Boundary work is the main task of a German shepherd herding dog. The dog has to work independently covering the whole circumference of the flock without disturbing the sheep while they graze. “A German shepherd herding dog must be absolutely ‘honest’. I once had a dog from another shepherd that killed a lamb. We were standing on the opposite side of the flock from the dog and didn’t even notice it. That should not happen!”

Now the question comes up about how the German shepherd herding dog gets to know what to do with the sheep. Manfred Heyne laughed as I was asking him that question. “It is genetic. Most breeders don’t even know that the dog can have this in him. “But also many shepherds nowadays prefer to use the electric fence or some mixed-breed dog. ‘Many shepherds have absolutely no clue anymore how a genetically gifted herding dog must work. They need two dogs for the simplest work—like even when there are only five sheep. I find this so unbelievable that I can not put it into words. Most of the time it’s like this: They have some kind of dog and this dog runs alongside the sheep barking all the time. Finally the dog gives one sheep a nip and comes back [to the shepherd]. And this is supposed to be a good and reliable herding dog? Look at the regional herding trial in Hessen in 2003. A herding dog cut a sheep out of the flock and chased it away while everybody yelled “Pfui” and the head judge along with the other judge ended up having to go rescue the sheep.”

Heyne raves about a good herding dog. “The herding dog, like the one you will be seeing here for a couple of hours, will demonstrate that he doesn’t need any help, laughs while he works, knows why he is doing his work, and does not need a prong and electric collar to make him perform to a certain level. There are two drives the German shepherd herding dog must have not only to succeed in practical, everyday sheep herding work, but also to excel in herding competitions which demand independent performance. The two drives are total attraction to the sheep and “genetic obedience”. These drives are genetic, can be selectively bred for and are expressions of the prey instinct. The higher and more balanced these drives are, the higher the level of performance the skilled shepherd can bring out in the dog without compulsion training.

“Total attraction to the sheep” is a specific and focused aspect of the prey instinct. It is an intense, almost obsessive, form of the prey drive, which is expressed by behaviors to possess and control sheep to the exclusion of all other prey objects. An example of a dog with this high drive is one which, when in the presence of sheep, does not care about anyone or anything except “counting the sheep” and one which literally “laughs” with pure pleasure while working the sheep. Expressions of this drive can be seen when observing the behavior of the selectively bred herding dog patrolling the boundary of a graze. The dog moves energetically along the boundary; is totally focused on the sheep in the graze—never taking its eyes off of them even when reversing direction and his tail is always up. “Total attraction to the sheep” is the fuel that keeps the dog working tirelessly all day—the higher this drive, the higher octane.
“Genetic obedience” is expressed as a strong willingness to please the shepherd and to accept the shepherd as the leader. “Genetic obedience” is the braking and steering mechanism the experienced shepherd uses to “direct” the high drive and natural behaviors the dog brings to herding out of the prey instinct. A dog with “genetic obedience” only needs to be shown by the shepherd what the job is to be done and, once he understands, does the task willingly, reliably and, above all, independently—this is “education”. A dog with this drive not only wants to work, but it wants to work in cooperation with the shepherd. Trainers with a “master/slave” mentality toward the dog are an affront to the genetic make up of this kind of dog. On the other hand, a dog lacking in ‘genetic obedience” needs to be commanded by the shepherd and often, in the beginning, compelled to obediently perform the same tasks whether it wants to, or not—this is “training”. Both of these dogs will be able to herd sheep, but there will be a significant difference in performance between them. For example, the dog with “genetic obedience” whose instincts are “directed” will learn to work reliably and independently in cooperation with the shepherd; while the dog lacking in “genetic obedience” which is trained to obey will learn to remain reliant on commands from the shepherd.

Heyne makes the point: “The shepherd’s most important tool is the dog. And it is always good when the worker enjoys what he is doing!” Manfred Heyne’s present dog, Luki (he names all his herding dogs Luki) has those genetic characteristics. Heyne and I watched the dog in the distance about 300 meters away when a woman with her dog passed Luki while he was working. Luki greeted the dog and within a few seconds went back to work—independently!
In this situation we could also watch very carefully that the dog used paths and furrows in the field as boundaries. Heyne had driven his car over the field to mark one side of the field as a boundary for the dog.

“You have to find the right dog within a litter—but there are many litters where there is not even one dog that is useful for herding. The papers could be so red for generations, and still there is not one dog in the litter that has the genetics.”
Manfred Heyne always decides by a puppy test if a puppy is the right one or not. Before doing so, he watches all the puppies very carefully and puppies which get scared by loud noises are eliminated immediately.

At the real testing he takes an age-appropriate lamb and puts it and the puppies together in a pen and watches them closely.

“In the first moment, from one second to the next, he will see a lot. You have puppies that are afraid, that tuck their tails whimpering, and puppies that are like young scamps. And, there are puppies whose tails are up when they walk to the lamb just like they want to say: “Hey, you are the one I have been dreaming of!” These young dogs, the ones that laugh and want to bite, are the ones I am looking for. I do this kind of testing for about a week and then I am already pretty sure what I have got there. “Of course it is also very interesting for the shepherd to see how naturally attracted the puppies are to him. Heyne lets the puppies out of the pen and when they get a certain distance away he calls them. “It is the same as working in a kindergarten. It is always the same kids that are out in front with the teacher and the same ones that dawdle behind.”

Another very important test is how the puppy grips the lamb. “Later two puppies are put with the lamb. The lamb then panics and wants to get back to the flock. It jumps up the wall. One puppy goes and just bites every where. That is not good. Which grip the puppies demonstrate is also interesting? It is important to know whether they use a neck grip, or a leg grip which is common in Lower Saxony and Middle Germany. It also depends whether the grip is dry, meaning full-mouth, or only with the front teeth. And it also depends whether they shake the lamb. This is all genetic. The same as with hunting dogs. So I have selected the dogs this way for decades.”

The whole test is over in about a minute. To the animal rights activists let me say that these tests are done with age-appropriate and size-appropriate lambs with thick wool. To use too large a lamb would be abusive to the puppies and to use too small a lamb would be abusive to the lamb. Puppies with milk teeth cannot get thru the wool of an age-appropriate and size-appropriate lamb to do any damage to it. The only way a puppy that age could hurt a lamb would be to intentionally bite at the face and ears or to go for the lower legs which are unprotected by wool – if the puppy presents that behavior it is removed from testing anyway because that behavior is unacceptable and must be selected against in a large flock German shepherd herding dog. It is far less risky to test for grips, drive and other prey behavior in a puppy than to try to test for these same qualities later in an older dog when an older dog is capable of doing serious damage to sheep.

Education these genetically-suited dogs is relatively easy. Manfred Heyne had an easy time of it with his present dog, Luki. He started by putting sheep in a pen and Letting Luki go around. Then he put an opening on one side of the fence and later got rid of that whole side of the fence. Later Heyne would stand on one furrow and encourage the dog’s natural behavior to move on this furrow with his voice and – if necessary – use his crook to indicate the right furrow.

Pay attention and you will find that many dogs have the natural behavior of running in a furrow or in a tractor rut.

When Luki was one year old he rally impressed Manfred. Luki came too close to a ram and was attacked by it. Luki was knocked over, got back on his feet and gripped the ram from the front on top of its neck—just like he did when he was tested as a puppy. His grandfather also started a fight with a herd of young cows which ran into Heyne’s sheep. “Those are the real sheep herding dogs. The others can get V-rated ten times at the Hauptzuchtschau or whatever. They cannot fool me any more.”

Generally speaking selection in the past was for a much tougher dog. Manfred Heyne knows a very interesting story which his Schäfermeister Walter Lorenz told him once: Walter Lorenz was a Jouneyman (Schäfergehilfe) under Schäfermeister Albert Pohle who had Herold aus der Niederlausitz in 1928 as a protection dog in Strohwalde (Unkermark). SV founder von Stephantiz asked him once if he could come over to test the dog. By all means he was allowed to do so. Albert Pohle had to put the dog into a big pen and had to hide so that the dog couldn’t see him. Then von Stephantiz and his companion rode their horses walking and trotting around in the pen. They started putting pressure on the dog which had been placed in the down/stay position, and, then suddenly they rode hard at the dog from opposite directions. Herold jumped up and gripped von Stephantiz’s horse on the top of the neck. Von Stephantiz hit the dog with his horse whip between the ears whereupon the dog released its grip. The horses were taken away, the dog shook himself and was praised by everyone. “Stephanitz made Herold aus der Niederlausitz SV Sieger in 1930 and again in 1931. Think about doing this now with today’s champions.

Herold had courage and knew the difference between war and peace.”

Manfred Heyne was very successful as a breeder. Not only did he breed every single dog that he won the SV-Bundesleistungshüten with (except of course his first dog which was a gift), but he was also known for his great success as a sheep breeder. For 30 years Heyne was employed as Schäfermeister by Baron von Kühlmann-Stumm. Heyne was in charge of the Baron’s sheep breeding and in 1974 won every breed class at the Deutschen Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft (DLG) Exposition. [Manfred Heyne is the only breeder ever to have won a clean sweep at the German Agricultural Society (DLG) which is Germany’s largest agricultural exposition held only once every two years in Berlin.]

However his point of view as a dog breeder is often quite different from the SV’s because he only bred when he needed another dog for his sheep herding work. “Twice I was tempted and I made the mistake of breeding to show dogs. Right away I had uterine infections and feet problems. Shoemaker stick to your last! These breedings were of no value to me. They can make all the money they want. I have always been against running around in a circle – I see no sense in it.”

To Manfred, the SV-Bundeslesitungshüten currently is conducted more like a show event because, similar to the schutzhund trial, it doesn’t test or assess the genetic attributes of the dog. “The few shepherds who participate [in the Bundesleistungshüten] are just constantly fooling themselves. With each litter, with each breeding, they lie to themselves. They don’t even know any more what a real herding dog is. They are satisfied with command/control robots. I don’t see a future any more.

The “Guidelines For Herding Competitons” [the SV-HGH rules] are acceptable – but the head herding judges appointed by the SV for the past 20 years don’t have the slightest idea about herding genetics. The dogs are not tested thoroughly (heart and soul) any more. Independence is the greatest asset!! All this is happening because the SV HGH head judges do not have anything to do with sheep!”

Heyne is very angry because he has seen by experience that dogs like his Luki which are genetically outstanding herding dogs cannot get a Koer rating because of minor “faults”. Luki, for example, has a slight overbite—so a few millimeters are reason enough to throw away valuable genetic capabilities. This is frustrating for him: “If this wellspring of the GSD had been used more, we still would have a diligent, hard-working dog today. The GSD’s willingness to work has decreased to such an extent—but you can’t tell that to the show breeders.”