - and properly tested the dogs, especially in the shedding ring and at the pen.”

So we hope our followers enjoy learning ever more about the true tests of trialling, for both dogs and handlers alike, and why only the very best of both get to the very top in this pursuit.

©Collieology 2026

We start dogs slowly, on a long line, because when the going gets dodgy, dogs and humans revert to what they learned first. Maybe not ‘sexy’, but safer for handler, stock and dog.
It’s pretty exciting to see them develop into calm, thoughtful workers.

I don't think we're sending newcomers the right message about what makes a herding dog good. Some of what gets called "power" out there is really just a dog with no brakes and good PR.

Ask a group of handlers to define "power" sometime. Get comfortable, because that conversation is not wrapping up any time soon, and not everyone in it agrees on what they're even talking about. 😉

What we don't talk about nearly enough is softness and feel.

Livestock like to be treated the same way we do. I'll shuffle along just fine if you ask me nicely. Go watch how Disneyland moves ten thousand people through a park in a day. They've mastered the art of moving things along in a nice, quiet manner.

Now have someone bark orders at me, poke and prod, and I'm doing one of two things. Leaving (not really my style), or picking a fight. That's 50-something me talking. Do NOT push me, Karen. 😆 Apologies to the actual nice Karens out there. 🇨🇦

A dog who's polite but firm gets the work done in a way that looks almost boring. Boring should be the goal about 95% of the time. Boring dogs always seem to get the nice sets at trials. Boring dogs never seem to need their teeth, and somehow never get stood off either.

A lot of "powerful" dogs look impressive because they're constantly fighting with their stock. Ever wonder why? Probably because the stock feels threatened, same as I would be. It's hard to turn your back on something that's threatening you, whether you've got four legs or two.

So why all the talk about power, and so little about softness?

Because softness doesn't make for exciting photos. Video of sheep moving calmly across a field doesn't get shared. Nobody's leading an ad with "boring," and nobody's chasing likes and shares with a video of it either.

Here's where it actually backfires. If you're new to this and all you've heard is power good, weak bad, you might watch your dog chasing, slicing, barely stoppable, and call that powerful. It's not. It's slightly out of control with good camera angles. Livestock does not want to be moved by slightly out of control, no matter how good it looks on video.

My musings today after watching my boring dogs push boring sheep around a... gorgeous field. What are your thoughts? Are you "pro power and bite," or are you in the "move along ladies" camp?

Quite the challenging course!

We had a lovely crop of apples this year! Many thanks to neighbour and friend, Susan, for coming over to help us pick them!
We gave lots of them away, and I have ample left for canning and vinegar.
In this day & age, nothing should be wasted.

Small farm producers are strangling in red tape and being driven into extinction!
Do you love your local Farmer’s Market?
This is what is killing us!
A concise and thorough description of the situation written by one of our Farm the Kootenay’s administrators.

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