IHerd

Helping people and their herding dogs build real working partnerships. Lessons, clinics, and online training with Lisa Wright at iHerd Dog Training.

I’m Lisa Wright, a professional dog trainer with 30+ years of experience. I offer herding lessons, clinics & stock dog training near Athabasca, Alberta — plus online courses & remote coaching for beginners to experienced handlers.

05/02/2026

Yesterday we attempted to quad the dogs for the first time this year. As you can see…we didn’t get far. 😆

Photo credit: the incredible talent of Auntie Lois and Auntie Nelda. You rock!

Btw, our first trial is less than a week away. To say we are a bit behind in fitness and training would be an understatement. 😆

🇨🇦

04/29/2026

Everyone wants the second clip.

Most people don't realise how much faster their dog can progress on sheep.

Shep as a pup in the kitchen -- and a couple months later in the round pen.

Same dog. Same handler. The only thing that changed was the foundation work we did first.

Details below.

04/28/2026

He's earned it.

That's Shep. 11 months old, dead asleep in a sunbeam.

We just got home from a weekend of herding demos in front of thousands of people. Shep came with us. It was his first time in the limelight, and I wasn't sure I was going to take him right up until I loaded him in the truck.

He handled it all. The travel, the lights, the crowds, the PA system, the grandstands, the whole circus. Handled it like a seasoned pro.

I cut him from the demos on day two.

He started barking while crated, waiting his turn. Not scared barking. Frustrated barking. He wanted in. He just couldn't hold himself together quietly, and I couldn't get to him to help him through it in the moment. So I pulled him.

Because everything is a training opportunity. And right then, he was practicing something I didn't want him practicing for the rest of the weekend.

People hear I'm a professional trainer and assume my dogs are perfect. They're not. Not even close. I'm not afraid to admit when a dog isn't prepared for something. I take it in stride, note the gap, and add it to the training plan. You simply can't train for every eventuality ahead of time. But the more you put your dogs out there, the fewer surprises there are.

The important thing is that I didn't make it a big deal. So neither did he.

Shep didn't leave that arena thinking he'd failed. He left thinking he'd gone on a grand adventure. Which he had.

Next year, he'll know how to sit quietly too.

Making a dog isn't one thing. It's a hundred small pieces, laid down one experience at a time. This weekend, Shep laid a few more.

04/07/2026

This is Roy.

He's lying in a sunbeam.

Not chasing it. 𝑳𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒏 𝒊𝒕.

If you've ever owned a border collie, you know that's not nothing.

There's a piece of advice that gets handed out constantly when people buy a herding breed: "𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒏𝒆𝒆𝒅 𝒂 𝒋𝒐𝒃." And it's true. But a lot of people hear that and think it means more. More fetch. More movement. More stimulation. Keep them busy, keep them tired, keep them going.

What that actually creates is a dog that doesn't know how to stop.

Border collies are already wired to react to movement. To track it, control it, obsess over it. You don't have to teach them that part — it's already there. What you do have to teach, if you want a dog that's actually manageable, is how to do nothing.

How to lie in a sunbeam and just... be.

A dog that can't settle isn't a high-drive dog. It's an overwhelmed one. Always in a state of arousal or frustration, waiting for the next thing, unable to come down. That's where "that crazy border collie" comes from. Not too much energy — too little structure around how to rest.

Roy knows how to work. He also knows how to do this.

The job isn't just teaching them to go.

It's teaching them to stop.

04/02/2026

Someone is walking away from the Dafydd Davies workshop tour with a handcrafted whistle and lanyard. That someone could be you.

Every person registered for the April 12th virtual workshop gets automatically entered in the draw — live or replay, doesn't matter. Sign up once, you're in.

This is a Dafydd Davies whistle and lanyard. Made by hand, one at a time, in a little shop in Llanddewi Brefi, Wales. If you know his work, you already know what this means. If you don't — $20 USD gets you inside that shop to find out.

Live tour. Q&A. And a chance to take home the real thing.

Register here: https://www.iherdonline.com/team-canada-fundraiser

04/01/2026

I finally got out and worked dogs today.

The field I packed in December had settled overnight, and for the first time in months, the dogs, sheep and I could walk on top of the snow instead of through it. Will this good fortune last? Probably not — spring looks like it means business this time, and we'll be punching through again in a few days.

But today? Today was good.

We were all rusty. The sheep had spent the past few months doing exactly what they wanted — eating, sleeping, repeat. They didn't see the point of any of this, and that wide open field of white looked like a trap to them. Something they'd sink into up to their chests.

The whole goal of the morning was simply to get them to step off their well-worn path.

The first step is always the hardest. Convincing that first animal that they can actually do it — that the ground will hold — takes real convincing. And honestly? Taking a new path yourself isn't much different. There are a million reasons to stay where it's safe, where it's known, where the footing is certain.

But here's what I was reminded of today: the resistance to taking a new path is fear, not fact.

Once that first sheep stepped off and didn't sink? The rest followed. The dogs and I shook off a winter's worth of rust and pent-up frustration. Nobody was fancy. Nobody was brilliant. It was beginner stuff, really.

It was so worth it.

03/28/2026

If you know anything about sheepdog whistles and shepherds' crooks, you know the name Dafydd Davies.

He's been making them from his workshop in Wales for decades — ram's horn crooks, handcrafted whistles, and a client list that includes the Royal Household, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and handlers all over the world.

On April 12th at 11:00 AM MT, Dafydd is opening up his workshop for a virtual tour. You'll see where the work happens, watch him walk through building a ram's horn crook from start to finish, and get a chance to ask him questions directly.
All profits go to Team Canada for the World Trial Championship.

Every registered attendee is entered to win a handcrafted Dafydd Davies whistle and lanyard, drawn live at the event.

Can't make it live? It will be recorded.

Register here: www.iherdonline.com/team-canada-fundraiser

𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑑𝑙𝑦 𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑖𝐻𝑒𝑟𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒.𝑐𝑜𝑚

03/23/2026

Someone questioned my qualifications this week. Fair enough. Let's talk about it.

03/21/2026

Dafydd Davies hand crafted whistles and lanyards — now available in Canada!

I discovered Dafydd's whistles over a decade ago, after an unfortunate incident involving cold weather, a brass whistle...and my lips. I bought my first Brefi whistle and never looked back. The sound is sweet, the quality is something else entirely.

In 2019 I travelled to Wales and visited Dafydd at his shop in Llanddewi Brefi. We hit it off immediately, and have been friends ever since.

This year we took the next step. I'm proud to announce that his beautiful whistles and lanyards are now available in Canada.

👉 https://www.iherdgear.com

Dafydd and I have some other plans in the works...stay tuned. 👀

03/18/2026

𝙇𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨𝙣'𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙨𝙪𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨. 𝙎𝙪𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜.

A few days ago, I was on the phone with my best friend. Her son had just had a pretty significant failure at work. He's driven. He wants to be successful. And he was upset -- the way driven people get upset when things go sideways.

I don't remember the whole conversation, but at some point it came out: "Learning doesn't come from success. Success comes from learning."

She stopped me. "Write that down. That's something."

So here I am, writing it down.

We've got it backwards, most of us. We treat success like the destination and failure like the detour. We push hard, we try to nail it, we want the win -- and when things fall apart, we chalk it up as time wasted.

But here's what I've seen after 35 years of training dogs, competing, and watching students work through the same walls I hit: the wins don't teach you much. The wins feel great. They're worth chasing. But they're the result of everything you already absorbed -- usually from the times things went wrong.

The failure is where the information lives.

When a run falls apart at a trial, when a dog blows through a stop, when a lesson goes sideways and you can't figure out why -- that's not a detour from the path. That's the path. That's where you start to actually understand what you're working with, what you're missing, what needs to change.

Success just confirms what you've already learned. It doesn't teach you anything new.

I think about this with students a lot. The ones who are desperate to get it right from day one -- they're often the ones who struggle the longest. Not because they're bad learners, but because they're so focused on performing well that they can't fully process what's actually happening. Every mistake feels like evidence that they're failing, instead of evidence that they're learning.

Flip that around, and everything changes.

What if the stumble was the lesson? What if the run that fell apart was worth more than the clean one? What if "I got that wrong" was actually "I just learned something I couldn't have gotten any other way"?

That's not consolation prize thinking. That's just how learning actually works.

My friend's son is going to be fine. He's driven and he wants to succeed -- and those are the exact qualities that will help him use this. The failure didn't stop his progress.

It just became part of it.

Learning doesn't come from success.
Success comes from learning.

Write it down.

03/17/2026

There's no leash in herding. No collar. No physical contact at all.

So how do you actually control a dog?

You get into their head.

That sounds like something you'd hear at a late-night dog training seminar and roll your eyes at — but if you've ever felt it, you know exactly what I mean.

Stay There is the first exercise I teach in Herding Starts Here, and it's not because it's simple. It's because it's the foundation of everything else. If you can control a dog's feet without touching them, you're already in their head.

And that's where all the real work happens.

This is an excerpt from Herding Starts Here — over 50 videos, a dozen dogs, and one idea built on top of another from the ground up.

Join students from more than a dozen countries and start Herding Starts Here today. 👉 https://www.iherdonline.com/herding-starts-here

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644029 RR 225
Athabasca, AB
T0G1T0

Website

http://iherdonline.com/

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