A little update on things

Here’s my to-do list:

• Meet with organizations to get buy in on my Ranch Sheep Project
• Get sheep
• Meet with a local trainer to both use her sheep and maybe buy them
• Get back in touch with Nathan, who says it’s time for return to Adelaida, and he’s been using his puppy a bit so that might be really fun

So, as I last left you, I was working on getting my own sheep. I was asked to come to a meeting of The Ranch Development committee to present my idea, and pretty much had them excited the minute I opened my mouth. (Background, The Ranch is leasing the land that I got married on, owned jointly by the Jewish Community Center and my synagogue, to develop its unused acreage as both a fundraising ranch and educational opportunity for disabled youth and adults – my project would be part of that.)

What became a flock of five sheep with a small breeding program to restock them, me working them, and maybe letting other people have a shot, became “You are now the chair of the Animal Husbandry Committee!” They were firing off wanting turkeys, goats, chickens, horses . . . and while that is pretty neat (my own ranch without owning it), it was also not something I was prepared to be responsible for. Realizing the amount of space they wanted this stuff to be on wasn’t going to work, I sat down with my drafting stuff (yes, I have drafting stuff – when I was a little kid I REALLY liked designing floor plans of homes) and did some calculations, with room to grow and sent it to my friend who was like, “Woah, woah, woah, let’s just start with sheep.” Which is pretty relieving, as I’ve got a big pile of work in front of me in the meantime.

The cool thing about the project is that I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing kosher laughter lambs either at Adelaida or somewhere else and The Ranch was super on board with it. We’ll see if that pans out in the future.

Anyway, so now I  need to meet with the “wheat gal” and figure out the layout of the pens and then, as my husband says, “I got a hankering to pound some t-stakes.”

So that’s where we’re at. We’re in the middle of hiring and business trips so I haven’t really had time to visit Adelaida or hook up with the gal I might buy sheep from, but we’ll see.

Just thought I’d give you an update.

Stockdog Clinic at Trish’s New Digs

So, Kathy announced her retirement and sold all her sheep to Trish Alexander, who, after many years of renting a small house with so-so sheep facilities, managed to get AN AMAZING DREAMHOUSE in King City (and this is an even bigger deal to me, since King City is not exactly the pinnacle of places to live). First order of business?Host a stockdog clinic with Kathy before she heads north for the Winter.

Well, after a few months off entirely, and a month of confusion about whether I was breaking Rippa at Adelaida with my non-conventional training ideas, I figured I’d better take the opportunity to get out with Kathy and figure out what to do, now that I’m effectively on my own.

Some basic thoughts that I had:

1. Only taking lessons is a double-edged sword. I was a lot more confident with Kathy following me around and advising me pretty much what I knew, but I also stopped thinking about stockmanship because I guess I’ve always felt like Kathy was there to tell me how far I could “push” the sheep. At first it was super necessary, I think, to have her hand on the bike, stabilizing it, but I definitely feel like it’s time to let go and balance on my own, if you get that. I need to stop letting Kathy be a crutch for what I really know, and have confidence in myself because, well, I guess I do know enough to do this on my own without breaking Rippa.
2. I honestly think that teaching stockmanship as an instinct is job one. When I am at Adelaida, I do not make foolhardy choices because I feel like I need to protect these people’s stock before I train my dog. This weekend, with Kathy there, I let that slide a bit. That was both good and bad for me. When I saw that these sheep were, indeed, different from Adelaida in that they would settle and fetch to me, I relaxed a lot more, but that also caused me to make mistakes I normally wouldn’t make – like not preventing dive ins soon enough (on the first day) to starting an outrun with the sheep not settled and mashed on the fence (giving my dog nothing to do but dive bomb to get in between them and the fence on the third day) to just plain working the sheep longer than I needed to for success (that, I fear, was more the effect of knowing I was paying to be out there and wanting more than five minutes).
3. There was a time when sitting around all day was fun – especially when I was knew and standing there, watching the lessons and trying to understand what was happening provided a lot of new experiences (which I thrive on), but largely I felt like I knew what was wrong and Kathy helped me figure out ways to fix it, and so watching other people was more an exercise in seeing what they weren’t doing right. I’ve been stuck so long at just the handling facet of fetching that until I feel ready to drive, it’s all the same now. I’m there, effectively, for maybe thirty minutes a day, and I guess I really would rather be doing something else with the other part of my day – though I did plow through an enormous book. It’s definitely time to get my own sheep so I can do that.
4. I really need to find some sturdy bamboo to make the bottle sticks. Rippa needs them.
5. In the same vein, Rippa really really needs to know that I will get really mad if she does anything bad. I think we all fantasize that we can stand out in a field and whisper commands and they’ll just go right through it. Unfortunately, I think most dogs – or at least dogs with some real drive behind them – take a bit more than that. Rippa is a really honest dog for the most part, but she’s also an alpha and headstrong. You gotta be a real alpha to make her listen, and then it’s really fun. Kathy’s big lesson for me was “PREVENTION, NOT CORRECTION.” IE, start out being tough, and you can always soften up. Kind of like how, when I was in my mid 20s, I dressed up a lot to teach my college students so they’d perceive me as someone to respect, and then progressively got more casual as the semester progressed.

This was pretty much my entire weekend – Rippa chilling, me reading . . . waiting, waiting, waiting. I am definitely over that “new hobby” syndrome where you spend all day talking about whatever it is (I have done it with lacrosse, climbing, and dog sports) forever and ever and feeling like you have a corner on the market of happiness, so I don’t generally engage conversations at lessons. I’m an introvert, so sue me. I did however discover that I like Gina’s cake pops (though, right after found out that the filling was cake and frosting mixed up and swore off them for sheer badness for you), learned a lot about septic systems, and got to talk horse war stories.

Oh, and I got to pet a lot of dogs, which is always lovely.

Duke gets a belly scratch from me. We’ve been friends from way back when – it was nice to catch up.

Other things I thought were wise lessons from Kathy – most gleaned in casual conversation, before I get to the actual training:

• When I set up my sheep, don’t be married to the arrangement. You won’t know the ideal setup until you actually use it enough to create problems that might exist.
• When I buy sheep, I should work the group first, decide if they are good for my dog, and then buy them. Don’t just buy sheep someone wants to sell me.
• The secret to maintaining your weight as you age is portion control and forcing yourself to exercise (not stockdog related, but Kathy has been quite successful in this way) and not letting those around you convince you to get lazy about this.

So, onto the actual lessons.

The first day, she was a bit of a wild child – which I expected from many months off of this type of work and two months off from stock in any form. Kathy told me I wasn’t correcting strongly enough, and I needed to just go in there and be serious. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea in training, she warned, but that’s what Rippa respects and that I should enforce it quickly and then life will be easier. She also had me put a tab on Rippa so if I have trouble with  her (as I have in past lessons when she got confident and bratty) I’d have an easier time catching her.

I was so scared of doing outruns with her, but basically Kathy had me do what I was doing at Adelaida: obedience call offs. I’d lay her down on one end of the arena and call her to me. And back again. In a z pattern, getting closer and closer to the sheep. That way, we got Rippa calm and thinking “obedience” and the sheep calm because Rippa gets in there, gets low, and zeroes her beady yellow eyes at them with all the upright eye control that any Aussie has ever had behind her. 

This got her to relax, and then, interestingly, she started going to me kind of wide like she was going around me. I should note that when I call her, I call her to my outside leg – which builds up the dog’s outrun because instead of just coming in and facing the sheep, the dog will naturally have to swing wide around you, getting a wider arc, during outruns.

Well, this wide arching thing seemed to be a solution to my usual outrun of me between the sheep and the dog because instead of amping her up with a “get around” (which, if you use in casual conversation now, the dogs perk up as much as if they’d heard “cookie” or “sheep”), she would casually trot around me and get ready to lay down when I told her. So was born the sneaky “get around.”

I just called her around to me, kind of walked toward the sheep as I did it, and just never told her to lie down. We found that as long as I wasn’t running to protect the sheep, Rippa stayed pretty chill and in control. And thus, we have accidentally begun her slingshot outrun training.

Next, when I got them going, I had to trust Rippa to come back to balance, which she did. If I didn’t watch the sheep, and instead watched Rippa, we got into trouble. My handling always improves if I worry about what the sheep are doing.

BUT, I also needed to be much more “hardcore” about my unhappiness if Rippa came in too quick. The first day she got away with stuff because I was busy protecting the sheep from her. The second day, I got all kinds of serious and yelled at her and  . . . bammo. The next two days, the ratio of yelling or stick dropping  to “no, out, good dog” was a lot lower. In fact, there was one point that I clearly remember where she was ready to go for a sheep hock and I said, “Ahh, no” and she shot out of there like a bat out of hell. That’s my honest Rippa bear!

So, here’s your video of this, on day 3.

So, hoping that getting my own sheep works out soon so I can put the kind of mileage on her that she needs to get her calmed down so there’s less “out” and we can work on flanking commands and driving. And maybe reintroduce “get around” without overly stoking her. . .

2012 ASCA Nationals and I might get my own sheep after all!

Well, despite not having anybody to really trial at Nationals this year (I was really hoping to have Rippa bear ready for started, to go Most Promising Started – which is about a good award as any to get at Nationals), I thought since it was only two hours away, I should go. And I dragged the bandy (read, husBand) with me.

My friend Amy, who helps run my AussieBoard online bulletin board, was coming down and said that Finals needed duck handlers, which I was totally on board with. But, since I was going to be there Sunday and Monday, why not see if I couldn’t get into an agility pretrial, too?

So that’s what I did. We drove out to Bakersfield Friday night and got a hotel, up early on Saturday, and got there in time to hear the morning chicken song:

I am still wondering if that’s the club doing that or it’s an automatic fair thing. Either way, it definitely stoked me. It still does, even when I hear it on YouTube.

And so we were off. Fury hasn’t been trained in years – I just brush her off, maybe go up to the practice field once or twice before a trial, and we do okay. Rippa took an agility class with me back in April but my finances weren’t what they should be so I never continued it. But Y had built me a teeter totter because that and weave poles are her challenge. So, I’ve been poking at that half-heartedly and figured if I embarrass myself, who cares.

Well, I learned two things:

1. Don’t bring the husband next time. The dogs ran like this – oh, jump, and .. . Daddy? What? Oh, obstacle. Daddy? Daddy! And then it was over.

2. My tactic of training very rarely still works really great because my dogs have desire to please and learn. When they weren’t running to “daddy,” we did pretty good, with a qualifying and first place score for each! It’s not awesomely consistent, but it’s fun and I got myself a matched towel prize set for the bathroom!

Ribbons to match their red coats, and drinky cups for hot days (and it was hot!)

And then, I was so worked. 12 hours of hot weather, coordinating runs, helping everything run smoothly, etc took it’s toll.

But gotta do it all over again!

Only we did it in style, me and Amy:

Duck handling was super fun, when people weren’t complaining about how it was set up or what we were doing – but it was Finals, so I guess people get a pass, even though I think what we were doing was nicer to the duckies than what some of the Finalists wanted done.

At the end of the weekend, I was tuckered. I’d run scores for sheep and cattle and saw some really good dogs in some really good runs. I was inspired. It was gonna be okay.

And what of this blog and my training?

Well, Kathy Warren sent out an email a month ago essentially announcing her retirement and she has liquidated her sheep. Uh oh! But good for her – I’m sure she’s in love with her new grandson and her family in Oregon, and this has been coming a long while.

Last week, Nathan called to check in with me and said he’d finally finished harvesting and was going to classes with Laurie Batson, who I don’t know anything about. Missed the opportunity to go check her out last week, but may yet. She’s giving lessons in Atascadero, 30 min away.

In the meantime, Trish Alexander had moved an hour away to a ranch where she’ll give lessons and clinics, and trials, so there is that, as well. There will be a KW clinic there at the end of the month that I will be going to – which should help me address my questions and fears that I’ve come up with here on this blog. And hopefully make some good progress with Rippa bear.

And then . . . I went for a walk with my friend on the grounds I got married on – 15 unimproved acres that also houses my synagogue. A few years back, I asked about putting sheep on it, and everyone was amenable, but then a new project came to town: the Ranch. And they were ambitious, thinking the buildout would happen in months. I knew better.

A year or so later, they’ve broken ground and I tell my friend I’d be happy to help set up the animal part of the ranch, to which she sounds supportive and . . . one thing led to another, and I’ve got a proposal in front of the ranch committee for a sheep facility. For the cost of sheep and their housing, I’ll be contributing to a great project, have a sheep training facility right in my town, and even have people to help take care of them and benefit them in the same breath . . . can I say, yay?

Here’s a youtube video:

Next update will be whether that has gone through or not. I hope it does. We’ll know next week, hopefully.

The idea is they’d be behind that tree line there.

I Think I Get It Now

So after a day of fielding advice from people, and watching those videos over and over . . . (Poor Rippa goes crazy when she hears them)

I think I get it completely:

1. SHUT UP, Kristin.

2. Trust your dog. I keep watching this videos and even the ones where she “chomps” aren’t even horrible chomps. They’re measured.

3. I watched the one where I got a video of me trying to get her around and I am putting WAY too much pressure on the sheep to set up Rippa to be successful. I  have to just try it without being afraid of her wool pulling.

4. My timing’s not great. I understand that sometimes when I’m yapping, poor Rippa has no idea what I’m trying to show her because my body and my mouth are not in sync.

I am still worried that #2 will result in a wool pulling fiasco because in order to take the pressure off the sheep, there’s a moment between sending her and her fetching them to me where I can’t protect them if I need to stay off them to take pressure off and it could end up poorly. But, I guess, we can always stop it if it doesn’t work.

Ms. Calm-Chomp

So, today Nathan sorted out what he called the “PolyFace” lambs for me to work and had a little sorting pen to do so. It worked pretty well but I showed him how to catch sheep a little less stressfully (go for the webbing in front of the rear leg and then twist the neck into you). They give up when you do it right. That’s how “wild” sheep accept shearing.

Anyway, so I had eight sheep to work and set to my usual standing around and line walking to keep Rippa mindful. I tied Fury out on a line on the other fence and she chirped for a solid half hour. I thought she was over that crap, but nope. I don’t think I’m letting her back on the sheep unless she stops doing that.

So, basically, Rippa is doing pretty awesome on the obedience front. Her downs are solid, she listens really well, and her only fault now is that “stay” sometimes means “stay with me” to her, but it’s better than diving after sheep. The line and the mileage are working for that.

What’s not working is getting her to get around the sheep. I took Carol Mac’s advice of using a smaller amount of sheep (first I tried five, then three) because I was thinking I couldn’t protect the sheep, but I think what’s happening is that Kathy’s sheep are pretty much trained to run to the handler when the dog puts pressure on them, and these sheep feel my pressure too much and I can’t both protect them from Rippa getting in to tight and walk away.  The result looks like a calm outrun followed by a quick dive in for a sheep and then hanging on some wool until I yank her line and yell at her. I tried it a couple of time with the same results. I have no idea how I’ll get the sheep to come to me enough to get them off the fence and take the pressure off Rippa so she can feel good about getting around them. As you’ve seen in the past, as soon as she gets around them, we’re good and then we’ll be cooking. But I can’t do it.

So, it was back to leash walking and driving and half-moons. She is like 85% good on this. Leash walking is lame to her, so as soon as she gets in tight, her instinct to MOVE via chomp comes in. Her preferred method is to grab wool and hang on. It sucks, I hate that. The sheep don’t seem overly rattled by it so I think I’m doing okay dog breaking them, but *I* am, which makes me a crap handler. There was one time when she was walking up and did a pretty headturn and low heel with light pressure on a sheep, but I corrected her anyway. I do think she’s getting that I want nice nice on the sheep.

This is the “calm-chomp” I’m not in love with:

No chomping, though, because I have the line. HAHAHAH.

ANd then another video, but this one is later on after some corrections like you saw above:

She’s not SUPER engaged like she would be if she was on the other side of me, but you can see some improvement after working her a while. There are a number of times where she could have/would have dove in for wool but didn’t, but then it falls apart at the end. Watching this video, I realize I should lay off the commands because while I’m using them to get her moving, she’s not taking them so I’m either “not teaching her” or they’re becoming pretty useless. At the end of this, she gets too close and the sheep challenges, and she accepts, which is fine. Of course, the problem is, I don’t have someone to help me feel okay about that so I am pretty sure I corrected her after the video stopped. I just really want it to be easy on everyone. Y has agreed to go next time so I have someone letting me know if I make corrections I shouldn’t.

Half moons – at the start I had too many sheep and they would run and I couldn’t get to Rippa to back her off so I got four or five out and that worked pretty well. Rippa has a pretty good time with all of this – you can see her ease off and she REALLY appreciates being told she’s a good dog afterward and my experience with her means that she is trying really hard and starting to “get it.”

We also did some pen work which was really good for both of us and our relationship. She demonstrated she was not an alligator, she stayed and got placed where I needed her to be while I put the sheep in and out of that little holding pen . . . and it was pretty good. The only times she “calm-chomped” was when I inadvertently drove the sheep into her and she established her space and then wool grabbed after. Sigh . . . I hope I don’t make so many mistakes while I do this that she stays all “calm-chompy.”

I guess it’s better than the poor puppy the ranch has. We were sorting sheep so I tied him to the pen to help keep them up against the pen but he has NO presence and they just squashed him while he stayed quiet.  I put him on the sheep before I got started with Rippa and he vaguely did stuff but was more worried about his friend. Six months old . . . we’ll give him some more time to grow up. Again, it would be nice if we had sheep that came to us . . .

I’m glad I shot some video, though. It helps me see that at times when it looks like BAD THINGS are happening, it’s really not that bad. I don’t love how she hangs on sometimes, but I do see that every time she does it, it’s not unprovoked. I just need her to learn that diving in won’t help, but getting out probably will.

But what I worry about now is that she is just getting trained to work them on the fence. I know lots of people do this, but if the end goal is to bring in all 120 sheep from the hillside and do trialing tasks like center pen and chute, I need to figure out a way to get the sheep off the fence. Part of me wonders if I should just send her and hope for the best, but I’m torn between letting her be a wool puller and getting them off the fence. I feel like the former is something I want fixed before I’m ready to trust her, especially since they aren’t my sheep.

Again, the things lessons don’t prepare you for.

Anyway, I won’t be back for a bit because it’s grape harvest time and the ranch needs all hands on deck for that for a while – it takes about four guys to herd the sheep into the pen from as far as a half mile – and it’s nice of them to do that, but it’s a drain on the resources. Nathan says he’s decided we have to figure out a way to keep a couple separate, so if he does, that should make life easier on everyone.

At the end of the lesson, I let a much calmer Fury walk the sheep back over the ridge to their friends. She was VERY excited about this job, so I figure it felt like she was doing something, even if all we were doing was walking behind them with her on a leash. You gotta get your kicks somewhere.

It gets real.

Bringing in the sheep, and guardian dog. You can see Fury looking out the other way. They go nutzo for cattle in the car, but sheep, not so much.

So today, they were a little behind because I guess the sheep had wandered a mile away, but with the help of four ranch hands, we were able to get the sheep into the arena and the dog out. I really need to brush up on my Spanish. It’s really annoying because I am semi-fluent but I second guess myself so while my accent is nice and I likely “know” the word, it doesn’t come easily. It’s a nice excuse to work on it, though. I love languages.

Here’s a photo of the crest of the hill I drop into to get to the sheep.

Anyway, so more of the same. I have totally sprained my ankle from last week and have been babying it, except when working sheep. This is stupid because while it’s not so bad when I do stuff, it’s currently throbbing as I type this. Oooops.

My big take away from that I need to get a longer line. I’m starting to understand why a lot of people start and recommend line work – they don’t have cushy sheep like Kathy has trained. Both dogs are pretty good if I am having them just move them around the perimeter.

Basically,what I did was take a group of ewes and lambs and just down the dogs there for a while while I worked on their fear of me. Rippa got pretty calm and bored.

In a couple seconds after I took this (and my camera died), one of the lambs went right up to Rippa and I stopped it before she was tempted to do anything. But yeah.

I started trying to do half moons but I think the sheer amount of sheep I had in there (with lambs) was too much so I kicked all but six sheep out (and a couple lambs remained, but it’s really, really hard to sort mamas and babies) and went back to just calming exercises as the sheep got weird because the herd had thinned.

I did a lot of walking up on the sheep and “there’s” while trying to teach Rippa her flanking commands (“way to” and “go by”) and reinforcing what “out” means (out from the stock). The problem I’m seeing with this is right now I think Rippa kind of thinks “out” means “get back” – which is when you turn away from the sheep and go in the other direction – because I can’t get her “out” to the fenceline without physically pushing her.

I took Rips off lead and did some half moon work, but one of the sheep invariably spazzes and it all goes to heck quickly. Though, felicitations – I have a good down on her again!

So, back on leash and I figured out I could pretty much do half moons and keep everything in control by keeping her on leash – so that when she was tempted to dive in, she’d just hit the end of the leash and get a solid correction.

The other nice thing about this process is Rippa doesn’t resent it. I have figured out that basically, unlike her mother who is just game to try stuff, Rippa is cautious. If she doesn’t get it, she is mad. But when she understands what she’s doing, she’s a lot happier. I think she understands that I want her to balance up and what not, and when I tell her she is good, she is pretty excited about it.

We had this one ewe with a young lamb who would not stay with the herd. She was a follower sheep so invariably she’d get in the dogs’ radar as I walked them around the arena. Any pressure and she’d turn and face them. A couple times I let the dogs give her a correction, but I also know that she’s basically trying to protect her lamb and that if the dog just stood its ground or gave space, she’d move sometimes, so we had to balance correction when she didn’t move with moving. This blew my poor dogs’ brains because they were very happy to accept the challenge. This, however, kind of undid the “calm collected walk up” stuff I was working on for a bit and stressed the sheep out.

Anyway, Fury is just overly stoked, while Rippa, having not developed terribly bad habits, is settling down nicely. She’s comfortable just standing and watching the sheep when they get on the fence and stay there,  but she is definitely stoked when they break away. I really wish I could get her between the fence and the sheep and we could start  trying to fetch, but the sheep do not get to come to me, and Rippa will get overly excited and undo “sheep” trust, so just gotta take time at this. I just hope that my half moons and leash training exercises aren’t crutching her in some way.

Was out there for a  good hour and a half, downing dogs and throwing stones out of the ring when Nathan came to show me the slaughtering.

When I showed up, he was like, “We’re killing cows today!” Now, you may not know this, but it’s not really legal to kill your own livestock. You usually have to ship them to a slaughterhouse, so I think he’s joking. “Nope, we have our own mobile unit!”

So, being an animal science major in another life, this I gotta see. He takes off for a while, and I figure I will hear the cattle lowing and screaming, but I don’t.
Now that I am done with the dogs, we head up the hill a bit and I come to your standard cattle sorting pen, only there’s this truck and a woman in a government vehicle hanging out.

I park the car and come see, and there are two guys, one taking off what looks like fireman turnouts, the other with a big plastic apron with various implements sticking out of the pockets. These guys are kind of funny, with a  rapport like the Mythbuster guys, only butchers. “Wait’ll you see our reality show next month! Which one of you wants to meet the baby cow Jesus?” When your business is killing, I imagine you have to find some humor in it.

There are two yearlings in the pen, and three dead cows in the truck. Basically, they get them in the squeeze chute, slit their throats, and then haul them into the truck to eviscerate and start butchering them. They’ve got a hose and a hole in the truck that goes into a drain in the ground.

Thoughts:

1 – this is awesome. I have never seen such low stress killing. The cows aren’t stressed at all from moment to moment.

2.  - Holy crap, cows’ stomachs look bigger than they are when they are out of the cow.

3.  - Nathan points out that the muscle is still twitching on one of the cow’s haunches even though it is more “slab of beef” at this point than cow.

Once they slaughter it, Elaine the USDA inspector, does her thing (and tells me how much better this is than working on the line at Harris Ranch), and they push it into a freeze at the front of the truck. It’s pretty fricking amazing. Ya’ll should totally patronize this ranch. Talk about the right way to raise beef. The same thing will happen with my sheep, as well.

And then it was time to go. But first, the dogs took a dip in the lake.

Day Two at Adeliada

It’s 5:45 and I am just home from five days in the wilderness on the top of a rock. I’m burrowing through my dresser in the dark because even though Bandy is interested in going, I am quite sure he’s not getting up. Tape up my sprained ankle and the pets and I are out the door. Gotta get up early in 100+ heat to do anything.

The drive is awesome so I took a ton of photos to show you.

I loved the pink cast on the hills as the sun rose.

These oak arches are awesome, too.

And so we arrive. You go up and up and up this super steep, forested road, and it opens up to a hillside full of vines, and you roll on down to this field. Nathan has all the sheep in the pen at once because we talked about how to make them used to stuff and I said he ought to just put them all in there and I'll teach them to sort themselves out. So there’s my set up. I tied the dogs to the fence along the back of the pen there to do the sorting.

Just one problem:

Hi, Mia. Mia is their livestock guardian and she doesn’t mind me so much as the dogs tied to the fence and I wonder how that’s going to go. She’s timid with me and also sheep colored, so trying to sort her out was pretty rough. Happily, Nathan came by and all was well because he helped get her out for the rest of the sorting. He stayed with me the whole time, which was actually nice feeling because I didn’t have to worry about how he was feeling about what I was doing. He settled up next to Fury, who sat in his lap and played with the puppy they’d acquired. When she wasn’t squeaking incessantly.

“She’s pretty little!” he comments. Which reminds me about how Shannon had come over last time and just kept exclaiming how small she was. I guess I forget how small she is until she surprises someone. We joke that she’s a “micro” but the shock they both had was funny.

And then we got to business. I had about ten sheep in there with lambs, brought Rippa in and just had her lay down until she and the sheep relaxed. Then I put her on leash and let her walk up on them, and when there was too much pressure, told her “out,” which she did. Then I walked the sheep around the pen . . . which worked pretty well. They stopped spazzing and took the direction, with Rippa covering pretty well, but not stoked about getting on the fenceline.

One ewe kept turning back and charging her, which kept her attention pretty well as she feinted and barked at her. This happened with I let Rippa put too much pressure on her, but it was really neat to watch her kind of understand that and (in contrast to Fury, below) see her bark and snarl but back up to give the sheep space to turn back.

I was pretty happy about how she balanced herself in their flight zone and I could see that this method was teaching her to get out when the pressure was on, so it seems to be a good exercise for now.

Then, when everyone seemed pretty settled, I did some “out” half moons with her, but one of the sheep spazzed and made a break for it, and Rippa lost control, meaning I lost control and there was some yelling and chasing but when I got it together to lay her down, she took it, and Nathan remarked (after I’d fallen over in the ruckus) that maybe we should astroturf the arena. And then he was like, “The videos I watched all look like that. Guess that’s the dues you have to pay.” So I was feeling better about not having perfect dogs in the ring.

So, more leash work and we try the “out” half moon again, and this time she’s good and out so I lay her down and pet her and Nathan likes that. One more time, then more walking around and downing, and it’s Fury’s turn.

I figured that I might as well use Fury like this, too. She is SO into the sheep from being off them for so long, it’s like having a year old dog again. She remembers her commands nicely, but when she feels pressure from the sheep, she’ll gleefully shoot straight at them instead of giving them room. Because of this, I did the exact same thing with her as I did with Rippa. I wanted both dogs because then the sheep would learn more general “dog” rather than get used to Rippa and freak when they put their BC cross on them. Plus, Fury is way scarier in posture and power than Rippa is.

There’s Fury being polite and waiting for me to allow her to move the sheep, with Shannon and Nathan discussing life in the background.

I even shot a little video  of Fury when I knew I wouldn’t be in real trouble and need that hand.

So, you can see that Fury’s not being pretty here, but you get what I’m doing, I think. By the end she was wearing a little and getting them into the middle and no bum-rushing. So, this exercise might be good for here, too. I knew, at the end of the video there, that I shouldn’t have said “out” that last time, but we all make mistakes.

Unfortunately, a few moments later, the ornery sheep turned around and got her good on the head so I let her punish her, but then Fury was kind of over it all after that – I mean, she’s on leash, I’m not letting her do what she thinks she needs to be doing, and sheep are ramming her head. I made her do a couple more laps but she was more than ready for a “that’ll do.” No harm, no foul, but maybe she’ll start learning that rushing the sheep when she gets in their flight zone has consequences, and it coming from the sheep’s not a bad idea.

Back on Thursday. Gotta put the work in to get these sheep ready for the puppy and my dogs mellow enough to be working them right.

The ranch workers herd the flock past the car as I’m ready to head home.

Going Back In . . .

So tomorrow we return to the sheep. Nathan is doing his best to accommodate me, but we have a long road to go to get his sheep ready for his puppy to train on.

When I last left you, I was pretty worried that I was going to mess up my dogs without some experienced guidance, but a couple friends read this post (including the one that inspired me to try craigslist to find stock opportunities, Selena) and gave me some useful advice.

Basically, I am feeling a  lot better about doing things wrong. I do kind of get what I’m trying to do now and hearing what they had to say was useful. I wanted to write it down before I go back in tomorrow.

First order of business, though, is a new stock stick. The bamboo poles at Kathy’s are apparently super strong because mine break randomly all the time. I’m going to just bring a pole and wrap a rag on the end of it and see how it goes. When I was working Rippa last time, the stick broke and I just used my body, but eventually everyone needs to respect the stick so I need something . . .

Anyway .. . here’s the game plan tomorrow.

1. Patience. Nathan was talking about sorting a bunch of sheep and trailering them to a different holding area so I’d have sheep tamed up faster, but what a lot of work, so we are planning on working whatever random sheep the workers can get in there (sans lambs) and it just taking a while.

2. Remembering why I am doing this – having access to these sheep is no substitute for Kathy’s tutelage when available. It’s there to put miles on the dogs and to calm them down. Normally a ranch dog is not going to be super charged up when it sees stock because it sees them all the time. My dogs work the sheep for all of ten minutes before they’re put up, generally, and so self control and excitement is what I need them to learn. In trialling, you don’t have time to “warm them up.” This is supposed to help them calm down. I think I forgot that a bit and had visions of me taking them out of the pen calmly and walking the 1400 acre ranch and vineyard that day. Nope.

3. Learning to manage the sheep better. There were some handling mistakes that we all made that I should have known better on just the sheep equation that in hindsight if  I just had more practice and experience with them, I would not have done as second nature. I just got a flock of chickens for my backyard and even though I took a couple classes in poultry management in college, it’s no substitute for having them day in and day out and learning what makes them tick to create low stress handling environments, which is what I want to do here.

So, tomorrow the game plan is pretty simple – more of the same. Only I’ll probably bring a stake and tie Fury out because, as Selena reminded me, Fury needs it as well and I can probably start working her again if she can dial back the enthusiasm.

There will be some chill down exercises in the arena, call offs, there will be some half moons, working on Rippa’s reliable down, and there will be some leash stuff for now. I gotta keep at it. I have to teach the sheep that the best thing is to come to me – get that flight zone to me a lot smaller, and also teach them that they won’t die if she gets in close. I’m going to do everything I can to minimize sheepy panic.

I figure I have about an hour out there before it gets too hot (104 tomorrow), so we’ll see how it pans out.

“Venga las ovejas alli, por favor!”

So today at 5:45, I got up and drove up to Adeliada (kind of west Templeton) with the sun at my back and a very stoked Rippa bear squeaking on the highway. Getting up early is adventure time!

I made it to the ranch at 7 am sharp, though the confounded automatic door got me yet again  . . . I have to remember to ask them how it works. I don’t see anything that detects the truck, maybe it’s a magnet that’s buried. I feel so stupid about that automatic gate. :P

Anyway, as I crested the hill, I saw that Nathan and two ranch hands had gotten some sheep in a lovely round pen out in the field. “You did it for me!” “Yeah, no worries!”

The ranch owner was there with Arrow, his new six month old BC/ACD cross, that he’d just gotten the day before so he wanted time for the dog to settle in before he got on the sheep so it was just a day for me and the dogs to give it a go.

I brought both Fury and Rippa with me because I didn’t know who might be stronger at my job of dog breaking the sheep. First up, I brought Rips out on an eight foot leash because I figured we’d be going very much backwards here and her down is so bad these days on stock I wasn’t going to leave it to chance.

But there were a couple ewes just hanging out outside the pen and it wasn’t going to work well with them as a draw so I told Nathan we should get them in the pen.

Long story short, we got ALL the sheep outside the pen, and after running up a hill trying to herd them back, we decided, in the words of Kathy, to bring the many to the one. Nathan asks if I can’t just send Fury out to get them (because she can do outruns) but I was thinking that was a big risk for so little return. He must think I’m funny with my nearly ten year old dog that I won’t use but this is my hobby. I put Rippa back in the car because she’s a little too amped and I need her to calm down.

The ranch hands set with us to herding all the sheep across the field and into the pen, which was problematic because what I really wanted to do was sort out some leadersheep and train them up, but if they were all in the pen, then we’d get follower sheep. It was pretty funny, all of us whistling and waving, trying to get the sheep. I’m also on the lookout for a lamb that lost its mother last night (which, incidentally, I totally did find in the flock).

And then Nathan had to go keep working, so it was me and these two friendly guys who spoke  mostly Spanish. Now, I speak some Spanish, but I’m definitely not fluent. They get what I’m trying to do, mostly, but it’s broken as we try to communicate what I need.

I basically tried to tell them that out of the hundreds of sheep, I just needed six or seven, but no lamb and mom pairs. One of the guys, I should have asked their names, was in the pen with me, pushing the sheep and I opened up the gate to lure them in and sorted out sheep until there were about thirty left, with lambs.

Now, how am I supposed to say I want leader sheep.

“Neccesito seis or siete ovejas, pero las primeras ovejas.” I need six or seven sheep, but the first sheep.

He is like, “What?” So I look into the sky and wonder how to phrase this with my limited vocabulary. “La lina? The line?” I don’t think that’s the right word.

“Ok, quiero uno, dos, tres, quatro . . . porque las primeras ovejas son mas facil para pastor.” Because the first sheep are more easy to herd. Except “pastor” is not a verb, but it means shepherd, so he got it.

In the end, I had my six or seven sheep, minus one little lamb that the guys managed to get out for me. Now it was time to do dog things.

In all this hubbub, I’d quickly figured out that the sheep were pretty light, as I expected. They did not like me in the pen, and they did not like the dogs. So I thought, since Fury is older and wiser and generally under better command control, I would try her.

Bad idea.

Fury hasn’t been on livestock in like three and a half years, unless you count chicken herding, and she shivers in excitement when she does that. She is just too much dog and too much enthusiasm and I end up chasing her around the round pen yelling at her to get out and lay down and it’s a bit chaotic. The head grape gal comes over and genially remarks when I explain why it’s not going so well that she’s rusty. I give up and decide Rippa is a better choice.

So I go back and get Rippa and I’m standing in the pen, thinking. This is not going to be for training Rippa, exactly, I know this. But how do I get the sheep to understand that I am safe and what to do about the dog?

I’m woefully underprepared. I think I should have known better than to bring Fury out and I’ve scared the sheep again. Now here’s an even greener dog. . .

Rippa is pretty amped so I try leaving her on a down and just moving around the sheep. There’s a lot of replacement of her, but she gets it. I wonder what Kathy would have me do in this scenario.

So then I decide that my best tactic is to half-moon the sheep against the fence. Basically, keep the dog off them, but allow her to control them as she goes from side to side, with the fence holding the sheep. Today is not the day to get on the other side of the sheep, though I did try that at first – which resulted in dogs running around the ring getting mashed by scared sheep who don’t know what to do – so, lesson learned. So, that’s the plan – half-moons. Plus, it’s a nice drill of training Rippa what “out” means (not tear around the other side of the sheep while I yell out – she’s lost a lot of her respect for sheep, I fear, since last time she was in the round pen – and they are pretty light so that fires her up, too) and working on her down while showing her and the sheep that I help take pressure off.

It works pretty well. Every once in a while a sheep makes a break for it and there’s a desperate chase of me chasing Rippa to get it back under control, and there’s a knock into the fence, but not so bad – for what I’m working with. I’ve got to where Rippa is getting out and not fighting me anymore and as much as I’d like to reward her with some sheep work, I can’t.

I wonder about this. Rippa gets kind of bitchy when you drill her but she seemed pretty tractable. I praised her a lot the further “out” she got when I asked for it and I think she was pretty much okay with being told she was good that she decided to stop taking control.

Then, finally, the sheep were pretty calm. I put Rippa on a leash but was not quite ready to go. I didn’t want Rippa thinking she needed to regulate to me, I want her to learn to regulate to the sheep . . . and I’d just spent a lot of time running at her and protecting the sheep – pushing her back out. So, I told her to walk up and she did a nice job of stopping when the sheep started thinking of leaving. I told her “out” and she did an awesome job of getting away from the sheep. So, drillwork achieved and she wasn’t bitchy at all.

I think it’s going to be a lot of work to get the sheep calm enough for me to let Rippa fetch to me, and that puppy of Adelaida Springs Ranch will probably get going faster than we do because it will be a little more tentative than she is about the whole thing, but all in all I think it went okay.  I just don’t know how, with this method of sheep, I’ll dog break them, unless I just slowly dog break the whole flock. Hopefully Nathan will have some insight.

I do know the leash work isn’t something I would expect Kathy to approve of – she wants the dog to learn to do that on their own, I never see her do on-leash training as some people have recommended to me – but I just needed to give Rippa the sheep somehow as a reward and also make sure I didn’t terrorize the sheep by opening us up to some mistakes.

I really wish I had more confidence for this kind of stuff. I know how badly I broke Fury and I know that my sense for these things is better than it once was, but I haven’t worked without the tutelage of Kathy overseeing everything. I left kind of wishing Nathan had returned so I could discuss some of these things with him, but I couldn’t find him. I left a message on his voicemail and hopefully all will be well.

I head back to the truck, the sheep still in the pen and smile at the ranch worker, “El fin! Neccesita ayuda con las ovejas?” Need help with the sheep? Nah, he smiles. I try to ask him where Nathan is, and he doesn’t know. “You want me to get him here?” No, it’s okay . . .

And I’m driving home, very tired from a nervous, restless sleep the night before, and wondering if I'm cut out for this stuff. Kathy is otherwise occupied with her own life (and the arrival of a grandchild) so I don’t really want to pester her right now. I get a vibe from her that maybe I just need to do these things and stop being afraid of leaping out of the nest. Hopefully there will be lessons soon and we can see what damage I am doing (if any) and stop it before it gets to be bad habits like what happened with me and Fury.

How some of you do this with no mentor giving you lessons on dog broke sheep is beyond me!

Adios!

New Chapter on the Sheep Front

Well, I haven’t been very active lately. Kathy’s been on vacation welcoming her first grandchild, it’s hot, and money’s tight. So tight that my idea to get my own space and own sheep really stopped being an option – and really, when the idea dissipates that quickly, I very obviously wasn’t in a position to do it, so that’s good we didn’t get it going.

So, I kept putting ads out on craigslist. There’s plenty of livestock here, but not a ton of takers, and when they are, the facility or the stock just isn’t right. If I were a badass and my dog was a WTCh, maybe, but we’re just in our infancy of training still so I need to be realistic.

And then Nathan emailed me. Not getting overly excited because I know how this goes, I call him up last night and he’s got the whole thing worked out – the ranch owner is on board with doing this, and he basically is ready to “trade my boots for Nikes” with all the running he does  trying to manage the sheep as they wander around the hillside of the ranch/vineyard he manages.

It is a pretty good deal for us both. They want to get a dog and learn how to use it to make their life easier, and in exchange for helping them with that outcome, I get to work their sheep. I made no airs about my skill level and told him straight up that if he wants to start a puppy, it’s not me to do it, we’ll have to take the puppy to lessons. No problem with that. Nathan seems realistic about everything and earnest.

So, this morning, I pack up the truck with all my stockdog books and videos for him to check out, and head out to Adelaida Springs Ranch. It’s not a hop, skip and a jump from SLO, but it’s about the same distance as Kathy is to me – 45 minute drive, and the drive is every bit as pretty – rolling oaks, walnut orchards, lavender lined vineyard, and windy roads.

I drove right on past the turn the first time, but I like it. “Rangeland wines” and “cattle on road” – I really love living where I do. It’s urban and rural at the same time. It’s real – and it was great driving down a road I’d never been, past a Mennonite(?!) Cemetery and so many tasting rooms.

I get up to the ranch and Nathan has told me it’s an automatic gate, but I’ve got no idea how to trigger it and Laird, the owner, has to drive up his truck to manage it. It’s embarrassing. I am still not sure how I’ll activate it on the way back in when I return.

And I follow them down a hillside and I see the sheep opposite the hilly vineyard – a Pyr barking at me . . . so that’s how they’re doing okay out here.

I meet the owner of the property, Nathan – of course, and Shannon – the winemaker. We all stand around talking about what they need and how to make it work. Merits of BCs vs Aussies and what I can and cannot do for them.

They don’t have pens set up for me, but we talk about what to do to make it work. I’d posted on Aussie Stockdog on Facebook about how I’m supposed to make it work like this and the suggestion of just sorting off some leader sheep and breaking them in made a lot of sense so we’ve figured out that for now, we’ll just set up a little round pen off the electric fence on the flat in this photo:

I’ll sort the leadersheep into the pen and see how it goes. I was reviewing Rippa’s “progress” last night on this blog and my pride in her down has totally evaporated so maybe some round pen work to take care of that is what the doctor ordered anyway. Laird and Nathan think the sheep are pretty calm for dogs anyway – his old cattle dog mix gets in there and they don’t mind too much, and of course there’s the two guardian dogs. So we’ll see. Maybe if they’re good, all I need is the round pen to sort sheep and we can do walk abouts in the field. I figured if it’s not good enough, investing in panels that Nathan’s game to build out when needed is a safe bet compared to sheep and property. . .

So anyway, an interesting turn, as we’re talking, I find that both of them like Aussies more than BCs anyway so, being me, I was like, “That I can definitely help you with.” Reiterating that I’m not the person to start the dog, I’ll have to take it to lessons first, they’re game, but it’s a lot of time lost on the ranch, so essentially I’m going to help them pick a nice dog to work their sheep and cattle and then get to start it for them, along with my own dogs. Heaven, and a lot of driving. But that never stopped me.

So, looking pretty great. And I was thinking it would be a few months because they need to get their own dog, but Nathan’s game to start next week, just up to me . . . so here goes nothing.

And in the meantime, if you know someone with an Aussie or Aussie/BC cross (Laird likes hybrids a lot, they’re less “knuckleheaded” is how he put it) that’s older and can be useful pretty quick at outruns and gathers with a big flock of sheep, let me know.

Humble pie for three, please.

So, I have still been looking for opportunities to work Rippa (and Fury, too). Unfortunately, I think “my own sheep” just fell apart with some unforeseen business failures, but there are many opportunities to explore. Thank God for living in a rural area . . .

So I have been working on a 14,000 acre ranch, and kept seeing these sheep everywhere and they recently put them on a reservoir to mow the grass down. I had given up on trying to use the cattle and sheep on the ranch because I am pretty sure the cattlemaster just thinks I’m a yahoo, but the owner of the ranch told me the other day that I could work the sheep on the ranch so long as I don’t run them into the fence. Deal!

So yesterday, I had an opportunity to do just that. My last episode with the gal with the goats and the cows had me break ALL my stock sticks in brush and what not, so I got a long plastic pipe and headed out to the reservoir.

I should describe the layout of this reservoir. It’s artificial, and on the north end is a pump system, along with some flat areas that go along it, but it’s got big elevation with a road that goes around it. This is not really the spot to teach outruns or anything, but I figured if I can start the stock on the fence, I can get Rippa to pick them up and walk them along the road or at the flat that goes around the reservoir. Here’s a photo of the spot so you can kinda see what I’ve got to work with. This is a reporter telling me he approves of an obstacle we set up for a mud run there. It’s still there. Yup. That wood is milled from downed oaks on the ranch.

Anyway, so my huz and I pull up with the dogs in the truck and the goats and sheep (there’s both – maybe six Barbados sheep and a bunch of black horned goats of some persuasion) are up in the pump area. They see us (just me and the huz) get out and take off. I get Rippa out of the truck and my pipe and we go up on the road and look for them.

And look for them.

Finally, I see huzzy pull his truck out of the gate and it’s spooked the stock up onto the road, too. These are LIGHT stock.

Okay, so I keep walking, hoping to corner them somehow. They all spread out along the fence and at this point, knowing Rippa has a tendency to group, decide that I really have no choice but to see if I can get her to stop them.

And she does, sort of. But the Barbados were in the lead and while the goats are there with me, they are escaping. And Rippa, who cannot handle such things, takes off, totally ignoring me yelling at her to cease and desist.

By the time I decide that this situation is not in control (.5 seconds), I start back up on the road, leaving my nice herd of 20 goats, and running all the way around this 5 acre reservoir, while I hear Rippa periodically barking and see a couple sheep pop up from the fence and then not. Oh, and there she goes.

When I get to where everyone has ended up, I am righteous mad, but somewhat impressed. Somehow she has got them all in a group in the shade on a flat area (despite them all spreading out when she went hells bells on them) and is just entertaining herself by moving them around and letting them split off and putting them back together. She’s heeling them lightly and the sheep are more annoyed than anything.

But I am REALLY annoyed, both at myself and at the dog for not coming when calling so I toss my stick at her to get her to stop, grab her, and . . . hey yah, what’s this? A truck goes rolling by. Oh man, I am in SO MUCH TROUBLE. I mean, she didn’t run them into the fence, but I was so clearly not in charge here.

Anyway, but the time we regroup, the sheep are gone so I work on Rippa’s obedience and head toward the gate (and toward the work we really came to do, taking apart epic obstacles from an event a month ago). The sheep and goats have all conveniently squared themselves up in the gate, which is a pretty ideal place to set up a fetch, so I lay Rippa down and work on getting in between her and the stock. I get maybe 100 feet and they go from mild interest to full blown panicked running down the fence line and I know I’m done. Get Rippa back and call it a day. Them’s some light sheep.

As I’m walking back to the pond where my husband is, I’m just kicking myself. I need some heavy sheep until I can get a good outrun on Rippa – if I could send her and know she’d stay out from them, I could fetch, but I can’t send her yet. And if I’d had Fury, she could have done that, but being that she’s been off stock for over three years, and she lately is the naughty one that hassles cows on runs, I don’t trust her to do a decent fetch.

So then my thought is this – what an idiot am I that I think I have any idea what I’m doing? Yeah, it’s all well and good when you’re in an environment like Kathy’s with carefully managed sheep and spaces, but actually trying to let my dog do what she was meant to do? Sheep ranchers probably didn’t train in the same situations I do now. What a tourist. What a yahoo. The cattlemaster is right.

I feel like I’m missing a huge opportunity to really learn how to train with these sheep and this situation – if I can get it under control, I have FOURTEEN THOUSAND ACRES to do training in. But noooooooo . . . I can’t even get them fetching or call my dog in.

It reminds me of a time when Kathy told me to send Fury to bring in all her sheep and I was terrorized that it wasn’t all clean and pretty. “Trust your dog” she said . . . and I wonder what would have happened if I had done that with Rippa – would I undo what I’m trying to do, or would her instincts kick in with a herd that big after she settled down and would she do “good enough work” and learn something?

I am just so scared of doing it wrong and ruining the opportunities that people present me with by disrespecting their animals that I don’t want to take a chance with it.  Much less creating a situation like I did with Fury. Back in the day, before I know what I know now, I sent Fury into situations just like that and she DID do fine – got sheep out of brush and out of hillsides, maybe not pretty, but she did it.  But I also broke her pretty badly, so I don’t know what’s right to do here.

That’s why I’m back to thinking I need my own sheep . . . because then at least they’re mine and I won’t be constantly worried about messing it all up. Too bad my work situation is not looking very promising for that.

Visit to the Santa Maria Ranch

So, today started out pretty rocky, and I was a half hour late to my appointment to meet my new friend, B. (I am going to hid her name as while I may put myself out there, I don’t think it’s good to put other people out there without their permission.)

It’s an hour drive from where I live. Exit the highway, head east into the hills and I’m driving through some amazing canyon terrain. Part of me wonders if I’ve over shot it, but I know enough about homesteads by now to keep going anyway. The road gives way to dirt, which gives way to sweet river crossings that my 20-year old 4-Runner eats up while squealing in glee the entire way.

We get to the gate and there B is with her three adorable, patient, and precocious young children. We met on the Internet after I posted desire to work livestock. Today was a discovery for both of us, but I had a feeling I’d like her – that she was my people.

And, I turned out to be right. As we pull up to her main area and the kids unload and some seriously beautiful cattle dogs come up to say hello, we kind of get an eager feel for eachother and I tell her my story and she tells me hers. She’s hoping that I can use her stock and in turn help her learn how to teach her cattle dog to fetch and take flank commands.

I tell her I would really like to see her work with her dog first (this was Kathy’s advice) and she was really adamant that her dogs just do chores and it’s nothing to see, so we and the kids and her blue dog walk out to the hill/pasture and take a gander.

She’s got about 40 kids and goats and some mixed sheep in there and we talk about the plan. I tell her probably the goats are the best bet as she is worried that if the sheep get worried they’ll take off and not come home, whereas the goats stay calm. Sounds good.

Problem is, there’s no pen. It’s just an open field on a hill with chaparral-covered hills beyond it, a road lined with deer—proof fence, her, her dog, her kids and me and Rippa. I took Fury along for the ride but told her that Fury wasn’t going to be put out on the sheep – I just wanted her to have a nice car ride.

SHe’s like, “Can you just send her to gather them up?”

Nope. Not good enough for that yet.

“Well, maybe you can just get one part of the two herds?”

Okay, so we try that. I’m kind of wondering what’s gonna happen with the other herd that’s only 100 feet away, but Rippa has managed to stay focused working sheep while cows stood around, so maybe . . . The two herds separate, and I lay Rips down, get between her and the goats and tell her to get around. Not so nice. There’s too many, they’re not condensing into a group, and I can’t help her get out with my stick so the first thing she does is heel one of the bigger goats. I call her off and stop and think for a minute as everybody moves further up the hill.

B notes it’s funny, as that’s the goat her dogs always bite too, so I figure there’s a reason, but it still wasn’t very controlled and I wasn’t going to let crazy happen.

“You think your other dog can do it?”

Fury is pretty good at the outrun, but again, two years off. I am not going to risk it today. New plan.

So we’re standing on the hill with B down below kind of following us as I try to get the goats back into a herd and stalled. No such luck. They divide into two groups and I yell that I’m going to try to get them to her deer fence and see if that works.  Rippa, for her part, does a lovely job of driving them pretty calmly as I remind her to “wait.” But I put her down to push them back down the hill. They go laterally to the fence so I leave her there (again, goooooood dog) and try to push myself.  Even 100 meters out from Rippa, and 100 meters out from me, the goats won’t stall so I can get them set up. B notes they probably want to regroup with the rest of the herd, and she’s probably right and, with memories of messing Fury up by trying to make this workable, I tell I can’t work the sheep.

”Cows?” she suggests.

I wasn’t expecting that, but any exposure Rippa can get to cows is good by me.

She keeps three cattle. A bull and two cows that are beef breeds, but she milks.  We let Fury out of the truck along with her dogs and we all ride up in the mule with the dogs following us (she points out this takes the edge off them if they’re tired, which is a great idea).

When we get there, they’re up in the top of a hill in chaparral, no pens, so I figure I’ll call it good if I can get them moving a little and fetching along the road. If nothing else, some “legal” exposure for Rippa seems like a good idea. I do have the ability to call her off.

B settles in with the kids in the shade and just lets me go to it. She’s so mellow. She keeps yelling encouragement while I feel like a crazy yokel on her goats and saying it’s good for the dog and such. Sometimes you need to run into someone like that. I am all worried that I’m going to piss off these people and she’s as chill as it comes.

Anyway, I tie up Fury and let Rippa off and ask her to get around. These cows are pretty used to people and dogs and she goes up to them and they just look at her. I don’t have to worry about her heading – she’s standing there, trying to turn them, and they’re like, “Uhhhhh, nah.” She won’t hit their polls and she doesn’t really want to get behind them so it’s just a lot of snarling and waiting for something to happen, so I call her off and think this is a situation where Fury might get a little more respect first, even though she hasn’t been formally worked in a few years.

Tie Rippa up, let Fury off. Fury quickly gets behind them, but they turn around on her and go, “Yeahhhh, we’re not moving.” If I had a camera, I would have had some GOREGEOUS stand off photos of Fury and the cattle, but neither one was giving. She’s trying to move them – she barks, moves in, and they just move back at her. She doesn’t want to hit their heads but I’m going, “Ssssssss-skit” and she moves in but won’t bite. I remember Kathy telling me that she’s so small, she better make a big show to get their respect or she’s getting trampled so I go, “KILL IT” (which is sort of her command to go hog wild on a stuffed toy) hoping maybe that extra bit would motivate a bite, but she just stands her ground. I think maybe I have too much pressure on the cows and back up, but nothing. Finally they do give, and they head straight into the chaparral. Crap. Now I’ve lost the cows.

I think, well, maybe I can at least get them back on the road so I can ask B what she does with her dogs but they get so into it that I can’t do anything. I go down the hill a bit and tell Fury to get around, which she does, but again, she’s not moving the cattle. I try to physically help her by pushing them myself, and they just ignore me, too.

I was thinking maybe they were just too used to people and dogs and as I write this, I am more convinced that’s the issue.  If they were range cattle, which is what I’m used to working, they would have been a lot more easy to move off of both Fury and I. Driving home, I kept thinking, “Man, I really am a yokel if I can’t move cows with my dogs after all this time,” but, and correct me if I’m wrong, if B has got her cattle dogs on them, and they aren’t really trained so much but bite them pretty liberaly when needed, and she comes out and milks them, they probably don’t care about me or my dogs: my little dogs trying to use finesse really are going to fail, and me helping won’t matter. I can walk right up to them and pet them.

So, I bail and call Fury off and we go off to find B and her kids, who are still just chilling under a tree. I apologize for looking like a yahoo and she says didn’t expect much but I have control over both dogs and that’s way more than most people. We talk a little about her dogs and her friend that wants to sell her a kelpie and how she really does want to get back into trialing. I feel a little more confident in our relationship now and offer that she probably needs pens to be able to get control on both her dogs (and mine) before trying to do stuff like this and she agrees. We head back down to my car and her home.

So . . . yeah, that’s not going to work out. But B was really cool and it was neat to meet a kindred spirit my age trying to make the ranch life work. My dogs and her dogs got along fabulously, and my dogs even liked her kids. She’s good people and I hope that with me getting my own sheep and maybe her building up pens, we can kind of work this out together. It would be nice to have dog friend like her.

And, as icing to this story of Epic Fail, as I’m saying goodbye, Fury and Rippa are trucking around with the other dogs, looking at the ducks and the chickens and then Fury finds a kid (baby goat) out somewhere random away from the herd and  . . . I don’t know what she was trying to do to it – stop it? Treat it like a puppy? Chase it? But basically she starts pushing it around with her nose all gentle like, but follows it as it tries to escape, and I call her off and she totally ignores me. It honestly looked like she was trying to clean it and it wouldn’t let her but she was obsessed with achieving this goal. She keeps pushing it down the road as it tries to escape and she’s trying to get her nose in its ear and I’m chasing her and yelling at her and then Rippa comes up and I am like, “Oh geez, this is gonna be bad” but Rippa actually listens when I say to leave it, whereas my usually totally obedient veteran Fury dog is enjoying pushing this poor little kid down the hill. I am screaming my head off and apologizing to B who is like, “It’s okay, she’s not trying to hurt her.” But OMG, dog, STOP DOING THAT AND COME.

Eventually I got her back, but MAN. I looked like a screaming fool. Partly I just was overcompensating because I wanted to be respectful to B and her livestock, but partly, dude, FURY, REALLY? I think she wants a pet pygmy goat.

B, "Don’t worry about it, seriously, I probably sound like that with my kids.”

What a day. I think I need my own sheep. Don’t you? That or, man, I really got to throw in the towel on this one because I have no business doing this.

I probably should have taken one look at the situation and said, “Yeah, my dog can’t handle this yet.” But I’m learning. At least no harm done and B got an amusing diversion to her day.

I keep imagining what it must have been like to watch me crash through the bushes with Fury and the cows screaming at her to GET AROUND! AHH!! COME! WITH ME!! GET AROUND!! AHHHHH! and silence. And here suddenly I am with my broken stock stick and a dog with a big smile on her face. At least Fury got to finally have a sanctioned livestock adventure.

Looks like we’re getting sheep: a whole new adventure.

So I have been really frustrated with my complete inability to get Rippa on livestock more. I’ve put ads on craigslist, and I take lessons when I can, but I don’t have the time even to do as many lessons as are offered. So . . .

As I said, I did put an ad on craigslist and so far nothing has panned out until this week – I met someone who has a small family farm with a large herd of sheep and goats and some cattle that she has worked her three cattle dogs on. She seems really cool and while I am terrified to take my willful little red dog to someone else and use her animals, if anyone is going to be patient with it, it’s someone who owns cattle dogs. So that happens Friday. Apparently I need a four-wheel drive vehicle to get there and it’s a half-hour off the highway so if you don’t hear from me, call the police. Otherwise, a grand adventure.

But anyway, I’ve been kind of jonesing to see this whole thing through the right way and ever since Kathy was supportive of me taking my show on the road, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get access to livestock.

The kicker is that I do a lot of work on this 14,000 acre working cattle ranch. The cattlemaster uses his dogs daily as he does pulse grazing (ie, moves them each day to a small place so the ranch never gets overgrazed), and the owner keeps telling me that the guy would love to work with me, but let’s just say I don’t think he does. He probably thinks I’m a yokel and that’s fine.

So, anyway, I told my husband that for my birthday I wanted sheep. My birthday is in two weeks. Obviously it won’t happen that fast, but he talked to the ranch owner who then said, “You know, I have a 2-acre parcel of land in the middle of town that I have nothing to do with. Fence it and it’s yours.”

So, here it is:

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It’s the lot that’s between the train tracks and H street, flanked by Encina and a park. You can zoom in and get street view of it, too. It looks quite a bit different from this now – this photo is many years old. The trees have grown quite a bit and the field is now a lot of scrub along with grass.  The animal science degree I almost got tells me that if I want this to sustain my little baas, I am going to have to work on making that field a lot nicer, but that’s a fun project since I never got to use any of that stuff I learned in college.

So, anyway, I’ve got to figure out a water system for  the sheep, we’ll have to feed them, and I need to build them a shelter, some pens, and – oh yeah – fence a full two acres to keep kids, dogs, coyotes, etc out.

I was sort of hoping to get  a plot of land actually ON the ranch because I would LOVE to take the little guys for long walks in the hills, but it is just down the road to a gate into the ranch so maybe when the time comes, the owner will let me do that. Anyway, it’s at least a good place to start a flock and work on arena trialing.  It’s also a good place for now because people are all over that and they’re good neighbors. I can make a little sign asking them to call me if there’s trouble and it’s not so much in the huge, expansive ranch where they’ll get eaten. Just today as I was driving out from there, I saw some coyotes hassling the calves, right along the road.

But this is a whole other ball game, and I do know something about keeping sheep, but am looking forward to learning from Kathy how to manage them so they stay ideal for what I need them for. I’ve got some friends already interested in having them graze their land, too, so I think I could probably make it work in my favor and maybe turn that into something as there’s definitely a demand for grazing animals in the area. Anyway, as my husband says, we should just focus on getting them there and living well and come what may.

So . . . end of summer, if all goes right, I will get my own flock. And in the mean time – maybe this gal in the boonies is going to be my new best friend.

Learning to handle better . . . and it starts to click for Rippa, too.

I am two weeks behind in videos and lessons and I’m sorry for those of you who regularly follow this. I took Rippa to classes along with my laptop as requested, and Kathy wanted to show me something in the latest video, which I will show you now:

The key part is at 1:29. See me hitting the ground with the stick? Yeah. Bad me. You'll see me do it over and over again. I think I started doing this when I started moving the stick in front of the sheep to build up my flight zone there. I think I thought I would add pressure if I bopped the ground repeatedly.

But what it really does is take pressure on and off Rippa, when she really either needs it ON or OFF and not this little trick I’m doing here. You’ll see me back off while I’m doing it. This is bad because the dog needs to take pressure from the stick, which is really an extension of me. It’s easy to forget what it’s for and start trying to drive the dog with it (which you’ll see me do a lot later) – but you’re supposed to kind of be the control the dog needs in with the stock. Otherwise, even the best dog is going to do stuff that’s fun, but not necessarily right, if he doesn’t have handler back up.

So the next video up is the two-weeks ago video. I am tempted to axe it and not show you, but I want you to see what different amounts and kinds of sheep will do.

Normally you’ll see me with 4-5 sheep in a lesson, but in this one, Kathy gave me a mix of newbie lambs and established sheep.

What?

It’s a good idea to keep different kinds of sheep on hand. Round pen sheep are heavy – they trust the handler, don’t worry too much about the dog – they’ve been there, done that, and gotten the postcard. You can use these sheep for a long time if you have a dog that isn’t super instinct-driven. These kinds of sheep are really good for training stock sense into a dog. But a dog with a lot of instinct will get bored. You’ll see in earlier movies, Rippa just kind of stops occasionally in the round pen because she doesn’t have much to do – the sheep follow me and stop when I stop.

So, as a dog progresses in stock sense, you put progressively lighter (ie, more scared) sheep in the pen when you train. Though that’s not totally right. It’s really dependent on what you’re trying to do. In the duck pen (where we are), you can’t use REALLY light sheep because the dog and you can’t get far enough away from them to make them comfortable. That’s also why trying to work cows in a small space if they aren’t used to dogs is trouble.

But say we’re out in the arena, just working on Rippa’s fetch – lighter sheep will start happening as she learns to read the sheep more and more and needs less work from me. As she understands her job, we ask more from her. But when we go out back (as we have in camp) or when we start working on the drive, you want calm, “old hat” sheep that won’t make a break for it at the slightest provocation so the dog can rest a little on watching them and take more direction.

So anyway, at this lesson, Kathy had brought down some fresh lambs which weren’t “with the program” yet, and put them with some that were. You’ll see how the sheep respond. The leader sheep (calm ones) will help the spazzy ones figure out how to stay safe and work with people and dogs. We’re “training the sheep.”

This is a pretty ideal way to do it if can. One of these days I’ll talk about how you work sheep that don’t have calm leaders if you want to trial or just give your dog lessons. Generally, just buying some calm sheep and replacing your flock with lambs is just a good call.

Anyway, this video is just to show sheep behavior, not dog training.

So today I went back after a video-less lesson yesterday and remember my most recent post about why I don’t train like “you” for those of you who ask that question? It was pretty sweet – today I got footage of exactly what I’m talking about.

Lesson one: don’t have the waterproof thing on the camera because you can’t hear ANYTHING.

You may be wondering what that yellow string is on Rippa’s collar. Well . . . despite her looking AWESOME when she is actually on the stock right now, when I tell her to down or stay, she just dives in and ruins everything. Same if I walk her off. I am trying to figure out how I caused this, but Kathy says it’s just Rippa testing me to see how things are going to be. So I brought a little “tab” to grab on to for corrections.

Anyway, you can see some good things in this video: how I correct it when she decides to take matters into her own hands (usually this is just testing me), see her getting out and me reinforcing that having an effect, and you’ll see her start balancing the sheep because I’m doing it right and she’s got some self control – which, as I said in the last blog, is why we don’t obedience them – we just keep pushing them out until they keep themselves out without all the nagging. So yay!

I keep trying to get access to other livestock in the meantime to keep building on this, but yeah  . . . no luck.

Unless I can get Rippa to down instantly and stay reliably, we can’t really move on. It’s all well and good, but to teach a good outrun and the drive, we need both. Kathy said as I was leaving that we’re well on our way to fixing it after the session I taped above, and I hope she’s right. It’s frustrating to have a nice little stockdog that won’t STOP. Funny thing is, she’s great off of stock. Guess she just has a lot more drive to do that than do what I want. Keep chipping away at it . .  .