Pushy Dogs and Chicken Dogs

So, I was out in the yard this afternoon cleaning up the planting beds for spring (I’m a little behind for where I live) and Fury was out with me and the chickens. Every once in a while, I’d watch her, just for fun, move them around the yard. Nice and easy.

Which, you know, is totally the opposite of what she does when I take her to lessons and why I had to retire her and start her daughter instead of continuing her training.

And which is also why I am kind of stuck with her daughter because we don’t get stock exposure regularly enough and she’s turning into a wild child.

The dogs aren’t crazy unruly. They are just utterly STOKED when it’s time for lessons. They never get to move stuff. I yell at them when they think about heeling the vacuum or the skateboarder going by . . . and when you put them on animals, their brains LITERALLY SHUT OFF and I have to get all hard with them and really beat it into their little brains to listen to me, while still trying to figure out a way to get them to calm down.

So watching Fury, I realize now that there’s not really anything wrong with the dogs except that they don’t get enough livestock exposure. Because what I saw Fury doing, I liked.

I went out and took a short video, and it’s blurry because I didn’t focus it right (sorry, new DSLR camera), but you can see the picture plenty clear. Even the spot where the chickens worried, it was because I was right there putting pressure on them, not Fury.

I thought it was pretty smart of her to move them the direction she did–it was a dead end on the fence the direction they started in.Toward the end, she thought she just lost a chicken, not that she should get in the coop and push them out. I figured I got what I wanted.

I’ve also started working Rippa on them – now that she’s demonstrated she’s calmed down enough not to maul them when she gets frustrated. Rippa needs some more obedience to keep her behaving, but she’s getting there.

Yeah, that’s what I’m reduced to – backyard chicken herding. But, hey, it’s something, and it’s teaching me.

Pretty grateful to have dogs that are pushy, because it isn’t really a frustrating trait if they’re in a real life situation and not my suburban cowboy version – it means they’ll keep going, even when it gets old hat.

<3