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!