Two male pups from the older litter, Nel x Clwyd Bob, in the photos below are going to be sticking around. They remind me of the old comic strip, “Mike and Ike (They Look Alike)”

Apart from looking alike, these two pups engaged with sheep at just 8 weeks and 3 days old. Today, I put them outside the fence to ‘observe’ while I worked the young dogs and to just get used to sheep. They decided they wanted a piece of the action and made it through the fence onto the pitch.

One of the pups simply ‘took charge‘. His first minutes on sheep are captured in the video below. A little guy who had just turned 8 weeks old with absolutely NO FEAR (even when a ewe tries to head butt him) is working the sheep himself. The adult in the pasture, Jazz, is staying back –she may have been flummoxed. I put this pup and his brother in a portable kennel afterwards because they both kept finding their way back onto the sheep pitch while was working the adults.

The pup in the video was quite pleased with himself when I took him outside the fence for his post performance review. Look at that big, self-satisfied smile on his face!