A love for dogs, sheep at Sheepy Corner Farm

Prior Lake American

In 1996, Susane and Chuck Hoffman bought an empty plot of land in the countryside in Spring Lake Township, near the border of Prior Lake and Jordan.

In the 22 years since, the Hoffmans have transformed that land into a home, sheep farm and dog training business known as Sheepy Corner Farm.

“We found this place, it was just land,” Susane said. “We had this house built and everything else on this property, we’ve built up.”

The training bug

After Susane emigrated to the United States from Sweden, she got a Keeshond dog named Jan. Jan needed obedience training and Susane found a local club with obedience classes.

“I got bitten by the training bug,” Susane said.

In the early 1990s, Susane got her first border collie. She moved to Minnesota in 1993. She began to train her border collie to work sheep.

“It just became a passion — it’s addictive,” Susane said. “(Border collies have) been bred for it for at least 200 years, exclusively to work sheep. They are the gold standard, if you will.”

For two years before purchasing the land in Jordan, Susane studied sheep and worked sheep with a dog. In 1996, the Hoffmans moved from north St. Paul to south of Prior Lake to start the Sheepy Corner Farm.

The sheep

To start out, Susane and Chuck bought six ewes and one ram. On top of the border collie and a Shetland Sheepdog they already owned, Susane bought another border collie puppy to train.

“I got them to work my dogs, that’s how I started, but then I really got interested in the sheep for themselves,” Susane said. “I probably would have sheep if I didn’t have my dogs, though I couldn’t quite imagine managing sheep without my dogs.”

Now, Sheepy Corner Farm has 24 adult sheep, which includes two rams, and 17 lambs that were born in April.

“Lambing is really fun and exhausting,” Susane said. “I don’t sleep for about two weeks, or little sleep. But there’s nothing like having babies born, even if it’s at 2 a.m.”

The sheep are generally grown to 100 pounds and then sold directly to consumers. Some sheep are retained to either be bred or butchered for the dogs to eat. Some lamb are also retained to replace sheep sold or butchered, but most are sold directly to consumers for food.

“It’s not difficult to care for sheep, but they do require care,” Susane said. “They do find new and inventive ways to die on you — that is a guarantee. ... You have to be prepared for losses, especially if you raise lamb as well.”

The training

After years of training her own dogs, people began to ask Susane for help training their dogs. She started lessons in 1999. Now she has taught sheep herding to nearly 20 trainers and dogs, which is the maximum number she’ll accept for lessons. Three own their own livestock, one often farm sits and the rest are hobbyists.

“For an experienced trainer with a good border collie, to train them from start to finish takes almost three years,” Susane said. “I do two days a week that I do lessons and it’s all day and everybody has their own time. It’s a half hour, give or take.”

Currently, the Hoffmans have five border collies, some of which assist with the training. Susane trained three of those, which makes them “hers” — Soot, 10, Tam, 5, and Anya, 2. Chuck has Sweep and Bear, who is Tam’s brother.

Susane will often take her dogs out for lessons to help herd the sheep into groups that fit the trainer best, such as having a group of calm sheep for a beginner trainer.

The trainers use whistles to indicate to the dog what they need to do.

Apart from the training, the Hoffmans breed their dogs once every four or five years to replace their own dogs.

“You have an adequate amount of time to train the next one (that way),” Susane said. “I think each dog deserves as much time as you can possibly give them. I enjoy it, otherwise I wouldn’t do it.”

The dogs

On top of that, Susane and her dogs compete in stock dog trials, which are competitions for sheep dogs.

“I’m pretty competitive so I want to do well and place if I can, but that’s not the most important thing to me,” Susane said. “The most important thing to me is that I have a good dog at home that can help me with my sheep.”

The Hoffmans went to a trial in Wisconsin, then had a training seminar at the farm with an Irish dog trainer for three days in June. Now, they are preparing for a stock dog trial at the Minnesota State Fair. After that, Susane will chair the Wisconsin Working Stock Dog Association Trial in Hudson in August.

All on top of managing and maintaining Sheepy Corner Farm.

“It’s busy, yes,” Susane said. “It’s pretty constant.”

Because of her job, Susane said she doesn’t work with her border collies as often as she would like to, but will when she retires.

“They don’t get nearly the work they could tolerate — they’d like to work a lot more than they do,” Susane said. “When they’re handled in the right way, when you can work them and they have enough outlet for all of that energy, they’re brilliant dogs to have around because they’re very loyal and they’re very sweet.”

Susane said border collies are great at handling livestock and make wonderful pets if owners are able to channel the dog’s energy and intelligence.

“I tell people, ‘Don’t get a border collie for a pet unless you’re very, very involved,’” Susane said. “They were bred to work for very long days in tough terrain. ... They know more about livestock, especially sheep, than any human will ever learn. It’s just built into them. That’s what makes them so fascinating and so cool and breathtaking.”