nathhad

nathhad t1_iz044p9 wrote

You can also add Katahdin and Barbados Blackbelly to the breeds that shed. However, those three breeds (including Dorper) don't produce wool at all that is in any way usable, it's more of a fuzz. They are all raised almost exclusively for meat.

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nathhad t1_ixly4wa wrote

Unfortunately, islands in the Bay are inherently impermanent. They move, they leave. Barrier islands on the surrounding coast are the same way. Historically this has been the case long before we started doing things that often accelerate the process. Building "permanent" structures on them is really a fool's game, but unfortunately that's something we seem to have forgotten culturally. Some places are suitable for long term occupation, some really just aren't.

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nathhad t1_ithd1e7 wrote

Most dogs were originally bred to have jobs, and an awful lot of them will be downright sad if they don't have one. Few things in the world happier than a dog who knows they have a job and like the job they do ...

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nathhad t1_ithcj81 wrote

> It doesn’t understand ‘ooh I need to memorise this course’. It doesn’t have that function. They stare at their keeper and follow orders.

You are drastically underestimating the intelligence of dogs. they absolutely DO learn a course they've been on before, and the smarter ones will pick it up very, very quickly. This is true of other things too, not just agility.

My wife trains sheepdogs (she raises sheepdogs and sheep for a living). The entire point of buying and breeding such smart dogs is that if they're trained right, most of them do come to understand what you're trying to get done, not just their commands. Sure, some people do train their dogs to be "mechanical," just left, right, stop, go, but most aren't training for that, it's an exception. When you have a working dog that has done the same jobs with you every day, day after day, they normally understand what you're trying to get done, which job is next, and with the better ones and simpler to medium difficulty tasks you can just tell them it's time to go get it done and they'll go do what you need them to do (adjusting on the fly as needed, because when you're herding live animals there's no "fixed course" like with agility that they can learn by rote). You're often only giving them instructions when something is going wrong and they need help.

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