PET DOGS BRINGING HOME THE FLOCK; CITY SHEPHERDS TAKE UP TRADITION.

Byline: Jesse Hiestand Daily News Staff Writer

The ancient task of herding is being reborn in the computer age as a growing flock of suburbanites turn to training and competition to hone the natural instincts of their dogs.

``It's very rewarding, but it takes several years of hard work and training to become good at it,'' said Dale Carriere, one of a dozen handlers who attended the grand opening of the Mutton Punchers Dog Training Center on Sunday.

The Agoura Hills-based business caters to people like Carriere, 53, a gemstone salesman from San Gabriel who has spent two years training his bouvier des flandres to round up sheep, ducks and even cattle.

``Most of these dogs take to it immediately because they're bred to,'' he said, describing the verbal commands and whistles that get the dog, and hence the herd, moving in the desired direction.

``The sheep always go away from the dog - they don't like the dogs because they're predators.''

While Carriere praised the wolflike nature buried deep in his otherwise well-behaved dog Annie, the husband-and-wife team that run the training center staged a herd dog demonstration on their six acres near Canwood and Kanan Dume roads.

Ken and Gayle Dugan are not newcomers to either the area or the art of dog training.

They taught herding classes at this location nearly a decade ago but closed shop after a year in favor of working in their hometown of Bakersfield.

Sunday marked their return. The couple plan to hold classes at least once a week.

In the intervening years, several students from the Los Angeles area regularly drove their dogs to Bakersfield for training. ``There's so few trainers that a lot of people drive two to three hours a week to get a lesson,'' Gayle Dugan said.

She readily notes the classes contain few real ranchers, the kind who take pride in training their own dogs.

Instead, students these days are more often lawyers, car salesmen or real estate brokers, some of whom live not among rolling fields but in apartments, she said.

Besides training tips, the Mutton Punchers center offers another key ingredient to success in this sport: sheep.

Dozens are on hand for practice, and students are allowed to drop by anytime, even when the Dugans are back home in Bakersfield, and tend a flock.

Not all breeds of dogs are adept at this type of work. In fact, only certain dogs have the herding instinct, largely due to breeding, the trainers say. These include border collies, Australian shepherds (and their German counterparts), English sheep dogs, shelties and others, including the occasional Rottweiler.

``They have to have instinct to do this or you can't train them,'' Gayle Dugan said.

Training, which can last more than a year, is usually followed by competing in events where the dog must guide a flock through various obstacles.

Judy Vanderford, a 53-year-old property manager from Burbank, says she and her Belgian Tervuren, Mooie, have been competing throughout the Southland for the past six years.

Vanderford said she was unaware of this sport when she decided to get a herding guard dog, but quickly found the training helped her four-legged friend.

``When I got the dog, he was so hyper and so mischievous that I had to divert this destructiveness into something constructive,'' she said.

Shepherding has become a serious hobby for Vanderford, one she says brings back memories of growing up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin.

``It kind of takes me back to when I was young,'' she said.

Robert Schooley, 46, a veterinarian from Torrance, said sheepdog training brought out a previously hidden side of Bonnie, his border collie.

``Dogs that are bred for herding want to fulfill that,'' he said. ``It helps bring out their confidence and working ability.''

And true to form, as soon as Sunday's demonstration began, the dogs appeared to relish an opportunity to bob, dash and weave around a trio of shaved sheep that ran in lock-step away from the barking canines.

``For some of these dogs, it's their whole being. They love to do this more than anything else,'' Carriere said.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) Cassidy, a 6-year-old sheep dog owned by Lawrence Gerstle of Westchester, herds some sheep.

(2) Sheep dog trainer Ken Dugan watches Kitty Jones keep score during a competition.

Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News