Today we visited a working farm about 45mins from Gisborne. We spent the morning treating the horses and then it was the farm dogs turn.
Stuart started by giving us a demo treatment on one of the dogs before moving into articulation of the front and back limbs. While smaller than horses it was not much different to articulating a horse. The big difference however was that the dogs have a shorter attention span than the horses so we had a much shorter opportunity to work with them before they just wanted to move on. Horses just stand there for hours.
We had twenty dogs to assess and articulate and most were pretty healthy working dogs. It was a lot of fun. The dogs were incredibly well behaved. Working with them however was a back breaker so our body position was really important.
After we had finished for the day the owner gave us a demo of the dogs jobs. Two dogs did a fantastic job of moving ~20 sheep on a steep paddock. I would have hated to have to have done that without the dogs…