Zen and the Art of Sheep Moving

I’ve always been a student of spirituality, though it took me a bit to accept it. In grad school, as an avowed agnostic, my Christian friend told me one day that I was the epitome of “Spiritual, but Not Religious,” and for the first time, coming from her, it didn’t sound like some kind of weak cop out.

I think no matter what banner I fly overheard, I’m probably a lot more that than I realize, and I’ve spent a long time learning from spiritual masters of all ilk, looking for the secret to a quiet mind and open heart.

So, after the last session I had, I suddenly began to understand that I could use stockdogging to that end, as well. Moreover, I probably needed to.

So, after a couple weeks off after the sheep’s owner traveled to border collie trials, I returned today with really only one major goal: a pacific mind and a quiet voice.

When I woke up this morning, I was a little nervous about if I could turn that on and wanted to sit down and read this blog because that’s the point – me thinking and getting it out really seems to be a way for me to remember it for good, and reading it again can provide insight.

BUT I DIDN’T.

I didn’t because of something in a book I used to teach college students: in it, the author makes a statement that we read a science book and we don’t constantly need to refer back to it and study every word like people do with the Bible or any great religious text. My take on that is this: you may know what it says in that religious text, but you constantly need reminding of it because you live and think so in opposition to it just because that’s how the world works. It’s easy to understand and work with gravity. It’s harder to deal with complex relationship and mind stuff.

I intellectually knew that my goal today was to simply be pacific in mind and body, and I didn’t need to read what I did last time that worked because I KNEW, I KNEW, like I know gravity, that if I maintained that practice, things would go okay. And if I didn’t know, I didn’t have any business with that as a goal.

So, when we got into the round pen, I checked my mind-body connection and felt peace. I connected to that, and I think, showing that to Rippa, I sent her to fetch the sheep and . . . it was fast because she was excited, but it was also fine. No sheep bowling or inappropriate behavior.

But as I asked more and more of her, I could FEEL my body losing it’s peace. I had a talk with a naturopathic doctor who had a booth next to mine and at an event yesterday and she said that the panic state of mind is a constant today for us, and it wasn’t like that before, which is why we have all kinds of odd and troubling diseases.

“Back in the day, people couldn’t work all the time or form overly complex relationships and plans. The fire went out, you went to sleep. And your adrenaline would only kick in when a bear came into camp and you’d have to run from the bear.

“Today, however, we’ve got complicated relationships, intense work, money troubles, etc, etc and we are always running from the bear. Our adrenal glands never give up and we get into this habit of freaking out easily. It’s so bad.”

So I am standing there and I can feel my body telling me a bear is running. I always think I am calm, at ease, not stressing this stuff, but I can feel it, like a cowbell vibrating in my chest.

So it’s time to call a break (this is why renting sheep is awesome). I pull Rippa out of the pen, go get my phone, then go back in and sit there with Rippa, doing email and seeing what’s going on for Facebook. It’s good for Rippa, too, as she finds out that sheep can just hang out. Then we just sit some more until I feel pacific again.

And it starts over. And with me being like that, instead of focusing on the wrong, or even the right, I’m starting to see what Rippa sees and feels and it’s pretty obvious that Rippa doesn’t understand some of the basics of this game: like that she is supposed to quietly lift the sheep up and bring them to me. Or how, exactly, to do that.  She does mostly fine when we’re in a moving fetch, though she’s flat on the go-by side, and I’ll get to that in a second.

So, now I add something else to “be pacific” – which is – teach Rippa how to pick the sheep up quietly and just bring them to me. I determine that the best way to do that is to start over and get right up close to the sheep and send her on an outrun, verbally telling her to get out (but quietly) and giving her space to get around them. It works. I think I have to do a lot more of that before I start trying to slingshot send her – which turns into sheep bowling – because I think she just isn’t getting that particular part for some reason. Maybe she forgot it.

Anyway, in general she’s really good on the way-to side, but not the go-by side. Way-to, I get a really excellent square corner, where she’ll turn away from the sheep and move perpendicular to them until she’s just out of the flight zone before turning in. Go-by, she’s a lot more slanty. It almost looks like the photo above, but it’s enough that she’s slicing off the flight zone of the sheep and they just can’t get balanced to me with her there.

I think, “Man, I really want the long stick.” And then, pacific mind says, “No you don’t – Rippa is softer than that, you need finesse.”

So we know that my usual method of chasing her out of the flightzone is scary to her, and we know that Rippa doesn’t know that when I send her, it’s to pick them off the fence and bring them to me or she wouldn’t sheep bowl if I wasn’t there to babysit her. It’s probably a likely thing that she doesn’t know she needs to square her go-by corner.

So we do some half moons. That works pretty well, and when she looks good and square, she gets her sheep. When it doesn’t look like she’s going to balance up, I skip ahead to some pre-cursor drive training and teach her to “get around” the sheep, all the way around me and the sheep and back to 12:00 and try again. All of this falls apart after a couple laps around the round pen, but I think if I keep it up, she’ll get it pretty quick. The instinct and stock sense is there, but I just see some holes in Rippa’s understanding of what we’re trying to do.

Anyway, so we just did some laps around the round pen with her balanced up and getting praise for giving me nice square corners and here we are.

Once I know she understands things, I think we’ll be able to move into the arena and work on things there, but I don’t expect it will be soon. She’s had way too much time off and obviously, I’ve got a lot of mental training to do myself.

Anyway, it’s definitive: a quiet mind makes for happier herding. Ohm.