“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!