The Smartest Sheep in Grainger County*

*This claim is based on 1) the scarcity of sheep in Grainger County and 2) the assumption that most people have better things to do with their time than clicker train sheep.

Here's little Maa-Maat, my 6 month old Tunis lamb, showing off her tricks.

As you can see, there are no cuts in the video. This was done to show how much she enjoys performing. As a matter of fact, she usually has a little temper fit when it's time to stop.

The most complicated thing she does is the Bang the Drum trick. For this, she has to hit the feed pan with first one foot then the other. Just banging away at it with one foot doesn't work.

As for the Bow Down trick, she can also expand it to crawling along on her knees. This, however, has pretty much been eliminated from her repitroire as it just looks too creepy.

If anyone has any suggestions for additional tricks, I'd really like to hear them. My husband is after me to try to teach her to roll over, but being as she's 1) overweight and 2) a sheep, I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. Neither is she very well suited to retrieving items as she pretty much tries to eat anything she can fit into her mouth.

Maa-Maat and Friends

Maa-Maat is a little Tunis ewe. Her mother, Evil, was very sick when she was born and died shortly afterwards. Because of this Maa-Maat has been completely hand-reared. The picture was taken when she was only a few days old. She was born early and had very little wool, hence the sweater.

She's now about three months old and is doing fine. The only problem we have with her is that she is a little more than just slightly overweight. I've been doing some clicker training with her, and so far she knows to jump up on a bale of straw, kneel down and crawl a short distance, and jump through a hoop. Her "jump through a hoop" isn't all that great because...well...she's not all that great a jumper. Did I mention the weight problem?

In addition to Maa-Maat, we have two other lambs, Merlin and Rachael. Merlin is a little black Welsh mountain wether (castrated male) and Rachael is a Jacob ewe. In the mornings and evenings, the three of them line up at their stall door for me to put their collars on. Once they have their collars, they go out to graze or explore or whatever.

Although they don't come when called, they will come if I rattle a grain bucket. They also come running down the center aisle of the barn periodically just to check if I have any treats for them.