Herding: Willow showed a lot of natural balance and cover on her initial stock exposure. She is a very heady dog. She had an early tendancy to get sucked into the heads and creep straight in. Willow is an exciteable dog and requires a firm hand when working stock otherwise she will take advantage of the situation to work “her way”. She prefers to create movement. She can be pushy and is a bit of a dirty biter. She prefers working close. When broken of her desire to walk into the heads she is very natural to flank wide. When she is confronted head to head with stock her natural reaction has been to hold her ground and walk straight to the head (as per usual). If that doesn’t work she tends to dive in for a strong bite. She is a dog that you can correct for biting on light stock, she has not been deterred from using her bite when asked or when challenged. She is also a dog that contextualizes well, so being taught to refrain biting sheep will not effect cattle work, that will need trained separately. We are currently trialing at an intermediate level on sheep and hope to begin trialing started on cattle in 2025 with a little more exposure to cattle work.

General performance: she is a very confident dog that has a strong innate desire to please her master and to work whatever that may be. Extremely food and toy/play motivated. She is resilient in new environments and situations. She is aloof with strangers and treats her interactions with them as transactional. Willow drills well, catches on quick, and retains her lessons well even with long gaps in training. She is extremely enthusiastic in all she does. She is frankly the ideal temperment for performance of any kind for me.