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| The Derek Scrimgeour approach to Sheep Dog Training | ||
| Derek is intending to
submit information and tips about his gentle method of training Sheep dogs. He has
to fit this in to a very busy schedule and has provided the following information to
Border Collie Rescue as an introduction. Watch this space for more -
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| Derek Scrimgeour has been involved in the breeding and training of Sheepdogs for the last 30 years. Starting life on a hill farm in Scotland, he quickly came to understand the necessity of a good well trained Sheep Dog to help look after the stock on the farm. | ||
| Sheep dog trialling has become a passion for Derek only in the last 15 years. It has become obvious to Derek that more and more dogs are being bred with a view to winning trials. These trials dogs have to respond quickly to directions and must be easy to stop. | ||
| With the increasing popularity of nursery trials for young dogs, the trend is to breed dogs that start early and can be trained quickly ( not necessarily correctly ). These young dogs are being bred with little regard for stamina and not enough attention is being paid to breeding a dog fit to handle large quantities of sheep on difficult terrain. | ||
| Derek has learned that certain family lines of collies have more natural stamina and intelligence so he has concentrated on breeding with those lines. He loves the competition side of trialling and has competed for England in the TV series ‘One Man and His Dog’. He has qualified to run for England with four different dogs - Jet at Aberystwyth in '92 - mother and son Meg and Glen at Mostyn in '95 and Sweep at Chatsworth in '96. | ||
| When training his dogs, Derek likes to use a dog’s natural moves and does not fight against them. Use of different voice tones plays a great part in his training methods. Basically, when starting a young dog, he encourages its development by using a harsh voice when the dog is moving badly and a warm, open voice when the dog is making nice moves. The dog learns to make the moves that result in a response with the nice voice and learn to avoid moves that result in a response with harsher tones. | ||
| The beauty of this approach is that the dog is not being forced to move in a certain way by violent body movements and language but is making its own decisions and choices. This way the dog can also be trained for long periods without becoming scared or bored. | ||
| Derek has released a video, ‘A Hill Shepherd trains his Border Collies’, which is proving very popular. He is currently writing a book about the breeding and training of his dogs which should be available some time in the year 2000. He also runs handling courses from his farm for both beginners and trials competitors. He travels abroad frequently to teach handling courses, which he enjoys very much. | ||
| Derek only breeds with well researched dogs that have exceptional quality and are equally at home on the hill or the trial field. He uses the prefix ‘ Killiebrae’. | ||
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