Speak Softly and Carry a Shorter Stick

Today was my first day renting sheep unattended. I totally brought a video camera with me, but for some reason it only shot 12:52 of each time I turned it on, so it missed the good stuff toward the end and I think the bad stuff without the good stuff isn’t a good idea to show you.

Basically, today I learned how much *I* needed to apply all my spiritual zen and calming down practices in order to be successful.

When I arrived, Stephanie had a hard time getting the sheep to the round pen because one was fighting her dog but it happened. When I got in there, without supervision, I came in hard on Rippa, and it made her come in hard on sheep. I set up an outrun by doing the “z” obedience thing that Stephanie wants me to break away from and instead of starting out calm and trusting her, she started running hard on the top and I yelled at her.

This tanked Rip’s confidence and then I guess made me angry so then it was me yelling and sheep blowing past me. “Get out, get out, get out!” She wasn’t getting out. “Get out get out get out!” I start fighting her. Then, I’m watching this happen and I know pretty well that whatever’s going on is likely my fault. The sheep are kinda lighter and Rips is keyed up, but hold up.

We’re renting sheep so instead of trying to get the most out of the lesson, I call Rips to me and we time out. She gets some water and then we go back in, but I sit with her in the shade and look at the sheep.

“Okay, Kristin, what’s different between before and now?”

Stephanie’s not here to tell me what to do. I have to tell myself what to do. What do I know? I know that I’m loud and I’m scared that my dog is going to hurt sheep. I know that I’m scared I’m going to teach her something wrong.

What can I do about this?

1. I HAVE to be quieter. Rippa isn’t stubborn unless she doesn’t understand what you want. Then she will stop offering behaviors until she does. She’s not confident enough to keep trying. She’s bowling sheep because I’m freaking her out. But she’s not even bowling sheep that badly. It just feels like it.

2. Remember what Stephanie said, “She’s not an alligator. That dog doesn’t want or need to bite. She does it when you stress her out.” Zen, Kristin, zen. Even so, like I said, she’s not even biting. She’s just buzzing them and getting close to them before pulling out and trying again. Zen.

3. The only way you’re going to teach her something wrong right now is if you stop using what you know. You’ve been doing this a long time. You know what it’s supposed to look like and what it looks like getting there.

Kristin, I tell myself, calm the eff down. Everybody is fine. Work on outruns. Work on keeping Rippa calm. Work on your “out.”

Note on that, Stephanie thinks “out” is a throwaway command and that the dog will naturally get out when it learns what to do. I do get that, that’s what putting mileage on the dog like this does. But the thing is, it can help Rippa be right if she takes her outs. She is cutting her corners and blowing sheep past me, so  that’s the first step. Get the “out” better.

So I do some half moons. But I’m yelling at Rippa a lot. I wish I had the longer stick, but I know it’s a crutch. The last couple times on sheep, I can totally do this without a longer stick, in fact, it works better. That’s not it.

Time out, Kristin. We go back to the shade and sit in the round pen for a while, looking at the sheep. Maybe 20 minutes. I’m calm, Rippa’s used to being there, and the sheep have calmed down and started eating some weeds in the pen. Okay.

I slingshot Rippa out and whisper “away.” She gets away. Everyone’s okay. She comes in too hard, so I catch her as the sheep blow past and do some half moons. I whisper “Away” – just one time. Not like how we started. At first Rippa doesn’t get it, but all I need to do with the stock stick is kind of underhand it at her and she hits the far side of the round pen. Okay. We do it again. She gets out and and walk back and give her sheep. She balances up.

Yes!

“Go by” I tell her as I turn, so that she can get her flanks down. She fetches them. As she comes in I tell her “Steady . . . down.” She does. We sit there a minute.

I do another outrun and wait for her to bring them to me. “Down,” I whisper. She does it. We sit there for a bit. “Walk up,” I whisper. She does. “Way to”, she goes out.  We walk backward. “Go by,” and as she takes it I tell her that is exactly what I want. She comes in a little tight so I underhand the stick out at her with an out and she turns her shoulder out .  . . the sheep come toward me. “There.” She straightens out and watch them. Man, this little dog has some eye.

We do some more easy “steady . . . . down . . . walk up” to keep her balanced and calm, and then a few more turns and it’s over. I’m so tempted to work on preparing for a drive, but it’s pretty clear that Rippa doesn’t get the fetch perfectly, nor the outrun, and that’s stuff I can do in this round pen.

Once I can walk around without a lot of handling, we’ll get to the arena again. I just have to be sure she understands the game, and when she doesn’t she’ll have the confidence to play it on a bigger field.

It’s good. It’s peaceful. I really need to meditate before I go in next time.  Speak softly and carry a shorter stick.

Back to the arena? Nope

So, today we took another lesson from Stephanie, only this time in the arena. I am going to rent sheep for awhile, but I wanted her help in the arena. Good thing I did.

Not as pretty as the round pen, and there’s a couple issues there that make sense now.

1. Rippa really doesn’t get her job yet. Without me giving instructions, she’s not doing a full fetch – which is what she was doing on cattle, too. Need a lot more mileage in the round pen to show her what I want.

2. I’ve gotta stop yelling and fighting her. I started out with the big stick but Stephanie said I need to trust Rippa because she gets upset whenever I put pressure on her. So, trusting her, I got the smaller stick and just backed up instead of following Rips to push her out at the top. She did pick up clean, but then she just wouldn’t go all the way to head to balance them so we moved back to the round pen.

So, I’ve got some homework and will be back out there Wednesday. Hopefully I can get the huz to video tape me. Stephanie’s method for getting Rippa to give her best is working well, but it’s going to take some getting used to: the quiet, the not freaking when she makes a mistake, the movement away and not toward her, and different stick handling. It would be good to show you visually instead of in writing.

And we begin anew . . .

Ever since I got back from Montana, I’ve been really bugging on my stockdog situation. Despite my best efforts for the past year or so, I still haven’t figured out how to get my own livestock. We are looking at a house sometime that’s $800 more in rent and probably not worth it, but there’s a potential to have sheep training there so my husband was supportive of a possible move while we wait for the house buying situation to shape up.

But here’s the thing. If I’m paying $800 in rent, that’s just rent. That’s not the added cost of having sheep there, and I’m not someone who should be giving lessons so it’s not like I’m making any money back. Almost $1000 a month, and then having to hire a sheep caregiver when I am away . . . and I’m supposed to be saving money for a house and just to be a responsible adult. And we’re starting to think seriously about kids and what happens when I do that?

So basically, I really want sheep and I know I probably shouldn’t get them yet because none of the situations presented themselves that worked right. I feel like I should either give up altogether until much later or DO this. I’ve got a dog that can and I hate that she’s not.

So back a year ago, at Kathy’s recommendation, when I thought I was getting sheep, I wrote to Stephanie to see if she had any, which she didn’t. Kathy had told me it was a good idea to rent Stephanie’s sheep, but if you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that when I’ve gone to other places, it hasn’t gone well and I’m stressing on hurting their livestock. Plus, in the middle of this back and forth with Stephanie, she didn’t reply to an email and my stupid ego kicked in.

Not in the way you think, I bet. I’m super insecure when I really want something and don’t have something equally exciting to offer someone. In this case, I really wanted access to sheep and Stephanie had them, and if she thought I was a joker, she didn’t need to take my money. Instead of having confidence that I wasn’t a joker and she didn’t think so, I just assumed that was the case and dropped that option altogether. I knew a lot of people went to Stephanie, and liked her, but I’m THAT insecure.

I talked to Pat Lambeth about local options and she told me she talked to Stephanie and that I should try her again. And I don’t remember why I didn’t. Maybe work. Maybe I was just shy, I dunno.

But yesterday I decided that I wasn’t a loser and I should trust Pat that she likely didn’t think so and I contacted her again. Her not knowing me from Adam was like, “Where are you. I don’t let dogs harass my sheep.” And me being me . . . I’m like, “Well, she’s a border collie person and I’ve been warned I handle a bit harshly for some. WHAT IF SHE THINKS MY DOGS HARRASS HER SHEEP?!” I mean, by very nature, putting beginner dogs on sheep is kind of harassing them. There’s a spectrum. So I sent her a link to this blog with the last time I’d worked Rips at Trish’s, but not before she came back and invited me to her house today.

I didn’t need to send the video, but it turns out Trish works at Stephanie’s, too. That’s a good thing in my book.

Anyway, so I show up with my big bean pole with a bottle on the end (thanks Donna for that) and my new W Lazy J stock stick and tell her I’m nervous because I don’t want Rippa to chomp her sheep and I want to be sure she’s comfortable with everything.

I decide we should start in the round pen since it’s been over a year since she’s been on sheep and I am sure we have some foundation to put back in after the cows (she wasn’t taking “out” much).  I go in there with my long stick and tell Stephanie that I have to do this “z” obedience call off thing to warm Rippa up to taking commands and being easy and as she’s watching it, she’s like, “You should get her off that soon. Also, she’s going to be fine. You can send her.”

And I am like, “No she isn’t.”

So we go back and forth in our little exercise where I lay her down and then walk off like I’m doing a slingshot send but am just calling her to me and slowly approaching the sheep going back and forth to keep her focused on me and not the sheep.

And then I send her, and it goes well, but she goes at it a little hard. I’m out there with my 8 foot pole pointing at her shoulder and waiting out her excitement where I can give her the sheep as she runs hard around them. Eventually she does and balances them up but comes in hard as I point the stick at her.

Stephanie says put the stick down, but I don’t know what she means so we stop the action and she gets the stock stick out and shows me how you can use it to put some pressure on the dog with body language and sweeping it at them, but that I really need to take the pressure off Rippa with the stick – it’s what’s keeping her keyed up.

She says it’s like horses, too. A little pressure, but ease off as fast as you can and trust your dog. I’ve heard the “trust Rippa” with Kathy before, but this time I kind of  “got it.” Maybe because of my recent experience with the cattle where I could see really clearly that Rippa got grippy and got kicked when I had pressure on her.  I also see it with Fury – how she works nice off me but when she comes into contact with me on the other side of the sheep, she keys up. It’s me. My pressure is too much. My anger and my position and my not trusting the dogs and myself to handle right.

So I start up again with the short stick and when she doesn’t give, I run into her like Kathy has me do to push her out. Stephanie stops me again. “No. That’s what’s making her get upset. Pressure OFF. If she bites the sheep, it has a lot of wool, it will be fine. Pressure OFF.”

She bit the sheep. It did,  indeed, have a lot of wool. She had me lay Rippa down and calm down. We tried it again, but I felt lost so she came out to handle but Rippa started shutting down because someone else was telling her what to do. I really appreciated that instead of thinking Rippa was stubborn, she could see that she was just feeling too much pressure. “It’s okay,” Stephanie said, “She’ll desensitize if I work with her more over time.” But since she wouldn’t work and Stephanie couldn’t show me, I  told her this was a lot of information and I was having to learn too much quickly, so could I go back to the big stick for a little comfort while I tried what she was saying. Yes.

So now that I had the big stick and experience with how to handle it, I tried the pressure off thing. I sent Rippa without the “z” because she was being easy, and she got around nicely and balanced up. When she got tight, instead of going into her with the stick, I eased off and focused on me walking back and letting her bring them and Rippa calmed down.

As I write this, I think about how Kathy handles and while it felt like all new information, that’s what she wanted me to do, too . . . but I just didn’t get all the pieces until now.

When we had her fetching and balancing, I figured that was a good place to quit and we took a break, with Stephanie working her dogs and showing me how she starts a drive (quite different, but we’ll get to that in a different session).

Next session, I started out with the big stick, but sent her on a flank command with no “z” and just trusted her not to eat them, and she didn’t. Whenever she sped up, I thought about where I was and got out of the flight zone and she’d clam down. I even got her to lie down with the sheep balanced on me and start up walking from there as I backed up (which used to be too much pressure for her to handle without biting).  Since it all went so well and so easily, I switched back to the short stock stick and handled the way I was now beginning to understand. We did circles and such around the round pen, had her stand balanced up, had her walk up from there on them, worked on flank commands and “there.”

The biggest take home for me today was this:
Your dog is intense for two reasons: because it is intense (maybe not used to the stock or working, a new location, being young, or because it just is) and because you are intense. If it’s because the dog is intense, then absolutely I would think that following with the stick until the dog calms down and gives, and pushing out with the stick and being heavy handed can work. But, at that point you need to learn when YOU are being intense. What are YOU doing that’s causing the dog to get nervous. Whatever that is, do the opposite and relax if a dog makes a mistake. When you stop being intense, so will the dog after it gets over the causes of its internal intensity. 

I think I get this so much that I really want to try Fury with Stephanie and see what I can get out of her. At 10.5, Fury has not slowed down at all, and she has all that training on her that if I can fix MY intensity with her and handle better, I wonder if she can’t get some solid training in as well. (I could be pie in the sky on that one – but that’s how much I feel I “get” this now.)

Anyway, as I made turns with Rippa in the round pen, I felt like no time had gone by at all, or, more accurately, like time had gone by and someone else had been working with her in the meantime. Maybe it’s that she had time to mature. Maybe it was the cows. Maybe it’s me putting things together, but I feel like I had a major break through with handling and a couple more lessons (in the arena this time), and  I should be ready to start a drive, she was so nice.

Stephanie remarked as I was finishing up some fetching in the round pen that she was a nice dog and I was going to get a lot out of her. It shouldn’t matter what other people think, but I’m glad to hear it from her: here I was afraid of Stephanie and that she wouldn’t like my pushy, bity Aussie because of stuff I put in my own head.

Part of that is something else entirely. You hear BC people talk about pushy Aussies that can’t do a thing or you hear about BC people who say this. You hear Aussie people tell you that a BC trainer can’t do anything for Aussie people. And sometimes these things are true. But they weren’t true this time in the least. Stephanie impressed me with her understanding of dog behavior and her insights. I liked something she said about the difference with Aussies and BCs. BCs you don’t have to teach to get out or get an outrun with. With Aussies, you do, and she calls it mechanics (which is funny because Kathy doesn’t like “Mechanical training” either, but what she does to start a dog with the stick and pushing the dog out is what Stephanie calls mechanics). She said, “With Aussies, when you start them, you absolutely have to apply mechanics to them to get that behavior solid, but as soon as you do, you can stop and train naturally again.” (Naturally meaning let the dog learn to rate and move its stock on its own). In context, she’s not wrong. I just never thought of the stick and push method as mechanics, but that’s exactly how I perceive how Kathy starts dogs – show them what you want, and when they get it, it’s time for miles added just fetching and letting the dog learn how to do it without your commanding all the time.

I feel like I’ve got a new dog friend, and I’m finally going to go somewhere with this after so much time off – she’ll let me rent sheep outside of lessons so I can go up there a couple times a week and just get some mileage and then go back to have someone else’s eyes on me and fix what bad habits I pick up or continue. And it’s not going to cost me $800 a month.

Moreover, I’m really appreciating this going to other places now. Getting a solid foundation on dog behavior, stock behavior, and the principles of training a working dog from Kathy as a consistent mentor was so valuable, but what’s making it the most valuable is hearing other people say what she did and it clicking more because I’m out of my element and it sounds all new from someone else. I feel like I’m about to grow as a handler and trainer, and that when I feel like I am not getting something, it’ll be time to attend a clinic or go somewhere new, at least for a bit.

I guess I feel a little more grown up. That I can do this after all. I know Kathy said I was ready, but I didn’t feel ready. Now I do.  I hope this feeling continues.

W Lazy J Camp: Stuff I Thought About

Being in a totally different environment really made things I “knew” stand out to me while at cattle camp. Things I probably haven’t written about before because I took them for granted.

These are little notes I made to myself about my works and observations throughout camp:

• Keep your mouth to a minimum. When I (and many other people) get nervous, I tend to run my mouth a lot. I kept it shut when I was giving the cattle space, but once it was clear they were heavy and I wasn’t just letting Rippa try stuff out, I think I kept my mouth running way too much. (Also, I’m loud, so other people commented on it.)
• It seems like if you don’t have a dog with experience to introduce your pup with for help, it’s nice to start the cattle in smaller areas and work them off the fence as Betty had me do – just teaching them to stay back and get between the cattle and the fence to fetch. She starts them in small pens because most dogs lack confidence in a big arena.
• If a dog goes crazy wahoo, it’s okay to put a line on them and correct them physically until they calm down and stay back. No line training at Kathy’s (except to catch them if they don’t recall) but I saw it used quite effectively here. It’s key that you use the line to show them where you want them, that you read the cattle so you can keep your restrained dog safe, and that you praise the dog when its in the right spot so it learns from that and not just the line restraint.
• When starting cattle, the first goal is confidence, then you can work drive and/or fetch, THEN you can work on finite training.
• Rippa starts really hard so I have to remember to do our z-recalls at least at first to calm her down.
• She also wants to quit when she gets mad, so doing outruns perks her up.
• Dogs without any exposure to a ranch can take longer to turn on because the stimuli are just so strong.
• For dogs showing stress behaviors (like checking out, eating grass or poop), make it fun. Don’t push and don’t let anybody’s frustration grow to a point that the dog feels all wrong. If they check out, DO NO punish them by dragging them or yelling to them. Get them, make it a party, and have the dog do something so she can be good.
• Bring the many to the one. A lot of handlers didn’t seem to know about this particular rule, but it made my life a lot easier than trying to catch one freaked out cow.

W Lazy J Cattle Camp: Lectures by Betty Williams

One night I’m out, walking the dogs and taking photos of the sunset, when all the cattle pop out of a hole in the fence, and, one by one, with real purpose, saunter over to the alfalfa field. I would have stopped them, but they moved like they had pressure on them so I wasn’t sure if it was okay or not until it was over. It made a neat shot, though. Everybody had to deal with that problem that night and the next day, but . . . it got handled.

So some highlights from Betty’s talks at camp (I don’t do stenography, so this is paraphrased, I apologize if I get anything wrong):

Day 1:

• Smart dogs don’t go to cattle and act like an alligator – it will take them a while to figure stuff out. Be patient: don’t give up on them. A lot of people want to see alligator to start. Some of the best dogs, including Spur, took some time.
• Dogs are wearing because they’re trying to catch the cattle’s eye out of her blind spots. They can see really far behind them, but the dog is in her blindspot if she stays up straight on the drive. The wear is a good thing. Trainers will teach a walk up for trialing, but it doesn’t work in real life work
• If cattle are worried about a dog, they’ll turn to look for it.
• They have really bad depth perception -
• Fast and tight heading is scary for cows because they can’t see what’s coming up and feel it’s a threat
• Cattle putting their head down isn’t necessarily a challenge – they’re trying to see what’s in front of them, not initially fight
• This is why shadows really freak cows out – they can’t see what they are and it looks like a cliff.
• The stock stick is there to protect the handler. Use it like that.
• Heeling
• The cow the dog is heeling isn’t necessarily the one that kicks a dog – it’s the neighboring cow seeing the heel and kicking at the dog
• Dogs generally start heeling high and then drop lower (and how, Rippa tried a stomach shot first time out, but after a smack, she didn’t do it again)
• Smart dogs heel rear cows and don’t heel just to heel (but this comes with experience)
• When you start pups, you do it on 5-10 head of cattle and increase size of the herd as soon as possible.
• 35 is great for some dogs
• Less cattle is less threatening to pups who aren’t used to cattle, but the dogs work better on big herds
• Dog and handling break your cattle way prior to starting your pups – use chutes, too
• Send dogs softly so you don’t scare the cattle.
• At trials, think about whether your stock is heavy or light. If you’re first up, look at how they’re handling back in the pens for a clue.
• Cattle are handled by steering the head and point of shoulder. (You’ve seen me write about this in the past so no elaboration here)

Lecture 2:

• Separation from the handler in every day life is a good thing – dogs get really dependent on their owners for security and it shows in stock work. If they’re babied a lot, they won’t have confidence without you.

Lecture 3: 

• If you’re having a hard time out there, think back to your foundation. Something isn’t solid so take it back to the round pen and make it solid.
• The Round Pen is where we start
• You stay for a short period, or not, until your dog can square up, get back, dog rates the sheep – start with the bamboo pole but end with the ability to handle with just your fingers.
• Then, start in the round pen and move to an intermediate space (for me, I call it the duck pen because that’s what it was at Kathy’s)
• Work on side commands (only when easy working), steady, square shoulders (the dog turns back squarely, as we’ve talked about in other blog entries), out
• Look for the side the dog favors and work the other one a lot
• Once you’re out of the round pen, start and end with a fetch every time. It’s easy to get a drive and work on that all the time, but you’ll lose the fetch if you only work on driving.
• When you’re teaching square shoulders, the dog should give more than 90 degrees to you so that when you can’t enforce it and the dog cheats, it’s cheating at 90 degrees
• Teaching the drive
• For the drive, do an off-set balance exercise with 10-15 sheep.
• Basically, you get the dog on the outside, you in the center,  with the sheep on the other side of you. You’ll want to keep them pretty much in the same place and send the dog around. Betty moves with the dog as this happens, though when I did it with Kathy, and have explained it before here, we stayed put.  The dog should then be told “there” for it to turn in and face the sheep, but Betty says between dog and sheep.
• You should be able to do this 360 degrees around the sheep and your dog should stay out enough to not affect the sheep bunched in the middle of the imaginary circle you and the dog are walking around and stopping randomly.
• This is the time to teach short flanks by saying “way” and “by” softly. (As opposed to AWAY and GO BY – which should help tell the dog to get way out).
• When the dog is able to get all the way around, you can stop ding the arc exercise.
• This should be done for 5 minutes max at a time as it fries dogs’ brains
• When you’re done, have the dog fetch, then put everybody up.
• Next step in the drive:
• Now the dog should go into a fetch with the owner stopping them and telling her “there” – “walk up” – “good there.” The dog should be able to handle this for a tiny amount of time before it feels like its losing the head. Don’t expect more than 6-10 feet of driving for a while.
• Call the dog back after the short drive and then set up an outrun, fetch, and you can set it up again.
• After being patient and not asking for too much in a session, after 2-3 day a dog should be able to drive about half an arena if all the foundation is laid..
• If training isn’t working, stop and think. Go back to basics or find another way to try things.
• Different lines learn differently. Not every approach will work with every line – try different things.
• Dogs are task oriented – give them good jobs that put all this schooling in context (ie chutes, penning, loading trailers, etc)
• Starting a puppy:
• 4 months do a little with the rake – just play with it off stock to teach them to respect it
• 6 months – do some slightly more seious lessons on sheep – should be short, maybe 15 min max. Make it fun.
• BE CAREFUL OF FEAR PERIODS, which can occur:
• 8 weeks
• 4 months
• 8 months
• 12-15 months
• 18 months
• Know thyself: do you get pushy? If so, wait until the pup is emotionally mature enough to handle it.
• Make sure they go to trials before their first exhibition – so they’re used to how that all works and feels.
• You can train flank commands with toys on the end of sticks.

W Lazy J Cattle Camp

So, clearly the “get your own land” thing hasn’t worked out, though I’m still working on it. In the mean time, back in January I decided to give the famous Betty Williams’ clinics a go since I was saving so much money in not having any lessons. My huz was in full support and we decided to make it an adventurous road trip all over the Western US.

I wanted to go for a few reasons:

I’d heard a lot of good about Betty and her dogs and it seemed like a good way to find out about both, because despite my inactivity, my interest in learning is nowhere near dead.

I wanted to meet and see different people and dogs than I have met in the past – travelling is a sure way to get out of the usual.

Two years ago, Rippa was nice, but she just wasn’t powerful enough on Kathy’s cattle for me to feel good about having achieved my goal in creating good cattle dogs with her litter and I wanted to see what she did now that she’d grown into herself (I could have done this in California, but it provided the reason to do it in the first place).

I’ve been wondering if I really know how to start a dog on cattle, and learning from a different person would augment what I already knew. Now that Kathy’s retired, I’m more on my own and if this is a long term thing, I’ll need to work a little more on my own because I’m not the sort that enjoys devoting her life to traveling to stockdog clinics.

I’d say on all fronts this was a massive success. Huz and I packed up the F250 and headed North (then East), climbing and mountain biking along the way, until we landed at the W Lazy J ranch.

The clinic started out pretty much just like I was used to at Kathy’s, with much the same format: a lecture in the morning, then a run order that had the dogs go through twice and the day was over. Everybody ate dinner and lunch (and even breakfast) together.

I’ll talk about Betty’s methods as she taught them in a post following this one, including notes on her lectures, but I thought you’d appreciate more of an overview of how things went and what I learned.

Initial Impressions

Betty’s cattle were very different from Kathy’s lesson cattle. Maybe it was because they had been used to trial and do clinics on, but they were a lot heavier and more mellow about everything. Betty had to encourage me to get right up in there a number of times because I had been taught to be hyper aware of the cow’s flight zones and danger to myself and my dog.

She started most of the dogs in a smaller pen, about equivalent to Kathy’s “duck” pen with five cattle. Rippa went right to the cattle and enjoyed driving them around, but when she went to head, she wanted to keep doing it. Betty was trying to get me to hold Rippa back after she turned the heads in a drive and this was SO foreign to me that it took a while to figure out what Betty wanted of me. Eventually I got it:

This is a photo of me so close on the cows that I am running up to Rippa to push her back while trying to get out of the way of the cows at the same time. Toward the end, I was so good with the cows not being light that Betty had to tell me to watch getting kicked. I definitely got Rippa kicked in the beginning with all that pressure we were both putting on the cows, but after a while I figured out what Betty wanted and I don’t think the final two days we had any kicked dog action.

In other news, Rippa got the crap kicked out of her while I figured out this “turn the dog back and hold her there” thing. She generally went back to work, but thought a lot more about it and wasn’t quite as resilient as some dogs, but Rippa is a thinking dog and I was the one getting her kicked every time and she didn’t seem to hold that against me.

Another totally foreign concept was having the dog go between the cattle and the fence. I took this photo just for this blog:

This is Stef and Lena pulling the cattle off the fence. The handler grabs the dog by the collar to put pressure inside the fence and uses herself, the dog, and the stock stick to get them off, and then sends the dog through to the heads to get them off. This is not something I’d ever seen employed at Kathy’s and man, I failed miserably at it. The first time, I made such a big hole, it was definitely me pulling the cattle off so the second time, after watching other people do it, I didn’t make a big hole and still sent Rippa through. I should known better. Rippa got kicked because she felt too much pressure on the fence and bit a cow without anywhere for her or the cow to go. I didn’t make that mistake again, but I felt bad.

It really was a pretty effective method of getting the dog to take them off the fence. By the end, most of the hot-to-work dogs were figuring out how to peel them off themselves a bit (if not all the way) on their own without the collar handling, and it’s good to have that in your belt if you don’t have another way to do it (a second dog, or a person or something).

Betty mixed up this driving/fence work with fetching at what seemed at random or at the handler’s behest. I took her lead as I figured she was the one that was best equipped to tell me what to do with my dog. In the end, I think it was a little problematic to switch back and forth for Rippa. She would act very stubborn when you would work on one thing, go do something else, then go back to the new thing. She would really avoid doing what I asked (like get back with the rake or stick as a blocker), but having worked with her for a while now, I really think it’s more how she learns – Rippa gets resistant and cranky when you ask for too much and she doesn’t understand it. Once she does, she’s on it. I didn’t feel like Rippa got a good idea about driving OR fetching, because she was spending too much time trying to figure out what she was supposed to do and getting cranky about us pushing on her and changing the rules a lot. Maybe I’m being kennel blind and she’s just stubborn, but if I had a better idea of that and more of a relationship with Betty, I’d probably have advocated we just stick to one thing (fence work OR fetching) during the clinic so Rippa’d feel confident on it.

Rips had the same trouble she did two years ago on cattle during the fetch work – but I think for a different reason. Two years ago, Rippa didn’t really want to go to head, which was now no longer a problem:

Now she just had a hard time working away from me – so when she got on the other side of the cattle, and couldn’t get my help, she didn’t keep going to head and let them drift. Betty got out her Spur and had him work with her to give her the confidence she needed to get around and watch the heads and fetch them up.

This worked really well, but again, I was really worried about Rippa messing Spur up or running cattle over him. Kathy had always been careful about this when putting a green dog with her lessons assistant dog and usually had you shut up so you didn’t distract the dogs. These lessons, I definitely was not shutting up with all the “get back” and flank commands I was giving Rips to get her to fetch to head. Betty assured me Spur could handle it so eventually, I did to stop stressing, and sure enough, the cattle never ran him over. Again, I also think they are quite used to him, and us, and we’re as light and dangerous as Kathy’s cattle could be. 

Eventually, Rippa was fetching well on her own (and even pulled them off the fence into a fetch when they got there), but would lose it periodically because of that working away from me thing. When I asked Betty, she said she was guessing that since Rippa hadn’t been working in a long time, she just needed help working on fetching in general, much less on cattle. “You think they forget it?” “They can.” I guess I took the foundation for granted that Rips would pick it back up, but it does make sense that she needed some hand holding.

Conclusions

Overall, it was a good experience. Betty didn’t say a lot during lessons, which made me rely a lot more on my own knowledge – which at first was disconcerting since I was used to a constant flow of advice from Kathy. Once I stopped expecting Betty to tell me what I’d done wrong or right, I started feeling my own abilities to make those decisions (like in reference to the kicks I was causing) and I came away from it feeling like I could start a dog on cattle, light or heavy, based on my experience and that ten years of lessons on and off were not a huge waste on me. That was the goal.

I also am pretty happy with Rippa. She showed really good stockmanship, had enough power and presence to get the job done (and knowing her, if she really had figured it out, that power would ramp up a lot more), she responded pretty well to me except during those “stubborn” episodes, and I really liked what I saw. I have every confidence that she will be a nice cattle dog and is still a candidate for breeding since I want a good cattle dog line.

Betty’s was a really good place to start a dog on cattle, though I did feel like some people really didn’t respect that the cows would be different elsewhere and might have come away with an inflated sense of confidence of what their dogs could do on cattle in a trial. By the end I was quite sure I could get through a started course with Rippa and qualify (Betty had us do panels for the last lesson, I’m sure she’s used to people liking that experience) – but I’m not sure we could on the trial cattle I’ve been on in the past.

I also met some very different dogs than ones I’ve met previously, got some ideas about Aussies I hadn’t, met some lovely people, and got the snarly photo of Rippa I really wanted:

I also got a kick out of Rippa and Fury being correctly identified by one clinic attender as being Slash V based. She said they had that very clear Slash V look, even though Terry’s dogs are looking different these days. I got my type set, so success on that breeding goal as well. This photo below makes me think of Slash V’s landing page photo .  . . this is pre-stalk for Rippa, but yeah, I see similarities.

vs

Photos courtesy Stef Player and Yishai Horowitz