[SallyintNorth]

Oh, they can count alright.  But they don't do it in English (or Scottish or Welsh or...)

[Mrs Snoodles]

I train gun dogs and have no experience of collies but at 6 mths we would always look at training/walking individually, building that bond, making sure the dog works with YOU learning, not just copying others.  It is a slow and steady job and as doganjo previously said, 10 mins sessions. Repetitive stuff, very basic but drilling it in and always actively praising good and making sure that the wrong stuff is stopped dead in its tracks.  We try not to let the mistakes occur in the first place, setting the dog up to always succeed.  Little by little. 

Quite frustrating most of the time, you always feel like you want them to do more but we find if we take it steady we don't end up having to correct later on.  We often see young dogs that have been pushed too fast, and they are good up to about 18 months then they just lose it, especially if they are put on game too soon. Their heads just blow.

[Old Shep]

I presume the situation you have problem with is play time in a garden or paddock?  No harm in them playing together, its just training you need to do individually.  If you can get an individual recall from them both when you are out in the garden/ paddock  why not just clip a lead on one of them and walk back indoors?  But before you do this - keep putting the lead on for a minute or so then let them off again so "lead on" doesn't always mean end of playtime.  This recall in play is important because if you can't control them here, then I would'nt move on to sheep yet!

[Alistair]

Shep, mrs s noodles thanks, all being taken on board.

This current silliness seems to have triggered by Julie going in with sheep for the first time, all was well before that.

Mind it was better this morning, Morris came straight back with Julie, but only because she had firm hold of his ear at the time I called them, all the way back to me and for a couple of minutes when they came in.

[Old Shep]

[size=78%]-- but only because she had firm hold of his ear at the time I called them, [/size]

[Mrs Snoodles]

sounds like little Julie was a bit too excited by your woolly friends and is maybe just too young.  I'd be tempted to keep the sheep out of the picture for a bit then gradually reintroduce......

 Is there anyway you could get your car into the sheep fields and have Julie in watching.  We do this with young dogs on shoots...you have to do only a tiny bit though otherwise they get all wound up and start making noise 
It can be a good small way to start things off sometimes,

[Alistair]

All is much better now, we are back to something like normal, I ended up splitting them up and training daily on basic recalls then stay recalls together calling Julie first then Morris (because he's older and has a pretty rock solid stay), I also did this in loads of different places and distractions, to be honest they are better than they have ever been, so my advice s, even if you've got older dogs, train the basics again and just see how much better they are than before, it's pretty incredible

Thanks for all your advice... The combined TAS knowledge once again helped 

[Mammyshaz]

Sounds like all your hard work is paying off. Well done you