Ian and I were watching Charlie last night as she was rounding up Babbity who was in the pantry and Queenie who was in the living room. Her sheepdog tendencies are so strong, she takes keeping her flock together very seriously. It’s obviously quite challenging for her as they disappear when they are on her blind side, but she doesn’t give up, running round till she finds them again!
We were wondering if she would actually have been a very good sheepdog. And we also then wondered how difficult it is to train a sheepdog if they already have strong tendencies like Charlie. I can only imagine that if she had full sight and hearing, and had been trained from puppyhood, that she would have easily taken to rounding up sheep and doing clever things in fields.
Of course, we don’t know her background so she could well have come from a working farm, although you would think that real farmers would understand the dangers of breeding dogs with the conflicting genes which cause blindness/deafness, and be more interested in the dog’s temperament and intelligence than their color and the fact they have blue eyes.