Positive Herding 101: Dog-friendly training (Positive Herding Dog)

This is a very comprehensive book. It walks you through learning theory, how to establish behaviours and herding behaviours. There are YouTube links also which really help visualise activities. I am a dog trainer who has never trained herding behaviours before and this book is really helping me to develop herding techniques using methods that suit my training. This is the first book I have found that uses modern training methods and I believe it will help many owners and dogs. Well worthy of a 5 star review.

This book is very well written and accessible. There are images to help understand the different exercises. It is also wonderful for people who don’t have livestock at home but would still like to progress in their herding handling and skills. The positive methods and mindset sets is appart from “old school” training methods and is very refreshing. I have Belgians and their working style is different from Border Collies, yet the methods in this book can easily be applied to any herding breed. I highly recommend!

Je suis une passionnée de herding et d’entraînement. Les méthodes expliquées dans ce livre, basé sur les théories de l’apprentissage sont ce que j’essaie d’appliquer en bonne partie dans ma pratique. Elles sont basées sur des connaissances scientifiques et je crois que plus de gens devraient comprendre ceci avant de mettre son chien au troupeau.

Highly recommend this book as an alternative to other type of training

I have nothing but wonderful things to say about this well written instructional book. I knew I wanted to train my Sheltie to herd, but I had no idea where to begin. I loved the idea of using positive training methods as that is what I use for all other areas of my training, and I felt my dog's personality lends itself to a positive training approach. Also, as an absolute novice I felt it would be much easier to target/reward the exact behavior I DO want rather than focusing on all the variations of behaviors I DON'T want (as so many other traditional herding books seem to do).I love that Barb goes into the "whys" of wanting certain behaviors, breaks those behaviors into very manageable slices, and has the text formatted in such a way that it is easy to refer back to while in the middle of a training session. It is also very helpful that she provides dioramas from a bird's eye view. That is infinitely less confusing than traditional herding books that show stick figures from all different angles. Further, she provides links to online videos that show a real dog performing the maneuver with commentary so that you really get the sense of what the book is trying to convey. She also provides a Facebook group where she will give feedback if you need help or want reassurance that you're doing things correctly.Overall, I think this is an excellent resource for anyone interested in positive training or anyone interested in getting into herding but doesn't know where to begin. Additionally, because so much of the training takes place without any livestock present, I think this would be an excellent resource for someone who has no/limited access to livestock. Well worth every penny spent!