Introduction.
My name is Tjitse Terpstra, born in Marrum Friesland.
I started working with sheep early on. This was a herd of 1500 Texel sheep and a herd of cattle. Quite different from what I do now. I did this without dogs for a while. My neighbor gave me the idea that a dog could do the work of 6 men.
He was right!
I bought my first Border Collie from Paul Andreoli, this was in 1982. I called her Sita, she was an active and smart lady. Since then I have never parted ways with Border Collies. In 1990 I got my job as a shepherd on the Hijkerveld. I’ve managed 800 sheep and a herd of Scottish Highlanders there. I herded this flock of sheep with my dogs and for the Highlanders I also used my Western horse.
I started my own business since 2004. Now I have a herd of Schoonebeker heide sheep for ecological management in Zwolle. Together with James we roam between three different boroughs. I often take the other dogs with me to train them here.
Competitions.
As you can read in my intro, Border Collies and sheep always keep me busy. Thats also why I am an active participant in the national and international sheep herding competitions.
In 1986 my first training course was of the Border Collie Club Netherlands. I did this one with Sita. Here I found out there were a lot of nuanced whistle signals, while I was only shouting 3 commands. My buddy Paul Andreoli insisted that I continue training. Which had a good result, I became first at the Dutch Championship with Sita! (1987 in Rheden)
In recent years I became European champion three times with different dogs and Dutch champion twice. I train my dogs on whistle and on voice commands. Keeping the dogs personality in mind we always have to wait and see how quickly a dog picks it up. Keeping them in good shape, mentally and physically, I accomplish this by training in different circumstances and just walking.