Kristin takes the wheel.

So this time, I got to handle Rippa on my own while Kathy ran commentary/instructions to me. In the previous entry, I explained what the goals were, so let’s look at the tape, shall we?



First off, maybe this is old hat, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE that Rippa’s stay and down are so solid. No long line for her, not even on day one. She’ll hold it while I turn my back and walk off to the sheep, waits for me to turn around and then goes. LOVE THAT.
You’ll notice how Rippa takes off lickety split and hits the fence and speeds up – no space to collect them, but also, probably, look where my stick is – right at her butt, pushing her to go fast, not out. Oops.
See how I go through the sheep, extend my arm, and also hop out at her to physically get into her space. At this stage, just like with any training, she needs to learn that if she doesn’t do what’s right, I will back it up until she does. You can’t be lazy with commands or just the stick, you get out there, and you tell her “out.” And when she gets out, you back off and let her relax and have the sheep (which her instincts make her feel good about) and tell her “gooooood” so she gets that what’s happening now is indeed what you want.
At 17:24, you can see her body language change and slow down, and so do I, so I back up and let her move the sheep on her own toward me. But then right away, she comes back in and I see it and I jump out of the sheep and she goes, “ohhhh.” See, daisy pattern like in the post before this one.
At 25, she gives me the space, but then isn’t reading the sheep totally, or is she? You want her to go behind the sheep opposite me, but she isn’t – she’s walking parallel to them. Why?

If you answered “because the fence and people are keeping them moving with their pressure,” you win a gold star. She knows. I am tapping the stick on the ground to get her to get back behind them, but then she moves when she needs to to keep them from going to my left – between fence and me and we’re back again with me pushing her out because of the fence.
At 34, she’s not getting back again – why? I think she’s being wrong, but that’s because I’m not watching the sheep. Are you? See the black sheep on the left, how she’s not tucked in, in front of me. Rippa needs to be where she is to get her to do that. It’s not as simple as the dog in back and people in front.
At 1:06, this is when you know I’ve been doing it a while – look at what I do with the stick. Kathy has me holding the stick down like that so the sheep see it and take some pressure off of me. When I lift it up, see how they go into me? She points this out and at the end of all our lessons, this is her big message. I like to think I’m doing okay on handling if the stick in relation to the sheep is the big take-home from the day.
At 1:20, this is how you know Rippa’s not ready to progress . . . she’s stalling out in the wrong spot because she’s figured out the sheep don’t go anywhere, but she’s not actually working them. I have to really get on her with the stick to get her to go back the other way. When she does, Rippa learns that stalling out and ignoring my stick won’t work. She’s gotta try something else . . . and we’re off again.
1:54, I down her. I would like to see an instant drop, but she is 10 months old and this is SO awesome. Then we cut to the second lesson. You’ll see the fog has rolled in. Kathy’s ranch is seriously one mile from the ocean. You get funny weather.
If you watch my body language, you’ll see me a lot calmer. I lean back more, am not quite as skippy – that’s because I need to purge my tendency to be HIGH ANXIETY with my dog partner and just enjoy it and be calm and relaxed, like Rippa needs to be.
At 2:00, I am backing up and watch those sheep. YOu can’t hear it, but about a second later, I tell Rippa “back.” Right where she’s in line with the white fence in the big arena. Pause it. Look at my sheep. She is heading counter-clockwise (we’ll get to directions later, but Rippa doesn’t know them nor need to, so neither do you, yet), why? Do you see that blasted black sheep who is threatening to squeeze past me? Rippa does. Her instincts say to go to that sheep and turn her in. But I tell her “back” and she does and Kathy says, “I don’t think so . . . she needed to get that one more sheep.”
Why is this important? Rippa is learning to have “short flanks” (a flank is that arc) if I do that too much. She stops watching the sheeps’ eyes and just goes back and forth. It’s rough trying to fix that. That’s why giving commands this early on is rough. Just look at your sheep, Kristin, and if they are in a nice little formation in front of you, Rippa is fine.
If I tell her to get back prematurely, she may always do that, get lazy, and lose sheep in that direction. No good! Bad bad bad. At this stage, Kathy tells me she would rather her overrun and come around me rather than get kicked back and let the sheep get out of her control.
Again, the point here is to show Rippa how to control her sheep ON HER OWN. As Kathy says, the ideal stockdog is one in which you sit down in an easy chair with a mai tai and tell them to get out and shout a couple commands about the direction to take them and that’s IT. They can’t do that if they rely on you to tell them.
This is hard for dog people. We like dogs partly because when you say “sit” they “sit!” Glee! I have a game with Fury in which I give her commands if she loses a ball in a field, and she usually approximately follows the commands, but often she goes, “Screw this, I can find it on my own.” I like that. That’s a good stockdog.
2:43, there’s Rippa slowing down and using the fence to help the sheep stay. She’s learning about this balance to the handler thing. :)
By 3:29, Rippa and I are doing okay. I even walk into the sheep and Rippa holds it together. Lots of mellow walking, not a lot of direction. Me likey so much.
At 3:47, Kathy reminds me to quit walking faster to give the sheep space. My job is to teach Rippa to give the sheep space by pushing her out. (BTW, at the end of this lesson, I was super sweaty . . .)
At 4:04, I told Rippa “out” because the sheep were too close, and she offered a down, so I told her “down.” “PICK A COMMAND,” says Kathy (hence my body language of, “oh, ha ha, yes.”). I want to show you how I am getting her started on the sheep – we’ll talk about the send later when we start teaching the stuff where I’m not between her and the sheep. But right now, you have your dog on a down, and when YOU are ready, you hold the stick down low in front of her eyes – that way if she’s inclined to run straight at the sheep, well . .. “boink, stick in eye.” So they usually pick one way and move off. You follow them, stick at shoulder again (push forward and out) to remind them to work the flight zone when they pick the sheep off the top of the circle. (See, that’s the “top” we taked about.) Gotta keep the stick low and them feeling the pressure, and consistently, so the dog learns the body English for this so later when you can’t apply stick pressure, they just get around cleanly on their own.
Now, again, you can’t hear anything at the video, but at this point in the lesson, I am not giving Rippa a lot of direction, she’s just doing her thing, reading her sheep and keeping them where they need to be. My trap is shut.
And then we end the lesson.
At this point, Rippa is ready to move into the duck pen. If Kathy decides not to move me into the bigger area, it’s because of my flawed handing. In the round pen, I’m doing a good job of handling, but I also have a tighter space to work on and less factors out of my control (like the sheep going other places or the dog getting out of control). I personally feel pretty good, but again, we’ll leave that to our experts. And report back later.
We’ll have another lesson next week.