3.5
Illustrations were not super helpful
Terminology was
Book is close to 30 years old but still remains one of the most recommended

Very good descriptions of how to train for each maneuver. It made me want to run out and get my Border Collie!

Great book

The book has everything (almost) you need to know about herding, if you can get through it. As an insomniac, I loved it since it quite literally put me to sleep. However objectively I think it could have been written a little better since most authors don't aim to put their readers into a coma like state.

Herding Dogs is a wonderfully written instructional book to help you train a stock dog.

The author focuses primarily on working sheep with Border Collies, but he touches on different stock and different breads of dogs. He is very clear and thorough in explaining the meaning of the terms and exercises.

I enjoyed how easy this book was to follow and will be looking back to it as a reference as I begin training my own stock dog.

I actually didn't make it through the last third of the book. While I enjoyed learning more about what goes into training a herding dog (and, let's face it, there just aren't that many books about herding dogs readily available), the author's way of writing was not only confusing but also oppressively dull, especially when accompanied by illustrations that seemed to be meant to be humorous and informative but always failed to be the former and often failed to be the latter as well.
I don't really feel like I learned much, except a little more about the terminology and the complexity of getting a good herding dog. I feel like the author knew what they were talking about, but they weren't very good at writing it down.
Basically, I was bored and confused and very disappointed because I really AM highly interested in not only dogs in general, but herding dogs specifically. I've slogged my way through a lot of dull, uninformative training books which were often trying to be cute or funny (it would appear that dog trainers have no sense of humor but are afraid their books will be boring if they don't make jokes. The jokes make it worse, not better).
It's probable that I will finish this book eventually, and may use it for reference as well, but it's not good reading material, even for someone who enjoys reading about dogs and dog training. I suppose it's a little much to demand that a training book be entertaining, but not confusing and minus the painful jabs at humor would be an improvement.

✔️