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