MLIOCH VTCH Golem’s Epic Fantasy HCT-s RATI RATS PKD-N LI-I SD-I TL-I UL-I ETD TKA VHMP

Moriah’s Mischief Managed x Golem’s Wicked Good

BREEDER: Claire Apple
BORN: February 25th, 2021
COLOR: Bi-Black
HEIGHT: 18″
WEIGHT: 30 pounds

Living and Training with Epic

Around the House:

Epic is generally pleasant and easy to live with around the house. He’s not excessively vocal for a sheltie. The exception is that he takes his territory pretty seriously and will let me know loudly if there is anything “lurking” in our yard (e.g. delivery person, squirrel, stray cat). He crates politely, is impeccably potty trained, was easy to manage with chewing even when teething and has never needed much management around the house except for common-sense stuff.

He is a “work-y,” engagement-seeking dog and his physical energy level is medium/high. His movement is joyous and sporty, not the frantic busy-busy-busy-just-for-the-sake-of-being-busy kind of motion. He doesn’t need a ton of physical exercise to stay sane and he’s happy to chill or self-entertain for days if I need him to (although he’d rather not). His mental enrichment needs are much higher than his physical ones. He’s a thinker, a problem-solver and a novelty-seeker. He thrives on learning new things. Sometimes I describe him as a sporty Ravenclaw: He likes to be physically active and he’s good at it, but if he had to choose between books and the gym, he’d choose books nine times out of ten. He wants to solve the puzzle, ideally while working collaboratively with his person.

Social Settings:

With household dogs, he’s confident, playful, able to read boundaries, able to share resources and just a fun guy. With unfamiliar adult dogs, he is moderately standoffish but civilized about it. We semi-regularly board guest puppies for my work (trainer) and when that was still a novelty, Epic was a little stressed for the first couple of days with each new puppy, but the puppies would win him over and by the time they went home at the end of two weeks, he was Babysitter Epic. Now that we’ve had several guests, he is completely used to the routine and just skips straight to “Hello, my name is Epic and I will be your babysitter.”

He can be excitable for the first minute or two after seeing unfamiliar dogs in a busy environment, but he generally settles in quickly and doesn’t make a pest of himself. If allowed to greet unfamiliar dogs off leash, he tends to be reserved/”formal” on greeting, particularly with unfamiliar intact males, but he’s a dog who I can take to a field of unfamiliar (socially appropriate) adult dogs in a new location and not worry that he’s going to do something dumb. Epic is not a dog who would enjoy a dog park as a regular activity, but he’d be safe and appropriate there. He can be barky with sudden environmental contrast (i.e. “suddenly, a dog appears!”), but it’s only surface-deep.

He’s cheerfully neutral with unfamiliar people in public places — perfectly happy to greet them and also perfectly happy to pretend they’re furniture depending on which is appropriate for the environment. His person is way more important and cooler than a stranger. Happily works with judges and volunteers in the ring and ignores them easily while working.

At home, he can have conflicted feelings about strangers in our space. I think this is likely due to socialization rather than temperament, but obviously can’t prove that. For the first two years of his life (during the pandemic), we lived in a place where we couldn’t have guests in the home. His first experiences with guests coming into the home were immediately after we moved to a new house when I was hospitalized and friends had to “break into our house” to care for him, which he was not a fan of.

And he’s #relationshipgoals with his person. He’s focused, biddable and snuggly-affectionate without being needy or invasive about it. He wants to be on a team. Whatever he’s doing, he wants to do it with his partner.

Novelty and New Environments:

Even though he’s a pandemic puppy, Epic is stable and not environmental. He’s interested in checking out new places, but he’s neither stressed nor excessively excited about it (leaning toward excited about it). It’s easy for him to focus on his person even with a lot going on in the environment — if I ask for his attention, I can pretty much always get it. He typically performs as well in novel environments as he does at home and it doesn’t take much time/work for him to acclimate or settle in, although he is definitely more “on” in trial environments than he is at home. I wouldn’t generally describe him as environmentally sensitive, especially compared to the average sheltie.

Clicker Training:

Holy moly, this dog is a delight to train in basically every metric. Like Epic is a clicker trainer’s dream dog and that is not hyperbole.

He’s easy to motivate, he has frustration tolerance out the wazoo, he’s intuitive and he’s ridiculously operant. He’s the sort of dog who looks you in the eye about halfway through learning a new behavior and says, “Okay, I think I figured it out but I want to double-check that I’m on the right track. Is this what you want me to do?”

He will work for any food in any environment. The only exception I’ve seen was at herding when the alternative was to herd stock — access to ducks > food when he was a young dog, but we were able to work through that (using food). He will focus for as long as you ask him to work. He will keep trying until he figures out the answer. He’s the polar opposite of a flail-at-it-until-they-click-me type of dog — he’s cerebral, conceptual, deliberate, strategic.

I would normally make a note about his weaknesses as a clicker training partner and I hope you won’t take it as mama-bragging if I say that I genuinely can’t think of any for him. He picks up new skills quickly, he’s good at working with props or without props, he can do large behavior patterns, he can manipulate small objects, he can apply concepts, he attaches cues easily, he generalizes to new environments easily — he’s that dog that makes training feel a little bit like magic. He didn’t have great rear end awareness as a baby-puppy, but that resolved by about 6mo and now he’s excellent at it, so I think that was probably a physical-growth thing. And he’s a “you clicked it, you bought it forever” dog, which can be a double-edged sword if you’re not careful about what you’re “buying” with your clicks.

Herding:

The short version is “Yes please, point me at them.” He is intensely herdy and “a lot of dog” as a herding partner. He’s a header and a little bit of a kamikaze at this point, so we’re working on fine-tuning the brake pedal. Very, very high herding drive. He has practiced on ducks, turkeys, geese and sheep.

Some people buy a herding dog for their farm. I have bought a farm for my herding dog. We have small flocks of ducks and geese at home and Epic takes his job as the livestock manager very seriously.

Geese: He helped raise our flock of Pilgrim geese from babies and I love his herding settings with them. Chef’s kiss, perfection. He’s polite and effective with herding them, but also entirely trustworthy to just chill in the yard with the geese and leave them alone if we’re not herding them. If I say we’re herding them, he’s quick to leap into action and he gets the job done. If I say we’re done herding the geese, he’s immediately over it and it takes no effort to convince him to disengage. If the geese are upset about something or in distress, he tells me about it, even if he can hear them from inside the house. He puts them away for me in their overnight pen every evening.

Ducks: He did not help raise our ducks from babies, so they were terrified of him when they first met him, which he finds very exciting. Ducks are much harder for him to keep his thinky-brain engaged with and he really wants to bulldoze into them at about 90 MPH and tell them what to do. We have had to put more work into helping him manage his own excitement levels and staying in a thinky brain around the ducks.

He has gorgeous distance, a lot of power for a sheltie and a strong instinct to cover. He works close to the stock (sometimes too close). He is willing to grip to make stock move if they are being recalcitrant (sometimes too willing, but never to a degree that I am worried he will cause physical harm).

He’s the first dog that I’m learning to herd with, so I am a very novice handler in this arena. I have aspirations to put a herding championship on this dog if I can figure out what I’m doing.

Scent Work:

Epic has a heck of a nose and he’s very willing to use it.

He started practicing handler scent detection at around 10 weeks old and started practicing shed hunt around the same time. By 4 months old, he was ready to start titling in Lost Item Recovery. It turns out they don’t allow puppies to play until 6 months, but he was ready to go and had a few titles’ worth of videos already filmed (which I now need to re-film and submit).

He’s trained on handler scent, antler scent, live rat scent (both locating and trailing) and birch. He searches well in novel environments even with significant cross-traffic. Food distractions are still challenging for him at this point (because “OMG FOOD”), but he is inexperienced with them, so that’s to be expected. He searches independently and with enthusiasm.

He swept into the Barn Hunt ring like he owned the place. At his first BH trial, he had a sub-five-second Instinct run and a sub-eight-second Novice run. He qualified five times that weekend and came home with five first place ribbons, five high in class medallions and two new titles. He’s also very confident with his tunnels and climbs. Moving up into Senior was frustrating and a confidence hit for him, so we finished Senior, tried a few runs at Master and then dropped back down to the B classes to build his confidence back up.

I keep being tempted to start taking nosework seriously with him, but I am trying to be good and save that for a later-in-life sport so we can focus on the big-energy athletic stuff while he’s young.

Service Dog:

When I got Epic, I had hoped that he might be interested in taking over for my current service dog (psych response, diabetic alert) when she’s ready to retire. Then he was such a sporty, active, “let’s DO STUFF” kind of dog that I felt like public access would probably be a big ask for him — it’s a lot of “sit around and do nothing.” And because it was mid-pandemic, I wasn’t really going out much and my needs were lower, so I back-burnered the idea.

Well, Epic had other plans. In January 2023, I found out that I had dangerously/deadly high blood pressure in my thirties, which was completely unexpected. In June 2023, Epic started to naturally alert to what we later discovered were cardiac arrhythmias — Epic is the only reason I found out about those. While I think it’s unlikely that I’ll pursue public access work with him (and the arrhythmias seem controlled with meds), I’m grateful to know he’s keeping an eye on me.

Epic’s Gallery

Epic’s AHBA Herding Career

Date	Age	Location	Level	Stock	Place	Title
Oct 1, 2021	7mo	Pittsboro, NC	Herding Capability Test	Sheep	–	HCT

Epic’s Barn Hunt Career

Date	Age	Location	Level	Time	Place	HIC	Title
Sep 17, 2021	6mo	Youngsville, NC	Instinct	0:35.42	–	–	RATI
Sep 17, 2021	6mo	Youngsville, NC	Novice	0:50.98	1st	–
Sep 18, 2021	6mo	Youngsville, NC	Instinct	0:04.75	–	–
Sep 18, 2021	6mo	Youngsville, NC	Novice	0:07.88	1st	✅
Sep 18, 2021	6mo	Youngsville, NC	Novice	0:39.09	1st	✅	RATN
Sep 19, 2021	6mo	Youngsville, NC	Open	0:49.72	1st	✅
Sep 19, 2021	6mo	Youngsville, NC	Open	2:01.46	1st	✅
Oct 9, 2021	7mo	Williamston, NC	Open	1:23.57	1st	✅	RATO
Oct 9, 2021	7mo	Williamston, NC	Senior	2:22.63	1st	✅
Oct 10, 2021	7mo	Williamston, NC	Senior	3:26.81	1st	✅

Epic’s NASDA Career

Date	Age	Location	Game	Level	Time	Points	Title
May 7, 2022	14mo	Williamston, NC	Lost Item Recovery	1	0:10.5	30
May 8, 2022	14mo	Williamston, NC	Lost Item Recovery	1	0:32.1	30
May 8, 2022	14mo	Williamston, NC	Lost Item Recovery	1	0:33.7	30

Date	Age	Location	Game	Level	Time	Points	Title
Mar 19, 2022	12mo	Williamston, NC	Shed Hunt	1	0:37.1	30
Mar 19, 2022	12mo	Williamston, NC	Shed Hunt	1	0:37.9	25
Mar 20, 2022	12mo	Williamston, NC	Shed Hunt	1	0:15.9	30
Mar 20, 2022	12mo	Williamston, NC	Shed Hunt	1	0:39.7	30	SD-I

Date	Age	Location	Game	Level	Time	Points	Title
Mar 19, 2022	12mo	Williamston, NC	Trailing/Locating	1	0:20.7	40
Mar 19, 2022	12mo	Williamston, NC	Trailing/Locating	1	0:26.3	30
Mar 20, 2022	12mo	Williamston, NC	Trailing/Locating	1	0:08.3	30	TL-I
May 7, 2022	14mo	Williamston, NC	Trailing/Locating	2	0:18.3	40
May 7, 2022	14mo	Williamston, NC	Trailing/Locating	2	0:43.8	30
May 8, 2022	14mo	Williamston, NC	Trailing/Locating	2	0:26.9	30

Date	Age	Location	Game	Level	Time	Points	Title
Mar 19, 2022	12mo	Williamston, NC	Urban Locating	1	0:19.5	30
Mar 19, 2022	12mo	Williamston, NC	Urban Locating	1	0:04.4	30
Mar 20, 2022	12mo	Williamston, NC	Urban Locating	1	0:29.4	30
Mar 20, 2022	12mo	Williamston, NC	Urban Locating	1	0:14.9	30	UL-I
May 7, 2022	14mo	Williamston, NC	Urban Locating	2	0:37.1	30
May 7, 2022	14mo	Williamston, NC	Urban Locating	2	0:07.8	40
May 8, 2022	14mo	Williamston, NC	Urban Locating	2	0:56.0	30
May 8, 2022	14mo	Williamston, NC	Urban Locating	2	0:19.8	29

Epic’s DMWYD Trick Dog Career

Date	Age	Accomplishment	Title
Jun 25, 2021	4mo	Novice Trick Dog	NTD
Jul 25, 2021	5mo	Intermediate Trick Dog	ITD
Aug 2, 2021	5mo	Advanced Trick Dog	ATD
Aug 11, 2021	5mo	Expert Trick Dog	ETD

Epic’s AKC Trick Dog Career

Date	Age	Accomplishment	Title
Jun 30, 2021	4mo	Trick Dog Novice	TKN

Epic’s Miscellaneous Titles

Date	Venue	Title	Notes
Jun 30, 2021	AKC	Virtual Home Manners Puppy (VHMP)
Aug 31, 2021	IPDKA	Parkour Dog in Training (PKD-T)
Dec 14, 2021	NASDA	Lost Item Recovery Online 1 (LIO-I)
Dec 16, 2021	AWSS	Versatility Title
Feb 4, 2023	AWSS	Versatility Title Excellent
Aug 31, 2023	IPDKA	Novice Parkour Dog (PKD-N)
Nov 1, 2023	NASDA	Lost Item Recovery Online 2 (LIO-II)
Nov 1, 2023	AWSS	Versatility Championship