I am thinking about it all wrong.

Today I went out on the fire roads and cattle paths that make up the Poly Canyon to Stenner Creek mountain bike ride with the dude and the dogs. I always think that our dogs are probably in better shape than most ranch dogs because they simply pull mileage out of the week with their full bore running. Watching both of them zip around the burmed corners of the single track makes me giddy.

I happened to watch Rippa trot a lot today because Y had her on a leash on the road and she wasn’t able to bop around much. Every time I look at her, I get pretty excited. She’s pretty much exactly my ideal dog in structure. Her movement isn’t something that takes your heart away, and to be honest, I don’t pay that much attention normally. But she’s efficient, and she is fast.

And as I was posting more recently about her not being very brave on cattle, today the dogs got a taste of them that I didn’t intend and it helped me think differently about her. The mountain bike trails are all mostly open rangeland and filled with cow-calf pairs. This is the most dangerous time to run around in the fields because mama cow is definitely not going to put up with a dog hassling the kid.

Y was up ahead of me and did an amazing job keeping the dogs focused on running with him instead of poking at the moms and babies that were strewn all over the road. When I finally caught up, we went down over this hill and the dogs found a mess of cattle without babies spread out all over the trail and before we could do much, they took off.

Now, one thing Kathy has taught me is that if you start shouting stuff at a dog, you’re liable to get them hurt, so usually if we don’t have much control on them, I keep my mouth shut and let everyone settle before I call them back.

So Fury takes off and gets around behind the first cow, with Rippa going the opposite way, and believe it or not, they balanced off each other and kept it mellow and simply moved the cow up toward the rest of the heifers. I was imagining some major drama with a green dog and a dog that hasn’t been formally on cattle for three or so years – but they both basically just did a good job of putting them back in the group and letting it go at that.

They then went across the road to the next straggler and did exactly the same thing. And as I’m watching with some pride and amazement, I had to realize that heading – if Rippa never really does it – isn’t really a must-have in the bag of tricks as Terry Martin has told me. We’re out with the range cattle who aren’t dog broke and they don’t take a lot power to get moving. What they need is simply some control and self-restraint on the part of the dog. Just like good trial cows.

So like . . . hey. I got myself a pair of dogs that work nicely together and keep their cool and don’t get into trouble but also have no problem going right to the cattle and getting ‘er done.

So, Rippa, I’d like it if you head a little more (Y says she does when this happens without me there), but meh. I keep forgetting this isn’t for the bragging/photo rights.

Gotta go meet up with my cattle master. I’m excited to finally get that moving. He’s even got cows he’ll let me work.

Lessons on the wrong days and this stuff is actually handy.

So I checked my calendar and found that I had a lesson this week on a Saturday. That is pretty stupid, I thought. Why would I ask for a Saturday? I specifically like the Thursday and Friday lessons because it’s low key, and a little less “make a day of it.” And, well, because I can. A lot of the stock dog folks bring trailers and this is their vacation, but I’m very single-minded about stockdogging. It’s the means to an end.

It turns out I was looking at an email from 2010. Oooops. And Kathy had been counting on my virile post-surgery strength to help with lamb chores (like castration), which, so long as you don’t do it every day, is actually pretty fun. You feel legit. You feel accomplished.

At first, I really would relish spending all day at the ranch, whether it was blazing hot or freezing cold, sitting as close to the action as I could, soaking it all in. But lately I find myself up on the hill, overlooking everything, simply waiting my turn. I think it’s because I’ve been around enough that everything isn’t totally new and that I’m not learning as much by observing at this point. Most people are working on driving and I’m just about there, but not quite.

Kathy started us back in the duck pen, where we stayed for both works. I thought this was an important lesson. Though Rippa can probably very successfully trial with me in started on sheep right now, it’s best to keep those good habits. Go back a few steps if you’ve had time off. Make sure you have the fundamentals down.

And we do. But the duck pen slows Rippa down and lets me handle my sheep better. Really read them.

But one thing that has been bugging me and REALLY bugged me this last time was that Rippa WILL NOT DOWN on sheep. She will down off sheep. She will. She does it for cookies, in the middle of running after Fury (who is fetching a ball), I can even make her do it when she’s after deer. She’s called off a bear before. She’s great. Just not on sheep.

So there I am, I have Rippa looking cute on sheep and I go, “Rippa, down.”

And what does she do, but dive in for a nip. Seriously? Seriously?

So then Kathy suggests I not use her name. Okay. The first go round, I use her name, catch myself, but don’t say “down.” Set it back up again (by this, I mean I watch her little yellow eyes to see if she is relaxed enough to take my down and not ignore it – this might mean a few laps around the duck pen to settle her), and “Down.”

And I swear to God, Rippa looks at me, gives me snarly-face (which, btw, is her half-smile thing she does that I encourage – it’s not actually being aggressive) and gives me the finger, diving into the sheep. Ooooh, she got a correction that time. People who think you can only train a dog using positive reinforcement have never tried working stock. Rippa so clearly gave me the, “No way, I’m gonna make this fun” face, and no amount of liver is going to stop that.

So the next time we’re doing this, you bet your life she lies down. I think it’s mostly due to me. I think my tone is a little tougher than it should be and that Rips has gotten away with it. It’s frustrating. I can’t start driving unless she downs. We tried teaching stand-stays but that wasn’t happening. Just need miles.

Which means I need to get the guts up to call my CattleMaster contact. After this blog entry. I promise. I told Kathy I hadn’t called him yet and she was like, “I understand. Just go and see what he does, without the dogs. It can be scary to get on something with a green dog.” Yeah, it is. I am respectful of people’s stock. Of the stock themselves. I don’t really want this to be a disaster, and I also think I am funny to be calling up a rancher and ask to work on his goats. But, she adds, “You know, keep it under control, or else Rippa is going to go! AIIEEE!! EAT ALL THE SHEEP!” Or something like that. Her wild gesticulation was about perfect. Not that Rippy is an alligator, but she has bite and if not handled right, yeah.

Anyway, so I would be more frustrated than I am if not for watching lessons all day. Lots of people with more experience than me being frustrated with their dogs and Kathy repeating this mantra about how you just have to chip away at bad habits over time. If they get like that, and their dogs are like that, I’m in good company.

So I get home after a solid day at the ranch and Yishai tells me he taught Fury a trick.

Apparently, our backyard chickens were out perusing the yard and one got under the house through a loose vent. We recently had to undertake a serious rat extermination project, and under the house was nasty. Y was not going under there. So, thinking it through, he decides that Fury has had her time on poultry, maybe he can send her in after the chicken.

So, I can only imagine him pushing Fury through this dark hole under the house and saying “Get around” while she’s fighting him, confused and probably freaked. He said it took him getting a flashlight and showing her the chicken to get her to willingly do it.

So Fury goes under the house, and moments later, while Y is standing there, a chicken pops out and flies into his arms, followed by a self-satisfied Fury.

And that made him spend the afternoon herding the chickens. These little feather-foot cochins are pretty gregarious so they just need to feel comfortable with the mover to, well, move.  So now Fury has the daily chore of going in, and herding the chickens out. She also now knows how to pop them into the air and into our arms so no more chicken-chasing. They don’t mind us, but they’re not exactly looking for love.

Pretty fun. I’m proud of the Fury for being useful. All that training wasn’t for naught. Funny, she’s got her started cattle title, and a leg of a sheep title, but nothing on poultry. Maybe she’s still got a future.

Day 4 – Oh, Chute

Well, the morning started out with rain. And lightning. And thunder. Which, you know, doesn’t happen too often here on the coast of California.  It’s 5:30 am and it’s definitely coming down out there. I’m worried about my little Cochin chickens – they have a dogloo to live in but we haven’t covered the whole enclosure yet and they have feathery feet, which, when they get wet, makes the little guys cold. I’m on the Internet looking at radar and thinking about how I’m slated to go walk around in the very hills where the lightning strikes and how I’m just not feeling all that awesome and maybe I should just go back to bed. I send Kathy and email and tell her I’ll wait until the lightning/rain stops. She emails back and tells me it never started where the ranch is at. Well, okay. Drink a protein shake and get in the car.

The last few days haven’t been very good ones for me in general. This camp fell during some bad mojo with my personal life and I’m not getting too much sleep and not too happy. Don’t worry about it, I’ll get over it.

But I get there, find Marilee and Carol out with their dogs in the back and join them. When it’s my turn (I’m not that late), we see a repeat performance of the last time. I’m really flipping excited about how easy miss Rippa is being, especially when Carol’s dog gets excited and loses control of her sheep and Marilee’s dog has to get them. Par for the course, but so far I am excited that this hasn’t happened to me. I’ve watched it happen over and over and it feels nice to not worry about that – yet. I’m sure when we’re learning to drive and not just fetching things will change.

So we all regroup and we’re sitting there and the first thing Kathy says is, “You need to fix your blog.” Okay, so maybe you don’t get this from me, maybe you do, but I have this stupid complex about being called out. Even if it’s not bad, I get all horribly guilty, feel awful, and want to go hide in a hole. The dumb thing is, even if I’m not doing anything wrong and I know it, I still feel that way. And the dumbest thing about that? I’m also totally the person that puts it all out there because I believe in being a voice when others are silent. I give people a reason to find faults because I put the whole story out there. Peeople like me should shut up and just keep their head down, but I can’t. You can see that I am a headcase. Oh well, you’re reading this so you like it. Anyway, being called out totally made me get all teary thanks to being already a bit of a head case the last couple days anyway. Stupid. I hope when I’m sixty I finally stop caring so much.

Basically, here’s what she wanted me to fix, and I did but I want you following along to know it too:

• The person that commented that her famous Fred started out weak on heads is dead wrong. In fact, when she was making the choice between him and another, he saw him go head-on (as a puppy) after a sheep (I think a ram) and that was that. Anyone who’s ever started puppies and seen that kind of confidence knows what I mean. Most are a little wary of big guys stepping up against them. And that I should never listen to hearsay.
• That Kathy never said I ruined Fury – I am the one that says I ruined her. She says that I started her wrong. I guess in my mind, it’s the same thing. Though, you know, that’s not true, either. Kathy’s always been patient with me about trying to get Fury to come back from all the bad habits I gave her. And she definitely has no problem telling someone that she has a lost cause on her hands. Me retiring Fury was my decision. I may start her up again when the goat thing works itself out as the miles she needs are free and she’s slowing down in her old age. Maybe not. But there is a lot of cool stuff about Fury that we got her to do, too.
• And finally, that I forgot the most important comment Kathy made about Rippa on cattle, that “She’s coming, she’s coming!” As in she is coming along and will step up. I just need some patience.

So there you have it.  And, as usual, I have some thoughts that spring from this.

1. Starting your dog right is really, really key. I cannot tell you how many illuminations I’ve had about this clinic about that. It’s almost been a year since I started Rips with Kathy and I only go maybe four times a month, if that, and she improves by leaps and bounds every time. As Kathy always says, if you don’t give them bad habits, it’s not about fixing things, it’s about progression. Poor Fury was mostly about fixing. There are some really talented dogs at the clinic, but they don’t have the benefit of Kathy’s supervision for every single sheep outing stopping them from making handling mistakes and fixing issues before they come up. All I can say is that if you think you can do this on your own, or from reading this, you definitely are barking up the wrong tree.
2. Pick your mentors carefully. I am very, very lucky to have learning relationships with a lot of the breed’s greats because I was a precocious kid who loved email.

I am not particularly tight with anyone in Aussiedom for a number of reasons (one of the biggest being that I am simply not around enough for real relationship building), but Kathy has been an amazing mentor for me. Her chastising me for posting hearsay always reminds me that she sets a good example about keeping her mouth shut with things unless she really knows, and then she really only tells you if you need to know or could use the info. In Aussieland, there’s a lot of talking about other people, but for the most part, I’d say Kathy does a brilliant job of keeping it classy and reminding me that it’s the source you should go to. You never know the whole story.

This also was reinforced when this guy showed up randomly to drop some ducks off and sat with me a while watching people’s runs. He was telling me he was dissatisfied with his show-bred Aussie that didn’t have a lick of interest in stock and was interested in getting a real stockdog puppy to train in the spring, and asked what advice I had about finding the right one. So I told him about what I’d learned from mentors that the public doesn’t always say, that he should really think about what qualities he wants in a dog and what he wants to do with it, and really do the research. I told him about how I did it and his eyes bugged out. I laughed and told him I might be a little hardcore about research, and Aussies in general. If not for the right mentors, I would be such a mess right now.

So, I know I told you I’d lay off the video camera, but Kathy wanted to do chute work with everyone and I was like, “Ooooh, good learning moment for everyone.” I’m not going to say a ton about it right now, but I did annotate the video for your learning pleasure.

What you need to know about chute-sheep-dog management is that it’s all about setting the dog and sheep up for success – telling them where to be, getting out of the way, and holding up your end of things. It helps when your dog actually lays down when you tell her to. This session ended with Kathy telling me that I really need to put some kind of stand-stay on Rips because she is fighting the down. What’s annoying about this is that she downs quite nice off stop. So let the obedience training begin.

In other news, a lot of people were working on their driving skills with their dogs.  Driving (that is, not fetching, instead of bringing the sheep to you, the dog drives them away) is a whole other game. People have just as hard a time learning how to drive as their dogs do. I think I finally understand the training philosophy, but understanding and doing are two different animals.

Kathy’s method doesn’t use props (like ropes) or the fence as a crutch. You start learning the drive out in the wide open, which I think is pretty cool. It makes for a well-rounded, thinking dog.

And what’s it going to take for me to start learning to drive? I think the following elements need to be all in a row:

• A solid stop (ie, down, which I don’t have yet)
• Self control (check)
• Balance on the stock (check)
• “Steady” (ie, a command that slows the dog down when they lose self control, do not have)
• “There” (a command that tells your dog to turn into the stock and go straight, not wear back and forth – I think Rippa knows what this means, but not totally)
• Flank commands (“way to” and “go by” – working on it, but not there yet)

But that’s not all! Rippa is currently training on heavy sheep (ie, not too scared of her or me) and we need to get her on lighter sheep to work on that control. Why? I asked Kathy. One very good reason is that her method involves taking the person totally out of the picture. When you back away from heavy sheep, they will try to follow you and bend in your direction when pressured by the dog. With light sheep, they’re happy moving into open space because they don’t know the person is “shelter” from the dog.

So, we have some things to get “down” before we move on.

Rippa at Repeat Offenders’ Camp Day 3

So I think I’m going to lay off the videos for a bit. I don’t really see much changing in the next day so I don’t know that it’s worth editing and posting. But I will show you some nice photos and videos from today.

First up was cattle. Most everyone had a “better” run, but almost nobody had a great run. I was on the edge of my seat for most of it, worrying about people’s dogs (though, as I said in an earlier post, for some reason this does not happen with my own). I really loved watching Joann’s dog work – she’s a smooth border collie, bred for cattle. The day prior, Kathy had her work with Teal and it got her confidence up. Now she was keeping her space, reading her cattle and it was really beautiful. It took my queasy feeling to squidgy.

Her being quiet also reminded me of a truth I forget about – when the dog is less powerful, it opens up the flightzone on the people side. Sheep are usually pretty used to people so this doesn’t happen, but with cattle and ducks, you can see it. Since Joann’s dog was quiet, not bitey and not quite that powerful compared to other dogs, the cattle had no problem confronting her further away from the handler. I couldn’t get a clear one of them fighting pointing toward Kathy (who was handling), but you can see them all more willing to go into the dog than her.

After taking some photos of people’s dogs, it was my turn and Rippa was a lot happier to start, but I didn’t really know what to do to control her so Kathy stepped in and she shut down a bit more.

But there was heading. And there was even a little bit of fetching. And some yahooing. And then she got kicked, but was fine. I think she needs a bit more time on them. Again, not thrilled she’s just not turning on – but she is not the bravest initially in situations like this.  But Anne (Rippa’s sire’s breeder/owner) saw the video and commented that she will probably be easy to teach to drive and it’s nice that she’s not obsessed with stopping them. It will be interesting to see. Marilee said things along the same lines – that she’s nice and that I will take her a lot further than I could her mother, and that she’s also making me a better handler at the same time. I just need to give it time. BUT I WANT MY BADASS CATTLE DOG NOW NOW NOW.

And here we are!

 

On to sheep -  this was cool, Kathy asked me to do the sorting chores with Rips after lunch. I haven’t done them in years since starting early training with Fury so I wasn’t totally sure what to do. But it came back once she instructed. I don’t have video of that because who would be holding it?

Basically our job was to take the whole herd, move them out into the arena, and slowly let them in so Kathy could sort light from heavy sheep. Rippa needed to stay on a down for that, and at 20 months old, that’s pretty hard for her to do and she nailed it. No train wrecks.

Then, she had to take them from larger holding pens to the smaller sorting and take pen. I screwed this up. Kathy was saying I should send her and then lead the way but I didn’t trust her to behave and get out and it got messed up, with sheep behind the door instead of through it, but Rippa exacted pretty good self restraint with fixing it. For a dog that has no problem stepping on you, squealing, stealing food, and tearing stuff up, she is pretty mellow with the stock around.

Then we had to hold the sheep for the sort again. When it was time we either put sheep out or just brought them back in where they needed to be. It wasn’t super exciting, and in the small holding pens, I just had to hold her collar or she would try to just hold them in the back, but all this work was supposed to teach her mellow self restraint. I was pretty impressed that she could be in the same pen as the sheep and show no interest unless told to. Fury sometimes would shake like a Chihuahua in the back area because she was so excited about being around all the sheep.

When it was our turn to work, I was reminded to quit being cocky because I was still working the heavy sheep. The real trial would be to see if Rippa can hold her stuff together (and me, too) on much lighter sheep. If she can, well, I see lessons in flanking and driving in her future. Her slingshot outruns are getting better, too. It’s so interesting how she seems to process stuff after the fact. She is kind of a slow learner – like, she watches stuff and looks at it, and then I think she thinks about it – and I sometimes thing she’s not getting it and then BAM, one day it’s there.

Today was one of those days. I am really proud of our sheep run. It was short because Kathy wanted to save her for pen work.

Starting a Dog on Cattle

So, as I have been writing, I’m attending a clinic that includes running your dogs on cattle. And, as the cycle simply is, pretty much everyone in camp right now has a young dog with limited or no exposure to cattle, so seeing everyone do their thing is really interesting to me.

How Kathy starts the dogs on them  -

First, it’s important that the cattle are as used to dogs as possible. They’ll group nicer, stay calm, and be less frightened of people (ie, smaller flight zone). These cattle are off the hill and then used for a trial the preceding weekend. There’s a reason that the advanced dogs go first in trials – to teach the cattle to mind dogs so by the time the started dogs get there, they’re less panicky.

Second, wide open spaces. It’s really a good idea to get your cattle out in a big space like an arena. Kathy uses a combination of a stick with a flag on it and her dogs to keep the cattle off the back fence (where home and safety are) so your dogs don’t get mashed up and smushed, and also to give them a chance to pick them up. The stick with a flag up also seems to freak the dogs out sometimes (it’s a bigger visual than the plain stick is), but it has a purpose. Anyway, like point number one, this is a safety thing.

With that said, man, watching young dogs start on cattle freaks me out. Some people intentionally won’t put their dogs on cattle because they worry about safety. I feel like I have cattle dogs so there is no reason to consider it an unnecessary risk, so I don’t get too freaked when they get into dangerous situations – but other dogs, I totally am on edge watching.

Anyway, the general approach to putting a new dog on cattle is this – set your cattle out in the middle of the arena and let the handler and dog follow them until the dog turns on. Then figure it out from there.

Most dogs, after a period of intimidation which involves running up to the cow and then running back to the handler, will slowly gain the confidence it takes to figure out they can move them. But I wouldn’t say “moving them” is a confidence shower in and of itself.

Most of the dogs, when they got confident moving them, started to yahoo a lot  -  heeling, then running to head and barking/feinting them to turn them around. But there was a lot of running and barking and unnecessary shots. Rippa was equally guilty of this, but still didn’t really have the confidence to head them. Some dogs never do. I think I covered headers and heelers earlier, so search that if you want to know why.

I was talking to Marilee about dogs bred for cattle and dogs not and I made the following observation about this, which I have pretty much considered truth after experiencing it in my own dogs. Very strong cattle dogs, when given the choice to fight or flight will pick fight. They will go in and do what it takes with a charging steer, but this also means that off stock, they are more likely to nip or be confrontational under pressure when other dogs would submit or avoid.

I actually got Rippa into trouble for that today. She and I were working in the pens and someone wanted to come through with her dog and watch. So there we are along the back panel, pretty close quarters – she and her dog, me, Rippa, and Kathy’s dog Denny. For the record, Rips has always been a little worried about other dogs – with time and socialization she’s mostly friendly, but if a dog runs up to her and intimidates her, she has no problem letting it know. Anyway, Denny is up in Rippa’s business so I make the mistake of trying to re-place her by laying her down between the two dogs, and Denny puts more pressure, Rippa looks at the gal’s dog, and he makes eye contact and leans toward her and it was just too much pressure for her so she lashed out at him for a second. I should have just read the situation and put her back by the front of the gate instead with us, but I was being dumb and novice. Now she is quite sure my dog wants to eat her dog when it was just a situation where my dog felt too much pressure and I wasn’t letting her get out of it by telling her to stay. My bad.

Anyway, it’s an interesting thing. Watching all these new dogs go from being intimidated and standing with their owners to charging the cattle, sometimes taking a hit, and going right back for more. But I also watched Kathy handle Teal on them – an experienced cattle dog who has to be about . . . 8 now? Anyway, confidence looks like Teal – she stands up right, no face, no lip and just looks at the cattle getting in her face. If she needs to, she’ll do something. And then when she’s fetching them in, she’ll sometimes take a cheap shot once in a while, but keep her balance and read her stock and you can tell she just thinks it’s fun. These biting dogs . . . they’re just as scared as the non-cattle dogs not making contact.

And then I wonder if anyone starts a young dog and they aren’t intimidated at first. Kathy used to bring out a trained dog to keep the cattle moving and give confidence to the younger dog (it’s in a lot of training books, including my favorite by Scott Lithgow),  but she’s since learned it can get the dogs hurt so she avoids it now.

And that was a divergence. Once the dog is going to head and moving the cattle, it’s time to ask for a fetch by pushing the dog back once it heads. And that is how you start a dog on cattle.

Day 2–On the Hill, First Cattle Run, and Sheep

I don’t really know how to start this blog except that today was pretty much one of the most perfect stockdog days I’ve ever had. I lately have felt a little burnt out from the whole thing – maybe because I have lots of other stuff going on, maybe because Fury was really easy to train so I achieved a lot of the goals I set, maybe I’m lazy, or maybe being on the ASCA Board just kind of burned me out. I have no idea. But today reminded me a lot about why I do this.

It also got even better when I sat down to review/edit the videos of Rippa from today and listened to the onlookers on the tape comment on her cattle run – people with a lot of experience, with a lot of knowledge, and even a well-respected stockdog judge comment on her positively. It made me sparkle because, well, I bred her. I didn’t just go out and buy her, I planned this.  Squeal.

Lots of firsts today so let’s get to it:

7:30 am, I arrive and help Marilee and Doug fix Marilee’s awning because the trailer washers are coming. Did you know there are professional trailer detailers? I didn’t. First number one.

We finish that up and go out back. I am lingering by the fence (mostly because I want to video tape this), but Marilee calls me up to her, down the road a bit and on the hill with the sheep. I leave the camera behind because it’s foggy and because I think asking her to tape while also making sure I don’t eff this up is probably asking too much.

She tells me to just hang out while she works on getting her dog to listen. Ally is kind of being feisty and wanting to do stuff her way and it’s pissing Marilee off. She tells me she wants to save her energy for cattle, so it will just be a little and then we’ll get them.

The fog is so heavy. Everything is so still. You can’t really see anything. So different from the day before’s super hot weather. It’s magical. It’s my turn.

“Make sure you point the heads uphill or away from the gate they came out of when you lay her down,” Marilee says, handing me the reins. If I don’t, they've been known to take off. Stockmanship 101.

So I down the puppy, get between her and the sheep and let ‘er rip. And she does amazing. Now, I have mostly only seen advanced dogs out here, or dogs learning to drive who lose their sheep, but I am pretty impressed with the Rippa bear. She keeps off them, balances up and rates when she needs to. It’s like floating across the fields. I have never felt so mellow in my life. Poor Fury had me on extreme edge all the time – I am so glad I bred Rippa to be a little more easy (her dad looks pretty easy in the video) and I’m glad Yishai chose her for that reason (I am quite certain two of her sisters have Fury’s spitfire).  I can do whatever I want. Even when she does her little dive in to test what happens, I push her out easily. It’s flipping amazing. I feel high.

And then it’s time to go back in.

Kathy is right there and asks how it went, and I give her a sheepish grin and say it was so different.

Well, she lists the reasons why:

• No fencelines may mean less intellectual control, but the space makes dogs feel less pressure and less claustrophobic.
• You’re making less turns which means you’re setting up less mistakes and bobbles and nags.
• The handler pays less intense attention to the dog because he/she is worried about where he/she is going.
• I had eight sheep. More sheep is nicer for these dogs, as I’ve said before.

All this comes down to the fact that working out back on “the hill” is more relaxing. And it was. For the dog and for me. She even downed instantly when I asked which I have a hard time getting her to do on stock, as you have seen in the videos. Marilee tells me I did a good job. I tell her I was glad it was her out there babysitting me.

We then regroup and figure out what’s next – and it’s that all of us want cattle. I spend a lot of time watching and taking some notes, adding to what I remember from Fury lessons and what Kathy says. I take photos of some of the dogs and then it’s my turn.

I think I’ll write a separate post about starting dogs on cattle, so hang tight. This post is all about me, Rippa, and the stock.

Anyway, so it’s our turn, we’re last, and we have nice cattle. I don’t know why but when you mix red and black cattle, things happen. I guess they’re racist. I warn Kathy that I know Yishai has taken her out with them but I’ve never seen it so I don’t know. I am sort of expecting a ballsout charge fest.

It’s actually quite the opposite. Rippa has shown me in accidental situations that she is quite measured around cattle, keeping her space, being calm, etc. And this was no different. She immediately started out by driving them at the heels, keeping them together, and just helping move them along. Peaceful like.

The thing is, she really did not get up the confidence to go to their heads and turn them. She tried a couple times and I have this awesome image of her burned in my mind of her giving the “I’m serious” snarly face to one of the bovines, but she pretty much stayed out of their way, kept out, and was happy at their heels. When she was at their heels. She did a lot of running back and checking with us and staying next to me. Which is HILARIOUS because I spend a LOT of time yelling at her to do just that when she sees cattle on the hill or in a field or something.  The video will show you this.

All in all, I’m not too worried about her not heading yet. She needs to turn on and get some confidence and she’ll be fine. I told you earlier I held off on lessons because she had some confidence issues and this is the same here. She’s kind of got a thing about new stuff – she needs some time to work it out. Once she does, she’s golden and it translates nicely to similar new stuff. I think she just needs time to understand what is going on. Kathy gave me some excuses about her being weirded out by her being there and that normally she would get Teal in to help rile them up and get Rippa some confidence (that’s what she did with Kite when it was Fury’s first time) but her Fred dog got injured so she’s wary of doing that with Rippa, who she can’t really control herself (Rippa works only for me). Marliee suggested working on the hill made her tired, but I doubt it. I think it’s just Rippa’s confidence is low. I know that about her.

And honestly, that’s kind of a bummer – I was happy to see a lot of things, but sad that she didn’t have the sheer drive and ballsyness that Fury has. I definitely wanted to tone that down in the next generation, but I also don’t want a dog that needs cajoling when things get rough. Rippa definitely checks out when she’s uncomfortable and that was always something I liked about Fury, that she didn’t. But, like I said, once Rippa gets it, she’s golden.

Anyway, here is the video for your pleasure – with Wagner as your backup music. Unfortunately, despite it rendering FOREVER, when it uploaded it was all cloudy and waiting for it is making me get behind in work so you get only cloudy Rippa. I’m sorry.

The interesting thing about going back and reviewing the video is that, as I said above, people had really interesting comments about what they were seeing.  No one ever actually talks to you about your dog, and no one said anything to me after the run, so it was funny to be like, “Oh, look they were talking about us.” Folks discussed her pedigree and me going back to linebreed on Slash V and such. They mentioned her super rich dark color, and then settled into discussing how Rippa is a better dog than Fury. Which is sort of nice and not, right? I mean, LOOOOOOOVE Fury, and as Kathy has always said, Fury was a nice dog that I started wrong. Rippa would have been a better learner dog for me, but definitely Rippa will get along quite nicely compared to her mother because she’s also benefitting from years of handling practice. But, as an objective viewer, yes, Rippa is better – conformationally, temperamentally, and she’s got nicer control over herself. If she would quit stealing everything and eating it, she would be universally better, but Fury’s at least honest.

Anyway, there are comments on her nice tendency to keep them together, sympathy with me that she’s not going to head, comments about how that might not be an issue . . . etc.

At the end of the video, when Rippa finally does go to head, the whole peanut gallery erupts in support, “Good girl! Yay! She has it in her!” Sparkle! Thanks campmates!

Lunch time and then back to work. I ended up going first because I tend to move fast so this works, which is also nice because I can go home and get back to work. I feel really, really guilty taking time off to do this so it’s nice to be able to actually get home and be productive, too. (Only after Rippa blogging, of course).

So it looks like Cathe failed at video taping my sheep run, but I’ll tell you that we’re so awesome it makes me sick. I can brag, right? Yeah, gonna brag.

First, Kathy had me go in and do take pen work with her. I guess apparently the way I was moving at first I was fetching instead of going around with Rippa and keeping her off. Rippa hates pressure so she tried to get out of the pen, and maybe once she nailed a sheep in the butt, but she was good otherwise. Practice makes perfect and wool is thick. I feel like that should be my new mantra.

So, we got them out of the take pen mostly nicely and out into the arena. I was able to send her around without having any more little dive-ins like she used to, and she stayed out. She takes her “outs” very nicely and I just ended up walking backward in a line. In fact, Kathy had me go through the panels, drop her, do some outruns, etc, and it was all so totally fabulous I’m thinking in my head that we just did our first title in started sheep like it was cake. I just really need to get her to LIE DOWN when I ask instead of coming in, but Kathy says she can see that will come if I am just nice and put pressure on my side. Rippa and I got to the panels (which we’ll talk about when training for trialing happens, or maybe just later) and she slowed right on down, let them get through, went around the panel and followed them through like it was baking a pie.

Toward the end, I was having a hard time getting Rippa to cover the right side of the sheep so Kathy started yelling at me about it – but it was windy so I could hear yelling and that was all. But, learning the lesson from yesterday (which is why this blog is awesome, I have to think and process stuff) about needing to just straighten out and get out of the sheep flightzone, I built my side up and held Rippa out and it fixed.

I felt proud as a peacock when I was done. I have come so far as a handler and Rips is such a nice dog. I’m excited for Bakersfield 2012, if not trialing before that.  It’s becoming a reality!

BTW, the UPS man just dropped off a package and Rippa is so dead to the world tired that she didn’t notice. Ha ha! Three more days, girl!

Repeat Offender’s Camp, Day 1

So I showed up to Kathy Warren’s Repeat Offender’s Camp this morning at 8 as the email said I should and no one was around. I literally heard the crickets. And then I found out it’s customary to take your dogs out on the hill, even though she’s not there. Oh. So I sat with Carol Norris and Doug Manley and waited for the show to begin.

Repeat Offenders is for graduated of her 100-series camps. Having excellent notes and also having done this for years, I thought that the opportunity to get on the hill, work cattle, and have five days in a row would be good for the Rippa bear as she’s been kind of off since surgery and no money and no lessons available.

I still need to set stuff up with the goat man, but yeah.

So anyway, the first thing all of us did was use today as a “warm up.” Rippa and I were back in the duck pen to make sure she got good control of herself and I managed things okay on my end.

I totally brought the video camera, but I guess it was full so I did not get any footage, sorry. It didn’t look too different from what you’ve already seen, though. I need to give more time to Rips to straighten up on turns and stop walking in circles, and she needs to stop checking out when I do stuff wrong. But overall, she looked cute.

Tomorrow I will be at the ranch bright and early at 7:30 and I’ll be paired with Marilee Mansir for my very first foray out “on the hill.”

Basically, at Kathy’s you progress from the round pen, to a bigger duck pen to the arena to “the hill.” “The hill” is an open space with no fences to help you. Your dog has to stay in control of the sheep or else it gets messy fast, but the real goal of training at Kathy’s is not to put your dog through the motions trialing, but make it a real, useful stockdog by working on the hill.  Fury never got enough control because I broke her, so in the ten years or so that I have gone to Kathy’s, this is a big moment for me and my puppy. I’m excited. I’m also happy that I am doing it with Marilee as she’s been around long enough for me to take her ribbing and know she’ll take good care of me and be patient if I screw up.

And then it will be Rippa’s first exposure to cattle if it is cooler than it was today (in the 100s, first time all year). Well, first official exposure to cattle. I’ve had accidental run ins since she was four months old that all ended quite well and I kind of think Yishai “lets” her work the cattle on the hills around her when he takes her running because he is always adamant that she is good at cattle. In an almost worshipful way. So we’ll see. I kind of expect good things from her because she has no fear but a good measure of self control and balance from what I’ve seen.

Today was a lot of telling people to go through the sheep to correct outs and a lot of “use your stick to hold the sheep back” which has been kind of a thing lately. Having been around a lot, I don’t know if Kathy has just figured out that this is something that needs to be taught, if I just never noticed it before, or if everyone is just in some kind of stick-misuse cycle. :hrug::

To day 2!

Take my pen, please.

So, yesterday I went to “Good Woman” Thursday and had one run with Rips in the round pen. More of the same of what you’ve been seeing. I really wish I could get her to down faster out there, but I really like her otherwise. She is great for me to learn on – I feel like I am really going to “get it” this time and maybe I’ll eventually have time to help Fury get to her potential before her little dog body breaks down (she’ll be nine this January).

The folks at the ranch yesterday and today were really cool, too. Saw some familiar faces and met some new people – I especially liked meeting a gal my age because you never see that.  

Anyway, so yesterday, Kathy’s like, “Let’s give the take pen a try next time, arm or no arm.”

So today, that is what we did.

We started with working on outruns and me getting back to paying attention to the sheep (I got heavy sheep today and my life is easier when I don’t have to worry about them). We worked on getting Rips to LIE down and to come to me instead of going for the sheepsies, and then it was round pen time at the end of the lesson (when she is good and tired).

So take pens – this is a different kind of work entirely from what we’ve been working on – which is getting the dog to work in an increasingly more open space in control. The take pen is much smaller than the round pen you start a dog in, and you really need to be able to keep them in control there. Dogs feel a lot of pressure in there so keeping them away from sheep and mitigating the pressure you put on them is important, too.

Kathy’s pen is set up so that you have a main gate into the arena that leads into a chute with different holding pens for different sheep (so she can select heavy, light, etc sheep for you). So Rippa’s job was to down in front of the gate while I open the gate and let the sheep into the round pen.

Of course, I guess the sheep weren’t too worried about Rippa because there she is, diligently lying down in front of the sheep with the open gate as I am tying it back so it doesn’t shut, and the damn sheep run right on past her to the take pen. Fury would NEVER have allowed that to happen. I guess that shows the kind of terror Rips gives these heavy sheep.

That doesn’t bother me too much, though. She’s got plenty of power when challenged and to move stock. I haven’t really seen her on cattle, but as I said, Yishai likes to “accidentally” let her get in contact with them sometimes and he always talks breathlessly about her performance, so we’ll see in the fall.

And then, once the sheep were in the take pen. We went in. Here is the video. No commentary necessary because you can hear us all talking.

 

So the idea is that you teach the dog to go in, not bugger (Kathy’s phrase, and it’s perfect) the sheep, and run right around the perimeter, stopping at the back corner (where you tell them to), and then using presence to push them into the arena.

We teach this by going in with them and having them run circles around the sheep and keep her wide to the fence. Then I am supposed to down her opposite the gate, Kathy opens the gate (because it’s a lot to ask an 18 month old puppy to hold her stay with that kind of pressure), and the sheep go out. Now, right here, Kathy says not to let her work the sheep, but use obedience, so I leave her in her down, go out to the arena gate, call her and down her. Eventually she will understand the plan and relax and just go to me while I close the gate and start working again when I say. This was a nuance I either forgot or didn’t remember from Fury. In fact, a lot of this stuff I forgot because it’s been aeons since Fury and I worked take pens. It was kind of funny.

Anyway, second take pen of the day was good, but Rippa was thinking maybe it would be better if she just got out into the arena if I wanted her out so bad. Oh well, Rips has her mother’s “If I am not doing it right, then why bother” trait. When she figures it out, it will be nice.

I am also having problems with stick location, and how it affects the dog, but we’ll worry about that next time and next time hopefully I won’t have the brace on.

Rippa says, “No worries, I luv mah sheep!”

People keep asking me how old she is for some reason. I answer, but I would feel weird going, “Why do you ask?” Maybe I should.

I also talked to Denise Creelman (who was up for lessons) about my silly aspiration to be a breeder judge with stockdogs. All the Junior handlers that I grew up with are getting their licenses to judge, but not me. She was like, “Yeah, she’s a nicely balanced little dog, maybe a little too long for my taste (true, me too), but the problem is she is so small.” Gets you every time! She is about 18” exactly, but in California that’s the kiss of death! :) Oh well. Next generation.

Barking, Arenas, and Sweet Videos of Me Working with a Sling

So, this time, I thought, “Hey, this whole working with an immobilizer on seems to work,” so I brought the video camera for Thursday’s lessons.

The first work of the morning, it was only me and my neighbor, JoAnne (she lives down the street from me) and it would have been too much for her to shoot video so I just set it on a post. You won’t get much video from that work, and it’s okay.

So I get there, and Kathy’s like, “Well, you can’t use the duckpen because Cindy (border collie local) needs to use the geese to get ready to trial in August, so let’s use the arena.” And I contain myself and very studiously say, “You sure the time is right? I can wait.” She goes, “Nah, let’s do it.”

And I am right back to when I first showed up at the ranch and thought the arena was the be-all and do-all. I am thrilled. Although, truth-be-told, I also had just sent in a deposit check for her Repeat Offender’s camp, which involves horses, cattle, and using the hill. I am hoping Rips will be ready by September, if only I can stay in good control and maybe get ahold of the Cattlemaster I keep mentioning and he is game.

Anyway, so I go in there and I am nervous. I watch Rippa at my side as she slinks in. I love how both my little dog ladies get super focused on the approach and slink kinda border-collie in and then lie down as solid as rocks until it’s time to go. No bouncing around like idiots here.

And away we go. You cant’ see much in the video, but she comes in hot (expected), and I push her out, and within a little bit, we’ve got them balanced and I can do pretty much whatever I need to.

Things I learned or thought about today:

I really need to control where I hold that stick. I notice in the video it’s way up when it should be pointing more down. I do like the sheep and how they help me with that because these new sheep are a little lighter and less likely to smash into me.

It’s time to move to the arena when your dog has control of the stock and itself (and you do, as well). The duck pen is useful in that, just like the round pen, it’s simply easier to catch and get control of the dog. Some training methods use leads, but Kathy’s is more about using yourself to handle the situation, and I like that. Fury has always been very good offlead because she knows if she messes up, that I will go and definitely get her.

I have a very big problem of walking into heads when I push Rippa out. It’s like I think the sheep stay put. I push Rippa out and then I go back to where I was in parallel with where Rippa is, which makes her unable to get around, and then makes her bitchy and quit trying.

Kathy is super annoyed by the brace because I can’t really effectively use the stick to get Rips to slingshot around me because of the arm placement. She always was like, “Now that you’re in the arena, it’s time to learn take pen, but you need full use of your arms!” Hopefully when I get to the doc in two weeks, he will say I have the right to bare arms.

Other dog thoughts . . .

- Barking. There was a new dog at the ranch for lessons and two women were outside talking about how the dog was barking a ton. “Does he bark normally?” “No!” she said suprisedly. So I kind of mumble something about how when her dog figures out what its doing and focuses, it will stop barking. Which, right about when I say it, it does.

Stock people really don’t like barking dogs, as I’ve said before. I haven’t thought about it lately, but there’s a good reason for it. I think the majority of barky dogs don’t have as much instinct as I’d like. They are usually like, “Wow, it feels kind of good to rush these animals but . . . I don’t know what to do!” Just like I thought Rippa would bark a lot because she barks a lot in person, she’s dead silent. And how many lessons have we had and she looks good. I’m really happy with how she’s turning out.

- Stress training seems to have worked. That same dog was having a hard time not chirping when he wasn’t on the stock and it reminded me of how Fury was totally unable to self-sooth at the ranch for a long time, she would dance around and chirp and all kinds of things. Now she settles right in for a nap, but it was obnoxious for a bit. Rippa has always been real easy to self-sooth. She is asleep under the picnic table while I grade in the interim, or napping in the truck. Fury used to shiver when we worked in the pens for trials and setting out sheep and I doubt Rippa will. She seems a lot calmer. Could be a personality difference, but I do think “puppy torture” that I did when the litter was little was helpful.

I Definitely Let My Freak Flag Fly!

So, sports fans, I haven’t updated this blog because Rippa didn’t get to work since last time. I haven’t called the goat cattlemaster because I found out shortly after that I was having surgery on my shoulder (old injury) and then I had it. And then, three weeks later, I have lessons.

And while you’re dying to know how we did and what we worked on, I need to explain what I looked like out there.

First off, I’ve got a big ol’ immobilizer brace on so that I can’t do anything stupid with my shoulder. Here’s a photo of the first day of surgery:

So, yeah, that big black thing. People think it’s an industrial fanny pack. I am supposed to wear it all the time – but the reality is that I am sitting here, lying on the couch with it off because I can type easier. Workarounds.

Okay, so, on top of that, it’s pretty hot and humid here in SLO, so, abhorrent of shorts, I have on a short little running skirts and some Nike Frees which are nothing but mesh glued to soles.

And there I am, wielding my stick with one hand and Rippa’s actually doing pretty awesome. We were all thinking this was spectacular and I look up at Kathy and grin, “Well, maybe we shouldn’t be practicing!” She’s staying off them, rating them well, walking straight up, giving them some space . . . Kathy says she gave me a notch up from the heavy sheep we were used to so I better be sure to keep them off my feet . . . which turns out to be literal because . . . RIP!

My right foot literally exits laterally from my shoes and my socks are exposed to the grass. My handling starts to fall apart, so I down the Rippa dog, kick off my shoes and am now handling her in the grass, which is a mix of sheep poo and pee and water. But I am classy and I don’t care.

By now I have fallen apart on my handling and Rippa doesn’t look as good. She’s not trying and not covering. She won’t lie down quickly on command. We practice the slingshot recall and she shoots and doesn’t sling a couple times and Kathy thinks she is clued into the fact that I’m hobbled by the brace.

But, you know, whatever, it’s funny and I had a good time. I still think Rippa dog is an excellent beastie and I’m looking forward to getting more miles on her and more skills on me.

One thing was super clear to me today (though it always is) – your handling skills make all the difference on these dogs.

Slingshot outruns and biting sheep

Video! We have video!

But first, a specific take home lesson Kathy gave that I cut out of the videos. As we said, I was going to try to take Rippa somewhere else to get some miles on her, so Kathy wanted to tell me something – if Rippa goes in to bite a sheep, I should not come down on her too harshly.

“Prevention, not correction,” Kathy says, “You think she’s not supposed to bite sheep but one day she might have to. They’re bred to grip and you can’t beat it out of them, nor should you.”

So there you go. Though, historically, it’s looked down upon in trial situations, there are, of course, situations when a bite’s okay. Especially if the sheep is challenging you. Having been head-butted, I can tell you, a weak dog that just gets run over is in for some headaches. Ah ahahahha.

To the video! I think you’ll be impressed that she’s only been on sheep twice (I think) since the last posting. Rippa is real interesting in that she really seems to digest what she’s learned or else mature into it as time goes on. She’s already way more under control than I ever really had Fury at.

Yeah, poor quality again, but you’d be driven nuts by the fence.

The interesting thing here is that the slingshot makes Rippa’s brain hurt a little. She would make a fabulous ranch dog because she likes knowing what’s coming. When you throw something new at her, she starts moving very slowly because the rules are changing and she doesn’t want to be wrong. Fury offers stuff quickly because she wants to please, she doesn’t mind being wrong. Very different, but I think it will be fun trialing her when she learns what the game is.

Good improvement and . . . the slingshot outrun.

 

Well, my camera is currently being held hostage, so no footage today. I am hoping to get it back tomorrow so I can shoot what we’re going to do, but we’ll see.

Wow. I have been bummed about not having time to take Rippa to lessons/not getting lessons, etc as I truly believe that you need real consistent work to improve, but she’s sort of proving me wrong. It’s going slower than I’d like, but it’s going.

Rippa’s an interesting dog. Not like her mother by much. Fury is very, “Okay, you want me to do something? This? No? This?” Very fast thinker, very fast behavior offerer. Rippa literally looks checked out, but the wheels are obviously turning because she seems to just “get it” whenever I start up a new lesson at teaching her. I have been taking her to the agility field to practice that and she is learning faster than Fury did because she’s not as urgent to please me RIGHT NOT. Which is interesting. I am thinking Rippa in the long run will be a nicer stockdog than Fury would have been if I did it right because she’s a bit more patient and think-it-through, which is what I wanted. Fury is a bomb little trick dog, though.

So anyway, after a week off, I took her up to Kathy’s and we went back to the duckpen for more miles. And I can see we are both improving a ton. Rips is staying off the sheep pretty naturally and I am making mostly the right handling calls. Not nearly as much circling and pushing, and a lot more backward walking, balancing, and rating. I am really proud of her and me. She gives me time to think so I can feel my handling improving. Fury just goes hard and then it makes me go hard. Here, I can chill a bit.

She also is downing nicely from far away – which was what I’ve been working on. Fury would always down too late and push the sheep past me, so we’re working on not having history repeat itself.

And then finally, Kathy was like, “Let’s see her recall.” So I left her in a down, facing the sheep, walked behind her and called her to my outside leg. No hesitation. She did it. No need to run at the sheep. Nope.

So, tomorrow, we try a bit of the “slingshot outrun” training which gets you that nice wide outrun.

You can see me do it here with Fury, a few years back:

The idea is that the dog swings wide around you and you act kind of as a . . . slingshot to send the dog. I LOVE teaching this. Fury loves it, too, she does it whenever we fetch. Rippa, however, doesn’t fetch, so we’ll see how that goes.

Well, Rippa fetches, but only if Fury’s not around, and not balls.

Miles to Go.

So, after about a month off, Rippa and I headed to lessons at Kathys. Today was only a one-off, and we won’t go back until next week. I have been thinking a lot lately about how my time is severely limited and I just really don’t know how I’ll manage to get Rippa out enough to progress her along.

We’ve been working out at a ranch a little north of town for events, and the owner suggested that his “cattlemaster” (oh man, do I LOVE that title) might be interested in meeting me. He has a herd of goats that he uses to train his (I think) McNabs on, and he probably would be cool with sharing them with me and maybe watching what I do because he just trains them to bring in cattle out of the hills. I thought this would be a cool opportunity to put miles on the Rippa dog. I have been looking into my own sheep, but it seems like I’d have to move out of town to make that work, and, well, I don’t wanna!

But, first I wanted to check with Kathy to see what she thought of the plan. She liked it. Said that it would be a good opportunity and that goats are pretty easy for people to learn on because they gentle up so fast, but, like geese, they can go sour if not managed well. She told me to go into this relationship seeing what his dogs do and just do that. Let everyone be comfortable with it. And if my dogs can’t do it, maybe he’d be willing to gentle some sheep for me to play with. I hope it works out. She said I could go out and do that at this stage and then come in for tune ups.

Because, well, the fact of the matter is – Rippa needs miles (just like Fury does), and paying $50 for forty minutes of lessons isn’t doing my wallet any favors. I also can’t take off enough time to do that. But this might be the solution.  I don’t think that it’s a good idea to put miles on a dog without any supervision (I did that, it didn’t work), and if you’re a novice, I think it’s much better to take “handling” lessons before you every try to manage your own training, but I’m glad to think she’s okay with me doing that at this stage.

So today we just put miles on. Kathy noted that Rippa was working better for me than she has and she was a lot easier on the down. Funny thing on that – Rippa is better at downing because she LOVES running Fury down when Fury is fetching and I hate it, so I started making her lie down and wait until Fury gets the ball and then she can go. So Rippa knows she’ll get to play if she lays down first.

Kathy also stopped me, midlesson, to explain how my stick use was affecting the sheep. I have been working for many years now, not really reading my sheep or thinking about my effect on their flight zone and I guess it’s time to fix that.

So here’s the deal:

With Rippa, I found that if I hold the stick flat out like this:

She is more likely to move out and stay out, instead of me pointing the stick at her. Kathy says that’s fine, but eventually I need to point the stick at her. My theory is Rips is fairly intense and she needs HUGE signals for her to not lock onto the mission and hear what I want.

But the thing is, the sheep are below the stick, so while I think I’m holding back my heavy sheep that want to stick close to me and are not afraid of me, I’m going way over their field of vision, and the stick should be here:

So now I have to remember the difference and stop fixating on handling Rippa and remember I am handling both her and the sheep.

Another interesting thing . . . Rippa sometimes lets the fence move the sheep so I have to help her get all the way around them to work them off me. So, what I do is tap the sheep in the direction I want them to stop going and go the other way. And it wasn’t working. Kathy was like, “WALK AWAY FROM THE TAP!” And I am thinking, I AM!

So she stops me and she makes me lie down and be a sheep and here’s what she shows me:

The grey is sheep and the brown is the dog. What I’m basically doing is pushing the sheep away because they see the stick and are like, “EEP, must not walk into the stick” while I am, indeed, backing up from the tap and then there’s Rippa who sees the stick that I’m holding out for too long and she’s also staying back because I am telling her to. Oops.

That stick position is SUPER important. It’s not a magic want you can just wave all over the place.

Boy howdy, do I look like a righteous bitch in these photos or what?

Rippa gets handled and you get a mini Kathy Warren clinic.

So the video is fuzzy because my computer wanted to take FOUR HOURS to render this 9 min video and I was not having that. It’s not as pretty to look at, but you get the idea.

Circles and Circles and Circles

I haven’t had time to digest the video yet, but I know some people are waiting on Rippa Puppy updates. This past weekend we did three solid days of training.

We worked on Rippa’s outrun (she’s quit splitting them for the most part, and quit doing that “change direction thing” that I talked about earlier that was hard for me to figure out how to manage), on her obedience (she still doesn’t stop before pushing the sheep past me), on her outs, and on my ability to hold the sheep.

First thought is: why do *I* run more than everyone else at lessons? I forgot to ask Kathy about this, but I think it’s partly that I can (when other folks are retirees or injured or just not in shape) and partly that I have more high-powered dogs than some. You gotta MOVE to keep ahead of them. Kathy’s pretty nimble herself and she gets out there, but I think timing has a lot to do with it, too. I need to hustle to get where she was two seconds ago.

Second is, MAN, am I tired of saying “Out.” The thing that you have to understand is that our dogs were not developed to work 3-5 sheep. They were bred to work a huge flock. That pressure is really important because when you have a huge flock, the front animals don’t feel the dog’s pressure, but they certainly feel the pressure of their compatriots urgently pushing on them. So, at this stage in the game, you’re trying to teach the dog to stay out so you don’t end up with a mess. Rippa listens for the most part, but there’s only so much she can take. She’ll get up, control herself and then . . . munch! Those lamb hocks are just too tempting that close up! MOVE, sheepies! Rippa is very pressure sensitive, both with stock and people. I think this makes her a nice cattle dog, but we’ve yet to see. She does not like a lot of pressure up front.

I’ve been dutifully chucking dog food at Rippa at feeding time after she lies down at a distance and Kathy says she sees improvement, but she needs to learn that lying down is a good thing. She just doesn’t want to. She looks really guilty when I ask her to down and go to her. Funny little dog.

The outrun issue, for the most part, have been fixed. She will take direction indications (ie, my body and stick placement), but she still runs pretty fast and flat at them. I have to run to keep her out around them, but I can feel her getting more control of it as time goes on.

Overall, good improvement over the three days. I started not being able to figure out what to do and Kathy stepped in to get Rippa right for me. The difference is night and day. She balances up (walks straight along with the sheep) with Kathy handling her, and with me she wears back and forth (what it sounds like, checks the outside eye of one sheep, runs back, checks the other, repeat). Why? I have a hard time holding my sheep – which is also how I broke Fury so badly. The sheep get past me because apparently when I run out to her to push her out, I run into the sheep’s flight zone and Kathy manages to stay out of it, so the sheep stay pointed toward her instead of going wide around me. We’ll see in the videos soon and hopefully get a clue as to how to fix this.  

Happy sheepsies in the mean time!

The Farmer’s Dog Philosophy

I finally got ahold of a copy of The Farmer’s Dog by John Holmes. Kathy told me to get it, along with a big list of other ones. I read the whole thing over the weekend and it was kinda neat to see what this guy had to see. Written in the 1960s, it’s a little “old school” but that’s how we kick it around here.

He spends most of the book trying to teach you about the instinct and choosing the right dog. He says in his second part:

“I cannot emphasize too strongly that dogs are not machines, but the reason I have written so much in Part I is to help you to prevent things from going wrong. To be able to do this, the first essential is to acquire some ‘dog sense.’ This is the ability to understand the canine mind and to be able to see things from the dog’s point of view. Without some dog sense the advice I have still to give you will be of little value.”

He says about instinct:

“It is of the upmost importance to remember that, when a young dog starts to run, he does so instinctively. When they see an untrained young dog ‘wearing’ a bunch of sheep many people say ‘It’s amazing how intelligent he is.’ Intelligence has nothing to do with it. The young dog which suddenly decides to run can be compared to the young man who suddenly decides that a certain young lady is the most attractive he has ever seen! one does not have to be clever to do that sort of thing, and there are many who looking back who wonder how they could  have been so stupid! The young dog herds, not so much because he wants to herd, as because he cannot help  it any more than, when he was born, he could not help squirming around until he found where the milk came from. “

“Run” = “herd.” But I like the term run because dogs start “running” far earlier than they truly “herd.”

He talks about the reserve that you see in stockdogs that gives people used to “city dogs” and the affect it has on his breeding:

”Temperament in the working dog is much more important than is generally realized. To the hill shepherd it does not matter so much as he is usually on his own. So long as the dog does not bolt at the sight of a stranger, it may be a first-class worker. Many good hill dogs are, in fact, shy partly because of temperament and partly because they never see strangers. On the general farm, conditions are very different. As the peace and quiet of the countryside become smore and more a thing of the past so does it become more and more important to get a dog with a good temperament . . . to keep up a team of demonstration dogs required constant replacements. Of the puppies which we selected at eight weeks as suitable, I doubt if 50 percent ever appeared in public. By the time they were six months to a year, we had to reluctantly decide to discard the other 50 percent . . . in most cases it was due to their not having to put up with people, the noise and the hustle bustle . . .”

He digs at people who breed for trials:

“Although trial dogs have done so much to raise the general standard of working dogs they have undoubtedly resulted in the production of a great many dogs that have no practical use to anyone. Many classically bred dogs have quite an abnormal instinct to work. The skilled trainer can use this keenness as a foundation for training the dog to the very highest degree. It will respond like a flash to each and every whispered command like the high-powered, well-tuned car responds to the slightest touch of the accelerator. But a high-powered car with a bad driver is far more dangerous than a low-powered!”

I laughed – I use this analogy ALL THE TIME.

He has a couple points that inform his training:

1. Dogs usually do not reason, so do not assume they will in training. (Actually, he says they cannot – and I disagree.)

2. No dog understands every word spoken to him.

What does this mean? That your dog is learning by association of ideas. So, when Kathy says “take the dog’s sheep away” after being bad – that behavior = no sheep.

Of correction:

“In the training of sheepdogs I rely almost entirely on two forms of correction.” Form 1 – grab dog, lift by scruff and shake. Form 2 – toss a hosepipe at it.

This is pretty consistent with training at Kathy’s. Ain’t no clicker that’s stronger than a dog’s instinct to run.

“If there is a secret to training I believe it arises from the ability to apply the type of correction and reward suitable to the particular dog, to strike a balance between the two and, most important of all, to apply them at the right time. The majority of failures in training are due to a – too much emphasis being put on how to correct or reward a dog, and too little on when to do so, and b – trying to work on the dog’s body rather than on his mind. The minds of some dogs can only be got at by making disobedience a painful occupation.”

And another gem:

“The first essential in training is will-power combined with the an active mind. This enables one to concentrate, to anticipate what the dog I going to do and, therefore, to correct and reward him as he does it. “

Why didn’t Rippa’s mom get a WTCh?

I was recently asked this question in light of the fact that here I am, telling you theories of stockdog training, when the only stockdog titles my own dog has is a STDc (started, cattle) and I’ve put a duck leg on a dog, a started sheep title on a dog, and a ranch trial title on a dog. That’s it. Kind of weird, right?

Let me tell you that writing this was kind of painful. Not because I’m embarrassed about it, nor because I realized something I hadn’t, but because I had to watch that damned video that’s linked here of what I did to Fury for two solid years.

But, well, there are things to be learned here.

When I first got into this, I heard the old adage, “You will ruin your first stockdog” and I was like, “Nah! How could I?”

Well, I did.

See, my training philosophy is very independent. I don’t belong to clubs, I don’t take classes. I train, and then I go trial. I’m a pretty good trainer, if I may, because I have been doing it for a long time, and I used to go to seminars all the time.  So when it came to livestock working, I though I would approach it the same way.

So I went to Kathy when Fury was about . . . oh, a year.

And, as you can see from this photo of her first time out, she had some go juice. You can see Kathy smiling pretty big there, too, because she liked how she was starting out, too. So I kept going to classes, but sporadically.

Look at her all balanced up and happy. Yeah, not so much these days.

Anyway, so I am in grad school and paying for this venture with student loans. Stockdog lessons aren’t cheap, but at least I am not driving upwards of six hours like some of the folks that come up  do, so I try to be consistent ,  but I’m broke.

And then, a few months in, I was given the opportunity to train and handle about seven Australian shepherds about eight miles up from me, every day, on sheep, agility, obedience, and we even tried conformation but the dogs weren’t socialized enough.  And get paid for it. This also afforded me time to use the stock on my own dog. And the hubris was incredibly. I was such a good trainer, this guy was paying me! I could not possibly not figure this out.

But here is what I did: Long story short, the sheep were terrorized by his dogs always getting loose, getting in the pens and having their way with them. Fury and her go juice allowed her to chase the crap out of these extremely light sheep and  fetch them out of the hills when they got loose, or move them from pen to pen, but even trying to start her in the round pen was work. She can work really large groups of sheep, but when they got small, they’d ping off the walls. And that’s where the problem went.

See, the dogs he had weren’t super strong on talent and instinct and it was mostly my job to bond with them and encourage them. They were very soft dogs. They moved slow and maybe didn’t listen so well, but I could get them to work the sheep enough to trial them because they were so soft and not so talented. They would follow the sheep just fine because they weren’t really reading them or trying to do anything. A few sits here and there and we could get through a course with me leading the way.

Here’s Fury with the darling father-son duo on trial weekend. The red dog, Bucky, got his RTDs that weekend with me handling, and Kodi (the black tri) got his sheep and duck legs. They were not high drive dogs, but they were sweet. Bucky died a few years back and unfortunately, Kodi’s owner died and the girl that placed the dogs wouldn’t communicate with me so I have no idea what happened to him.

Anyway, Fury, though, was all stockdog and she is still one of the more instinct-driven dogs I know. By this, I mean that she really doesn’t process so well. She just goes for things. It’s fun to train her, but if you hold a piece of food in your hand and ask her to do something, she stops thinking and just starts offering behaviors. She cannot help herself from heeling my vacuum, even though she knows it’s bad, and she has very little bite inhibition when people put pressure on her. (This was something I worried about with breeding her, but I do think I simply didn’t understand how to manage it, and I do think that this go round, we did fine with the same potential in Rippa. You gotta teach a dog that flight is much better than fight with people and not force them into things, Fury got forced.) PURE INSTINCT. And not always the good kind.

So Fury would get on those animals and try to turn them but they were so light they would bounce off the walls. Meanwhile, I don’t know how to handle at all, so I am not helping her out in any way. By the time I realized I really needed to start going to lessons again, Fury had learned that the way she should work livestock is like a bat out of hell, lest they take off.

Here’s a video of us in the roundpen:

2005

So I tried to annotate this video and it made me want to cry so I had to stop watching it. If you know what a good stockdog looks like in this situation, you can see that she is literally doing NOTHING wrong except I’m yelling at her.  And I did it five days a week for two years.

Uh, yeah. That’s how you break your dog. And the amazing thing is that Fury still loves the crap out of me and will always work whenever I ask and NEVER shuts down. She keeps trying and trying but I just never taught her want to do.

We’d actually work in an agility arena, too, so it was kind of fun. I had Fury send them over jumps and stuff, but it did NOT help her manage the sheep one iota. I could obedience her through drives and such, and I drilled her real well, but I couldn’t simply walk and have her keep the sheep with me.  She would blow them right by me because she never learned that I was there to  hold them, too (and mostly because it took me years to get that I was supposed to).

So, at some point I quit working for Doug when I knew I couldn’t do anymore with his dogs than I was and I went back to Kathy’s and was at lessons pretty much every day I could. And things got better.

2006

2007

So then I started trialing her, mostly because I knew I wanted to breed and I wanted to see what was out there, not because she was totally ready.  Proof of that? I never had the guts to trial her on home turf where people I saw regularly could judge my wonderful dog poorly.

My first weekend, Trish Alexander and I went to Idaho. Fury and I took home Most Promising Started Aussie and a sheep and cattle leg.  The sheep were unlike anything we’d ever seen, so heavy they would walk with me. It frustrated Fury because no matter what she did, they just stuck by me.

But obviously we did okay. The second trial was in Washington and not so good. And then we went for MVA in 2007 and Fury and I qualified in agility and on cattle, so we qualified on the whole shebang, while also finishing the started cattle title.

Everyone who watched that qualifying cattle run was impressed. The judge said she was like a little hornet on the cattle. Which is true.

On sheep, not so good – and it became clear we had a major handling issue. Away from  me she worked fine, but as soon as she got close to me, it was dunzo. I would be too nervous and Fury would be too nervous and it would be a big, fat wreck. Ducks usually went pretty well, but I was bad at handling them so she never Q’d.

(I bought the photo, so don’t be mad. I just don’t have it scanned.)

And I felt awesome about that MVA award- it had been a life long goal of mine. I was going to keep at it and she wasn’t broken after all.

But, in the end, I began to realize that the lessons weren’t really letting us progress. I was learning a ton more from watching others and keeping at it, but Fury just could not balance the sheep when they came into contact with me.

2009

This is the last video I have of us working together. The fact was, it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Kathy continued through all this to remind me that she was, in essence, a good little dog, and that it was I that had made some major mistakes. That’s why I also decided that breeding her was okay. Fury has been a wonderful pet, the smartest and most biddable dog I’ve ever known, and she has a lot to contribute to the gene pool, even if she’s small and has no titles.

As I said when I ran an ad in the Aussie Times  for the litter I planned but didn’t work out, it’s not the titles; it’s the talent.

 

I tried giving her to Yishai to handle, but she's too far gone and he doesn't know enough about how to handle, nor does he love it. If I had really wanted him to, he would have kept it up, but really, it's not worth it. And now I think that if I had sheep of my own to work on every day, I know just enough to maybe fix her, but with Rippa around at $50 a day, I can’t afford to fund Fury, so for now she is retired. I am trying to figure out a way to make this work as I love working with Fury and she definitely misses it.

But that, my friends, is why I am able to write about training dogs but have no real titles to prove I know what I’m doing. Because I learned all this stuff the hard way – as most of us do.

If you are not a stockman, this blog may help, but you need someone to keep you from breaking your dog.  Take it from me.