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.