My Furry Little Friend

So, after a bit off, I was feeling nervous. Like, oh, man, I am never going to get this stockdog thing, I don’t know what I’m doing, etc, etc.

This morning I went out to Stephanie’s and went into the round pen with a couple rules for myself:

1. She is your friend, and you need to remember that sometimes she does bad things, but she generally is trying to do what you want her to do so give her time to do it.

2. Stick in opposite direction and reinforce it.

3. Let her learn by keeping your trap shut unless it’s instructive.

And it worked. By the end of the lesson, I had Rippa picking the sheep up nicely from both directions and calmly bringing them in to me. We’d been successfully pulling her off the top with her flank commands and some help with my stick. And we balanced up just with me stopping instead of walking backward and making space. I’d say that was a good showing and a leap ahead in training goals.

When she made mistakes (like sheep bowling) I assumed I hadn’t set her up right and taught her what I wanted, which also showed me that she thinks “Get Around” means go hard right at them (oops, early training issues), so I can only use “Get around” right now when we do pulling off the top to keep her going instead of trying to balance them to me. I am sure we’ll get it back to what it should be, but nice to know I should not use it when I send her on a fetch.

We took lots of walks with me signaling flanks and “there” to help her start understanding what they’re for (I haven’t been using them yet, trying to get the basics down), and she did a bang up job.

We did pulling off the top and circling the sheep and me – a little harder on the way-to side, but by the end,  both sides looked even and lovely, finishing with a “there” back at me.

And then I did some balance up work – I realize that I nag her with “out, out, out” while we’re just doing fetch work and she takes it, but it would be smarter to just show her what I want. So, I stood on the fence and waited out her attempts to work the sheep in front of me, pointing my stick at her non-aggressively and saying “yes” when she gave pressure to me, until, eventually, she just stood there. Rise, Repeat.

Then, I thought to myself, this is all going so well, but now she only balances to the fence and me . .. what about in the open? So, using the same technique of non aggressively flicking the stick at her with the sheep in front of me in the middle of the pen, Rippa gave and just stood there. We backed up, she followed. I stopped.

Now, previously, if I tried that, she’d be like “YOU JUST FED ME SHEEP! NUMMY!” But instead, when I stopped, she stopped.

So, yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty excellent work today.  I think the goal is to stay in the round pen and work on flank commands and that balance trick and when I feel confident that she’s mastered them both, we’ll head back into the arena.

Steph told me I really should enter the next trial with her, but I don’t think so, no yet – we’ll need some takepen work, and she still starts out that initial send pretty hard. Until we get that send mellow, I’m not going anywhere, and I’m in no hurry to, either.

Also, happy birthday Rippa-Beezle! 4 years old on Dec 26th. Her mom blew all her coat and is naked – and looks like a cartoon dog right now.

On that note, there’s a part of me that’s a little guilty that she’s not really been trialed or gotten a title at 4 years old . . . but you know, I had other stuff going on and she’s going to be super fun to trial when it’s time. Looking on trying to get a CD on her this year, and eventually go back to agility. (Which, btw, she can do in that crown.)