Transitioning from Round Pen to Arena

So, this week we went back into the arena to work on our foundation, but it wasn’t as seamless as I had hoped.

We were in the the round pen and we had good balance, good responsiveness to my needs, and her outruns were pretty good, and probably only getting better if I got out of that tight space.

I’m used to transitioning from the round pen to a smaller pen that Kathy called “the duck pen” for duck trialing – it was a good size to move into because you still had the control on everything and then the dog and sheep got some more space to work in, usually for the better. I found moving from there to the arena was pretty painless in terms of expectations – the dog could do good outruns to pick the sheep up and had a fetch, and now it was time to just work on finite training and drives.

So, jumping from the round pen where it was getting pretty boring from one perspective, I am now in the arena.

I went in on Wednesday, but Stephanie forgot/didn’t know I was coming (email lines crossed) and so there weren’t sheep set out for me. She trusts me not to mess stuff up, so I decided to sort my own lesson sheep out and give it a go if everything went fine.

Rippa did an amazing job in the pens holding her ground while I sorted. I am really used to Fury’s abundant energy and intensity, and Rippa is far more laid back than I give her credit for – it was really not a big deal for her to lay down and let me sort sheep, and this is something we’d never done before.

So the sheep are now in the arena, but they are BOUNCING ALL OVER THE PLACE and I can’t set up anything for Rippa. These are the same lesson sheep we used in the round pen, but now they have space to escape and my green dog doesn’t really know what to do with that. So, we walked around a bit, I downed her, tried to get them to settle, but even I was too much for them. After five minutes of realizing it was going to be “chase sheep around the arena,” I put them back. I figured not to mess with stuff, especially if Stephanie didn’t know I was there.

So, as soon as I got home, I let her know what I did, and as I expected, she was fine with it, so now we’ve got it going on that even if she’s not around, I can come out, which is super.

I came out today and rented sheep after she did a lesson for someone in the arena for an hour or so. I gave the sheep a big, big break, and then we went in.

Same thing. Sheep bouncing everywhere – they are lighter than I’d like for this. I had thought about the earlier fruitless work and knew that Rippa wasn’t going to seek and destroy, so I probably just needed to let everyone get the feel of things without expecting too much out of anyone.

Now, armed with the assurance that Rippa gets what I want, I aimed to get them on the fence and let Rippa do her thing until she figured out that she needed to take pressure off them. It wasn’t pretty, but after me sitting there and just marking good things with “yes” and bad things with “no” we had the sheep settled enough to fetch a bit and stop and they wouldn’t bail.

It basically feels like starting over again, but Rippa knows commands better. Toward the end of the lesson, I tried to kind of teach Rippa her distance outruns by obediencing them – I’d tell her “out” and if she gave the sheep shoulder and moved laterally, she got a “good” and tried adding “out – go by” and it worked pretty well, but eventually she’d had enough and we put them away.

I have to admit it’s frustrating that it didn’t go as cleanly as I’m used to it going from one pen size to another, but there’s not option for something intermediate. Rippa has to learn how to rate her sheep with no help from the fence pressure, and I think I probably just have to settle into things not looking as nice in the round pen until she does.

I also think it’s time to bring the big stick with a bottle back – in the arena, the extra space makes her turn on the pressure too much and I think she’s going to need help getting out to take it off. Me running at her with the sheep running in the opposite direction won’t help us out one bit.

So, we’ll see how that goes. I did a lot of searching the Internet for something about that transition, but it doesn’t appear to be “a thing,” so  . . . I guess I’ll do my best. Advice welcomed.