Adrenaline

So here’s something that got brought up last lesson that I thought was worth a mention:

Rippa runs about 6 miles a day with Yishai and more than that playing with Fury. Sometimes she goes on 10+ mile mountain bikes. The dog is in shape.

So how come this last lesson, she just wanted to lay down and pant?

ADRENALINE.

By now, when we get in the car and head in a particular direction, Rippa knows what is up. The nerves start to jangle . . . we arrive, they’re dancing, and when we get in with the sheep: OMG it’s a FRICKIN party!

Fury gets it really bad when we work pens – she literally shivvers with excitement.

Don’t discount the power of adrenaline on your stockdog. Until it become old hat chores, they are gonna be so amped that they can be out of control, or, like Rippa, just over doing it and getting tired in ten minutes.

She’ll get over it.

Walking Backward

So lots of videos of me walking backward, right? What’s the point?

Stage 1:

Walking backward allows me to see exactly what’s happening while I lead Rippa by leading the sheep. She is looking at the sheep (and that’s why the stick needs to be a strong visual, she’s not looking at me) and I should ONLY be looking at the sheep. I watch where they walk and walk away from that spot to teach my dog to turn them back in the direction I want to go. My job is to hold the sheep on my end. This is actually kind of hard with heavy sheep. Soon you’ll see what it looks like with light sheep.

Stage 2:

This is what I had to do last lesson, but it’s not really a stage: walking backward and following Rippa – she leads the sheep and I go where I need to be to let Rippa put them where she wants to (essentially the reverse). It keeps worried dogs interested. I never had to do this with other dogs I’ve trained, even less keen ones. It’s new. I actually think this would be a good teaching aid – Kathy is always asking where the dog should be of me, and I know, but newbs wouldn’t, and if you put a good, seasoned dog on the sheep, that would teach people right quick.

Stage 3:

Walking backward and leading. By now the dog has learned how to stay an appropriate distance away and that the object is to keep the sheep between person and dog. You walk backward to ensure the dog doesn’t learn any bad habits.

Stage 4:

Turning around and walking. Trusting the dog to do its job. It also tends to relax the dog because it’s not thinking too hard about what you’re doing in response to what you’re doing.

Side note: This steps before the last are pointless if you’re working a LOT of livestock. This is sort of a fine-tuning trialing thing we got going here. Aussies want to work tight and they’ll do just fine on a big flock of sheep or herd of cattle, the instinct is already there. We’re just teaching dogs to do fine work with small numbers of sheep. Ranchers don’t need to work too hard at this if they work huge heads only.

Rippa in the Duck Pen (video)

Rippa in the Duck Pen for the first time.

So as reported, Rippa has been in the duck pen twice since this video was shot, but I thought that better late than never on the posting.

So here’s eight minutes of me and the dog . . . WITH ANNOTATION GOODNESS!

Rippa is a little worried

So no videos for this week’s lesson (I do need to look at the other week’s and get that up), but let’s do a little summation of puppy-issues.

Well, one, Rippa bear is much different to work than Fury. She definitely gives me more time to think, but she takes Fury’s stubborn streak into the duck pen with her. Fury, in agility, will run fast and hard, but if I make a mistake, she is like, “Nah, I do it right, or not at all.”

Now, Fury is crisp when she works. Very precise with her body and her movements, and so I am not surprised by her shutting down if I make a mistake that throws off her flow.

But Rippa is a clod. She paws your face, slumps over in whatever position’s available, and is generally not so body sensitive. The other night, Yishai was motioning her to get into his lap and she jumped up and she basically punched herself in the face with his fist accidentally. He was like, “I am SO SORRY!” And she could have cared less.

But when Rippa works the sheep right now, if it isn’t going the way she wants it to, she checks out. Not like uninterested, sniffy, spacy, just kind of turns off. She downs really nice for me in the pen.

Kathy seems to think this has to do with our relationship. She prescribes no obedience drills (“use bait” for training) and just being nicer to her. I AM nice to her. As I type this, she is asleep on my left arm. She keeps saying perhaps she’ll work nicer for Yishai as she’s his dog. Given that Yishai and I, while not married yet, are attached at the hip, she’s very much even steven on whose dog she is. He’s nicer to her, yes (he’s just generally sweeter than me in general), but he also doesn’t get the respect she affords me because I handle her better.

Anyway, what I honestly think it is, is that what’s going on with the Fury is what’s going on with the Rippa. She’s not totally sure what she’s doing is right, so if I put too much pressure on her, she goes, “Okay then, YOU do it” and lays down. I am teaching Rippy to call off of the sheep and come to me and even getting her up to follow me, she sort of cringes. I honestly think it looks like she’s scared to be wrong.

Which is funny, because I don’t see Rippa as worried about ANYTHING. More time will tell.

So what did we do to counter this? The first session (Kathy does two sessions with you, not longer than twenty minutes each), we saw her shutting down and wondered what to do. Kathy took the wheel and Rippa worked a little better, stopped running and wearing as much, but she still faded out and came over to me, and tried to get over to Yishai and Fury. So we called it quits after I had her do an outrun and then a fetch and let her have a break.

So I played with her and then we were back in.

So here’s what I did. We got in there, and I kind of squatted, walking backwards (and HOOO boy, was that a workout) to hold the sheep and keep them balanced on me (they are very heavy and have no problem making me their flock) and then watched Rippa and wherever Rippa was trying to go, I helped her by going opposite that so Rippa go her way. Usually, you drive and the dog follows, but our roles were reversed. I watched what she did and moved where I should be to make that happen. It was pretty interesting to do.  It kept Rippa engaged enough that when she got too tight and I pushed her out, she wouldn’t get mad.

Problem with this is that I am crap-tastic about planning for hitting the fence and we’d only get twenty feet before I’d hit a fence, so I think next time we go, it’s time for the arena (normal trialing arena).  She’s in enough control it won’t be a disaster but Kathy was quick to tell me we were doing that for me, not Rippa, so I could work on handling her without mucking it up every time. So that should be interesting.

The other thing I am really not used to, is that when Rippa does outruns between me and the sheep, she’ll pick a side but not follow through with it – so at the last minute, she changes directions and then it looks bad because I don’t have the wherewithal to follow through. Kathy says to just learn to be ready for it – she sees the head turn and acts accordingly, nothing wrong with that . . . and I’m not asking her for flanks yet, we’re literally just teaching her to GET OUT. We kind of want her on lighter sheep now, but she needs to get OUT. So . . . that’s where we’re at.

Yishai and I were kind of downtrodden about Rippa shutting down like that. Kathy reminded me that Fury was so much sharper, nothing stops her. But as she followed us out of the working area with her dog, Deni, she said, “Hey, Deni was a dog like that – she could have shut down if not managed right. She wanted to work a certain way – close – still does.” So, while I’ve been feeling like I have the world’s perfect dog, it’s a little bummer to see a setback, but we’ll work through it.

But I am NOT mean to Rippa!

Lesson day 4–Into the Duck Pen

 

So no video in this post as I don’t have the wire available to upload it, but that’s okay. We’re going to have another lesson tomorrow and I’ll probably have a nice, succinct video to show you all.

We started Rippa in the round pen first to see if she still had good control over herself and if my handling was okay. She was a righteous obnoxo puppy outside the pen – she was “whistling” (what Yishai likes to call whining) the whole way to Kathy’s so I think she knows what’s up now when we drive that direction .  We wandered over to the duck pen, where a cattleman’s BC was in there with Kathy getting a lesson and Rippa was like, “Screw leash rules! I want ze sheepsies!”

So I had Yishai take her and run her around a bit, but she just kept being annoying, so I worked on her leash work – heeling, down, etc. All slow and pokey. This is one bit about Rippa I don’t love. Fury is very crisp on her commands, she says, “Your way, right away.” Rippa is more like, “This is good enough, now that over there, can I eat it?”

So Kathy suggested that since it had been a bit since she’d been worked (about a month?) we should start her in the round pen. So we went back over to puppy kindergarten and I put her on a down.  She surprised me with how remarkably responsible she was IN the pen with the sheep. She had exactly what she wanted, but she was a Good Dog.

We did good things in the round pen, and then it was off to the duck pen after a break.

The duck pen, for reference, is simply a larger rectangle to work in. The round pen is probably fifty feet in diameter. The duck pen is specifically built to ASCA standards for duck runs in trials.

The challenge here is what Rippa will do with the space. She won’t be so tight, so she has room to get out, and it’s my job in here to teach her that – to a point where she has total control over the sheep, so that in the bigger arena, she won’t lose them and get bad habits.

Our goals here are to continue to learn how to balance to the sheep, and just what the rules are. She is overrunning a bit, but in the video, I’ll explain why I am being told by Kathy not to correct it.

Kathy also added two new things for Rippa to work on – both are to prepare her to learn how to outrun without me in between her and the sheep.

One – when I work with her “with me” command (which is a loose sort of heel command), I need to make her always go to my outside leg, so that she will eventually see me as a post to run around and then out from. If you teach your dog to run around you and always around you, not straight from you, their perception of that nice arc at the top is reinforced.

Two – calling her off the sheep. Rippa is, as I love how Kathy calls her, a baby dog. Asking her to come when the sheep temptation is so strong is asking a lot, so you will see me occasionally drop her and then call her to me a short, short distance away. She is facing the sheep and she is learning to ignore her impulses and do what I say. When she comes to me, I praise her and release. It’s my natural inclination to drill her with this, but Kathy wisely says that it is better for her to have a little pressure with ONE successful call off and then just give her the sheep.

What I find righteously interesting is that Kathy sees Rippa as a bit sensitive. She moves off the stick pretty well, but if I tap her with it, her feelings are hurt. She says I need to be careful to teach her how to stay out without shutting her down. This is Rippa, the bombproof, NOTHING BOTHERS ME, excuse me while I step on your face dog. They certainly can be different at work than in real life.