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 . . .
