Biggles’ First Trieball (Urban Herding) Lesson

Biggles had his first Trieball (Urban Herding) class last night. And boy was it fun!!!

His teacher, Heather, explained to him that the sport involves ‘herding’ several gym balls (representing sheep) into a ‘pen’ under verbal command from your humie. The balls have to be collected in a specific order that changes every time so it’s important to be able to listen to your humie and follow commands.

Heather explained to him that we were going to practice five skills:

1. A send away
   (To send you away from your humie to where the balls are)
2. Turning left and right
   (To guide you to the ball that your humie wants you to collect)
3. Going around an object clockwise and anti-clockwise
   (To get you behind the ball you are to collect)
4. A ‘down’
   (to get you in position behind the ball you are about to push)
5. Pushing a gym ball towards your humie with your nose
   (Your humie is standing in the ‘pen’ so if you push towards her the ball ends up in the pen).

We had one or two teething problems at the start. Biggles misunderstood Heather’s instructions. He thought she said “Wait until the other doggies in the class are practicing these things then go raid their treat bags”.

Found some!

Biggles new best buddy Ozzy had the most amazing treats – it’s fortunate that Ozzy is more interested in his ball!

Once we’d explained the rules to Biggles again (or more precisely, when he’d eaten all of the other doggies’ treats) he did rather well.

OK Heather, I’m listening now – gimme a treat!

We managed a very eager ‘send away’ (although it has to be said we did come back via Heather’s treat table):

We spun ‘left’ and ‘right’ until we were dizzy:

We lay ‘down’ behind the ball waiting to be told to push:

And we pushed:

…and pushed:

After just a few goes I turned my back for a second and when I looked back Biggles was scooting across the room pushing his ball. He loved it! He even had a go at pushing the other doggies balls (sorry about that folks!)

At the end of the class bestest buddies Biggles and Ozzy shared a well earned bowl of water:

Did I mention that Ozzy had the most amazing treats?

We think Trieball might turn out to be the perfect Biggly sport. It’s right up his street. The class was lovely – a really nice room to practice in and nice doggies to chill out with. And the best bit – NO GIRLS IN THE CLASS. And when you have a big sis like Beanie it’s kinda nice to hang out with the boys now and again!

If you want to find out more about Trieball or Biggles’ wonderful teacher Heather then visit her website.