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If you know how difficult it is to separate two members of a herd from the others, you will appreciate this story.
Dolly, the daughter of my older dog, Romie, is an amazing working dog (I might have mentioned that a few times before! )
Today we had most of the girls (alpacas) in the paddock by the shop. Two were left in the paddock next door because they are quite old and need some special treatment. I took Dolly out to help me move them out of the big paddock (about 2 acres) into a shelter which is surrounded by penning to enable me to apply some cream .
Of course they did not want to leave the rest of the herd and after a few failed attempts to get them in with me and Dolly walking behind, I decided to send Dolly out on her own. Her out run was lovely and when she got to them she just stared at them (strong collie eye) for what seemed hours but was certainly five minutes or more.
They stared back but finally they gave in and started to move, but still refused to go to the shelter, breaking away before they turned into the pen. Dolly repeated the performance and finally they started to move in the right direction with Dolly behind. I was not really expecting to get all the way across the paddock without another breakaway, but amazingly they just trotted over and I was able to shut the gate behind them. Alpacas 0 Dolly 1.
Then we went on to put the hens in their pen for the night with Dolly rounding up the strays.
She knew she had done something really special and was very bouncy on the way back to the
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