Work - Allevamento d'Egitto

To deal with the subject "work", we will quote the Second Chapter of the thesis for the Doctorate in Veterinary at the Medicine Department of Crèteil taken by Jacques Place-Verghnes in 1974.

THE BERGAMO SHEPHERD DOG AND ITS TRAINING
Chapter II: The training of the shepherd dog: the shepherd

The essential condition to ensure the successful training of an animal is that of directly making it do the work it is trained for. For how banal this statement may seem, it is important because it enables us to stress the fact that a "flock-guard" dog trainer must necessarily be a shepherd, thus a "sheep's professional".
What do we mean by "professional"?
A shepherd, an expert shepherd: somebody who, through months and years, has taken care of a flock and understood that sheep must graze calmly, that the departure from or the return to the sheepfold must take place in an orderly way and without creating confusion, that along the paths the flock must be aligned in a long line and that it must not trespass on cultivated fields. In a word, a man who knows sheep, their behaviour and dog's work.
It is certainly necessary that he is a good shepherd, but, if he is so, will he be a good trainer too?
It is essential that he has a certain number of moral qualities that we intend to examine. First of all, the shepherd must enjoy training: actually, many shepherds appreciate the work done by the dogs that help them everyday, but they find it unpleasant to train a puppy.
In the magazine "Pàtre" ("Shepherd"), in the column "Job applications" you can find the insertion: "Qualified shepherd, who can immediately start working, is looking for occupation with dog." Its author is very likely a rather indifferent man who will readily work with dogs he has not trained himself.
We must say, though, that such an insertion is rare, and that insertions like the following are much more frequent: "Thirty-year-old man-servant, well referenced, with his own dogs, is looking for piace troupe 300 meres (literally: "flock-place 300 mothers")". This tell us that the shepherd has is own dogs, trained them himself and enjoyed doing it: the shepherd and his dogs form an indivisible team.

                     

First of all, it is necessary that the shepherd deeply loves animals; that he loves his sheep and knows each of them, so that some are tamed and know that they will have to follow him since his arrival; they will be recompensed by a handful of salt or a piece of bread.
Love for his dogs is essential too: to him, the dog is not only a mere "instrument", but it is his everyday partner, his friend, his collaborator. The shepherd who loves his dog appreciates its efforts too and must know well canine psychology.
At the beginning, he will accustom the puppy to obey, will often go and see it in the preliminary period, that preceding the real training, and will have to master his young pupil without, though, annulling or overwhelming its "good instinct".
In practice, man and dog must become part of an only thing.
To the dog, the shepherd is a "teacher", an educator that wishes to see a debutant puppy, who has never seen a sheep, to make progress day by day, to perfect and complete itself. He is a creator, and from the "creation" and training of the puppy he takes pleasure.
Training-lover, dog-lover, connoisseur of canine psychology and educator, the shepherd must be a calm, persevering and patient man.
The daily training can be tiring, especially when the flock is large, the pastures difficult to control and the pupil still green at its job. For this reason, when he decides to take for the first time the puppy to the place where the flock is and give it the first lesson, he must choose a suitable pasture-land.
Days go by, the puppy improves and, after a month, instead of just stopping the sheep grazing along the border, it pushes them in the cultivated field. In this case, the shepherd can find himself about to lose his temper, but he must instead remain calm and go on with the training. Precision in giving orders is a great quality too. As far as it concerns training, approximation is blameworthy.
DOMMANGET states: "Actually, the training intends to obtain that, under certain circumstances, the subject that has been given an order sticks to a precise behaviour."
As a matter of fact, it is not possible to obtain precision in the execution of a work if not through precise orders. If you want the puppy to follow a certain direction, it will be necessary to point at it by stretching out an arm and always pronouncing the same word, the shorter, more sonorous and easier to distinguish possible.
The sense of justice is certainly the more noble of the trainer's qualities: he must be able to judge the dog's work, and he will not be able to do it if he is not enough used to guard sheep and doesn't know how an old dog works.
Is the puppy that hesitates before the sheep grazing on the grass behaving in the right way?
Does it disturb them instead? The shepherd is the only judge, it is up to him to encourage or to stop his pupil.
Recompenses or punishments?
When the mistake made by the pupil is a serious one, for instance when it has isolated a sheep, he will have to immediately and firmly admonish it.
If it acted well, he will have to praise it with nice words or with a deserved caress. It will be anyway important to realize whose the fault is: the dog's or the shepherd's.
The shepherd dog trainer is thus a shepherd, but a shepherd who loves animals and training them. He will rejoice at seeing its old partner controlling the flock by itself, or is four-year-old bitch that becomes perfect day after day. He will repeat his orders, train his young pupil without ever getting discouraged and make a good guardian of it.
Love for animals and knowledge of their psychology on one side, calm, patience and equity in the judgement on the other, are the main qualities of an excellent shepherd and of a good "flock-guard" dog trainer too.