Second lesson on cattle at the Woods’

This afternoon, I loaded Rippa up and we paid Shannon and Dustin Wood’s little spread in Atascadero, pretty much on the same road I use to get to Stephanie’s sheep rentals, just the opposite direction. Highway 41 is the big win in stockdog land.

I’m still feeling out how to approach the Woods’ lessons. They’re pretty open to me just doing my thing, but also super psyched to help me out and I’m trying to learn when to do my thing and when to take their advice – my thought is generally to listen to what they have to say, give it a try a couple times and I or the dog aren’t getting it, to go to what we know and ponder it. I think it’s working.

For example, Dustin had just built a round pen on his property (a dang fine one, by the way – post-holes dug and strung tight) and he says since they put it up, they’ve been using it every day. They like to warm their dogs up on it with their goats before putting them on cattle, and work on fundamentals.

Rippa and I haven’t been in a round pen in forever because of how Stephanie’s set up is, so we gave it a go, trying some outrun training handling advice but not getting so far so I went back to what she and I know well.  Basically, again, is that the message is, is that I’ve been lazy.

With Fury, who naturally took her outruns pretty easy from what I remember, I never really had to worry about the finesse of starting them (for example, laying them down with their shoulder to the stock so they’re facing the way you want them to run), and so with Rippa, who I had had so much trouble starting in the first place, I have been letting just laydown facing them. No more. The Woods got on me about consistently asking for it and it would come. Good. Thing #1 to work on. Okay.

I should also note that working with them, with their dogs, I feel like the laziest trainer ever – their dogs take commands. Rippa takes the suggestion and I have to handle her harder. Partly, Rippa’s never been fast on the response during stock and I was happy to get what I got, and partly I am being lazy. There’s no reason I can’t get the same level of obedience out of her at this point, so I need to start working on my expectations of her trained behaviors. She’ll take ten feet to down, five feet to stop, and a while to “get back” or take her flanks. I need it now and I need to remember to make sure I get it now. It will help her outruns, too, if I an get her to stop and take her flanks. Thing #2 to work on.

Shannon talks to me about how I really need to train Rippa to respect the stick. She shows me with her own dog on a leash how if she points the stick at her dog (off stock), she’ll immediately turn her shoulder and try to get out of her space. I take the stick and poke at my dog, who looks inquisitively. We laugh. This is a really big point to me because when I worked both my dogs, I saw the stick as the enforcer and direction giver, and both Stephanie and the Woods see it as a little something more. I’m not sure I’ve seen Kathy Warren do the kind of stick ground work my BC people have suggested, but I may just not have been “seeing it” back when I was regularly taking lessons. Either way, thing #3 to work on.

We then moved into the cattle. They’d recently lost one of their Holstein heifers so picked up some replacement beef calves at the sale. Dustin said they hadn’t really been worked or dog broke yet so if we had to separate them out, he would. Well, no worries there. Rippa went right to them this time and got to work and they stayed just fine with the dairy cattle, with one red heifer seeming to always get herself out and chased back in – but I’d also say that she was also doing that because Rippa was too tight and pushing her out to start.

I started Rippa by just having her walk up their heels to keep her easy and cranked down (because Rippa is PSYCHED to actually WORK CATTLE) and once she started lifting them off the fence, we started the real training. The Woods’ have a lot of panels set up in their arena for finite obstacle work and to use to help teach the dogs to work in that kind of pressure, so I was able to use the panel to send Rippa out wider than I could without them. Once she figured that trick out, we had things pretty much dialed to lift them and fetch them to me. 

Despite me starting her at the heels, Shannon observed that I should send her to the heads, and so I did, pushing her back after they turned. The one time I didn’t was the one time the fetch didn’t work out, so I learned a really good lesson there for my dog – despite her early starts being more heel work, she’s got big head instinct and to let her use that to feel in control.

The other thing that the Woods taught me was something I definitely wouldn’t have thought about . . . what happens when your group divides? In the beginning and occasionally toward the end of the lessons, one or two of the cattle would break off. This blows Rippa’s mind because she has a really strong sense of group but she’s also a bit insecure about working without me at a distance on the cattle (and I mentioned this is an issue on bigger distances with  the sheep, too). She doesn’t know whether to come into me with the lots of cattle or to go get the ones she wants to. So Dustin told me, hey, if she has a group handled, you go to the other one. Doing that makes her feel secure and she’ll think better and just bring the cattle over, which she did. In the same vein, if I have a group handled and one lone cow, if I want her to bring that cow to the group, just walk up to the cow without saying anything to her and she’ll go pick it up and then I can walk back to the group. Generally you want to follow the “bring the many to the one” rule I like to live by, but if you have a relatively easy straggler, man, that works so well.

Well, it works so well if your dog has the instinct and power to do it, which, hey, sparkle, mine does.

When we finished up, Dustin was very effusive about her, “She did really, really, really, good. That was really nice. By the end there she was getting them out of the corner, biting them where she should be, and 100% better than the first time in there today and way better than last time you were here.”
That means a lot coming from them, as they’ve got some very, very fine dogs and their handling is beautiful, quiet, and confident.

Rippa’s improvement is pretty in keeping with how it’s been with her. Once she gets it (or I do), she gets it pretty thoroughly. Having done what we did in there with half unbroke calves and only our second time on cattle in almost a year . . . I can confidently say we’d get through an ASCA started course, no problem. Maybe not get the highest score out there yet, but like her mother, she’s definitely more a cow dog. All that power and grip she wants to use on the sheep and goats stops being quite as stress-gratuitous on cattle and she settles down really easy and reads her stock.

No problems walking up on their heads if the cattle we standing, lifting out of corners patiently, lifting off of fence panels. It was pretty dang awesome.

And it looks like I have a standing weekly date with them if we’re both available. Can’t wait to learn more. Better get started on that ground work.

Back to Fundamentals . . . on both dogs?

So today, I went out  to Stephanie’s with the goal of working on Rippa’s fundamentals. I sorted out the heavier sheep and basically worked on her flank commands and getting her to both take her out and downs faster. And, of course, her outruns. I had posted this blog last week and Carol McLaughlin suggested I basically just do more fundamentals work with her and take smaller baby steps, which sounded about right so here I am.

We entered the arena really calmly and got ourselves set up nice for the outrun practice. I started facing her with the sheep behind and calling flanks and looking for her to turn her shoulder out to me and make a wide circle. When she did, I got next to her and did the same. Then I went behind her and had her come around me. It works. I tested it by going behind her and sending her but fail. It’s clearly just going to take some mileage there, but I could see the gears turning and I think I’ll have it where I want by the end of the month.

Then we just did stuff like I described above – simple, easy things with heavy sheep so I could easily get after her without losing them and without worrying so much about my handling and timing.  When we were tired, I put them up in a small pen and then got out the lambs.

The lambs are soooooooooo squirrelly that I wanted to take what she got from the early lesson about taking my commands and such and use it here to show her that when they freak, it’s not as useful to freak her self, either. It worked pretty well, but man, Rippa really has to charge those lambs to stay in contact and I have to work on my end because they’re pretty scared of me. Lamb work doesn’t last long because the little guys just give themselves a ton of running to do.

So, Rippa put them back up and went to water. I was going to work her again with the heavy to leave on that note but the huz had convinced me to bring Fury and I wanted to see if what I saw last time was the same. I figured five minutes off some outruns and balance work and putting them away would show me what I had.

Sure enough, like last time, Fury still has her nice outruns, takes her flanks, and works wide. She downs really easy, too.  She just comes in way too hard if I try to do balance work on her. I had started out with the big stick (I don’t use it much with Rippa any more because it’s made me get better at handling to use my body), but I could clearly see that Fury was so used to fighting me and my job was to show her that I wasn’t here to do that anymore, so small stick it was.

That made her relax a lot more. I didn’t say anything to her when she came in too tight and fast, I just kind of got out of the sheep’s way and pushed Fury around. She was getting it after a few minutes and I daresay in a few sessions I might be able to pick up where we left off and get that Started Sheep leg I need.

The key was giving her tons of space to not feel constricted and me not being hyped up about how she was dealing. It was just basically me watching where Fury gets worried and doing my best to show her she has nothing to fear. I’m actually really, really impressed with her. She’s so much more responsive to me than Rippa is – Rippa’s more a chore dog to Fury’s ability to finesse when she calms herself down.

So, we’ll see if Stephanie is up for having me rent sheep for a second dog. We talked about it a bit last time I saw her and it seemed like it wouldn’t be an issue.  More $$ for me, but I’ll feel a lot of satisfaction being able to both let Fury do something she LOVES to do and also being able to come back from the bad place we ended things. How many people have the chance to take their first “broken” dog and go back and make it right? That’s a real opportunity.

And what happens on Wednesday? Cattle!

So where are we at with our goals?

I’ve had a hard time making all my priorities work. I’m training for an adventure race (12 solid hours of biking, hiking, and kayaking) and stuff with work and such is making me choose between training Rippa and training. I’m slightly annoyed with myself, but I have been choosing dog stuff over fitness.

I guess I’m annoyed because in my personal life, I’m a super dog freak. It’s not a mutual admiration society and I never talk about my dogs or other people’s dogs. I talk about rides and work and climbs. And I don’t climb or ride as much as I want to.

Of course, I also didn’t get any stockdog training whatsoever for a few years there so I’m pretty psyched right now. The drive out to Stephanie’s is super gorgeous with poppies, lupine, and mustard just blanketing the green hills. Stephanie is fun to talk to, her dogs like me, and Rippa is psyched. I feel really bad for Fury when I pull out of the driveway with Rippa, but that’s the breaks. I talked to Stephanie about working with Fury and she had the same main concern I do: that I won’t be able to relax with Fury and that will be the issue. I think I need some time to work until I’m totally good with Rippa.

I know I’m not TOTALLY good because Stephanie’s property has rolling hills. When Rippa doesn’t listen, my yelling at her echoes back and I feel bad for the neighbors. It alone seems to help me calm down because I don’t want to. So, bonus there.

I went out the last two days in a row and didn’t have the greatest works ever. It’s not that Rippa’s not doing well, even. I think it’s to do with me. I’m getting better and better outruns on her – I’m starting to get the knack of slingshotting her and then going to the sheep, and she’s starting to understand that the only success she’ll ever get is when she goes out wide if we’re using lighter sheep.

But two things are annoying me now –

1. Rippa does not take flank commands if I am behind her. It’s totally situational and I feel like I have to obedience the hell out of her to get her to do it. I’m kind of hoping that the outrun work will help, but right now she runs around me all wide and then tear-drops and comes in tighter when she approaches the sheep, which makes them fan out and then her run hard against the last one or split them if I use all Stephanie’s sheep (I try to mix it up. Small batches, heavy, light, and big flock). Looking forward the the KW clinic I signed up for at the end of May to see what she does with me to fix it. I’m sure I “know” what to do but need reminding.

2. Totally related to the above – Rippa is SO insecure about working independently of me. This is the same behavior that makes people think Rips is stubborn, but I know better. She’s not. She just . . . JUST CAN’T HANDLE THE PRESSURE! The pressure, I think, is me. I’ve been going in the afternoons and it’s about 70 degrees out. The sheep and Rippa get tuckered faster than the 50 and 60 degree mornings. After we’ve picked them up and worked on outruns, I invariably start working on distancy stuff – having her pick them up on the other side of the arena, or look back if she missed one, etc, and it’s like . . . she can’t. She tries, gets up over the crest of the hill, looks at the sheep, looks at me (I can’t see the sheep), and eventually comes running to me. It’s very, very clear that Stephanie’s comment the other day that I was “making her right” has a lot to do with this. And it’s probably why Rippa is so good at pen work. When I tell her she’s right and help her be right, she’s happy. When she has to go out on a limb, she’s really insecure about it.

I don’t worry too much about it from a functional standpoint, though. Per the usual, I think Rippa just needs to figure out what I want and it will come. I might just be putting too many expectations on her. I am not sure. We had gathering around that crazy take pen where the sheep live dialed and now she can’t seem to remember to get out to bring them to me unless I position differently.

Again, I can’t be lazy and I can’t get mad. I’m not a great trainer (yet?) and this is my second dog, and she has only had 6 months of twice-a-week training on her. I had her driving sheep around the arena and fetching them to me today to a point where I think I could fudge an open run on super heavy sheep, so looking back from that to when we started in October or so, yays all around.

I’m on this Facebook group that’s mostly border collie people who ranch called Cattle Dogs Only.  As I said before, being on there is pretty illuminating. The most interesting post so far has been the question: “What do most people expect of a well bred working border collie with 60-90 days work in them. Starting from knowing nothing but being leash broke and being friendly.”

Given that I don’t do the straight training each day, I had to sit back and think about how many days I have on Rippa now. The blog is pretty faithful to my training. Lately I haven’t written every day but every week because nobody, including me, needs to. But if you count up the blog posts, I’m at 90 days. Some of the posts have nothing to do with whether I worked or not, other condense, but I’m probably at that window of 60-90 days. So, clearly, it’s been interesting to see people’s responses.

The basic response was “It depends on the dog” but the gal who seems to be the one I most respect says: “within 30 days of solid training I expect the dog to be pretty useful, unless the dog wasn't yet ready to handle training or isn't the type that can learn the way I teach, some just need to learn by being used. Put the initial 30 days on them to get a good stop and a basic understanding of their job and send them home to be used.”

Well, I would say we’re at that. So . . . yays me.

This response: “Well bred dog at 60-90 days, I'd say the dog should have a good outrun, know to and off balance flanks and be driving well. Dog should be gathering decently and be doing real jobs. Should have experience on fresh stock.” Not there yet, aside from the real jobs and fresh stock.

It’s cool. I think it’s dangerous to say that in x amount of days a dog should be doing something, though it would be interesting to mark it that way if you were consistently training dogs of a certain age to see how long certain ideas take hold.

Sheep looking good (on video), duckies getting ready!

Today the huz and I dropped by Stephanie’s to rent some sheep for a bit and then head out to the Best Family Farm to finish up the “Duck Fortress” (it cannot be called a “coop”).

As I have said before, training just isn’t linear, is it? Last work I had – we only had lambs again because I was with CA Sharp and she gets the heavy sheep for lessons while I rent unattended. I was thinking about doing a farm trial at the end of May, but it was so ugly that I really thought better of it. Plus, Kathy was judging.

If you haven’t had to be judged by your mentor, you won’t get what I’m saying when I felt sick thinking about it. You want to do your mentor proud, your dog proud, etc, so there’s a lot of pressure. One person I know who totally gets how I feel is Trish Alexander, so I called her up and she convinced me to wait until *I* felt ready despite everyone telling me to trial now when I’m out at sheep. Them telling me got me off my butt and getting ducks and a cattle situation, but I still want Rippa’s outruns better – and I want her to work as well on lighter sheep as she does on heavy sheep.

We’re at a weird stage now where working heavy sheep bores the crap out of her so I do a lot of chore work, interspersed with tweaks to work on stuff, to start her out mellow and then add lambs later so she’s working a larger group and having to pay attention.

It went so well today – so quiet and nice on both our parts that even though the huz doesn’t like videoing, I ask him to. I’d just had a slam dunk penning job and thought I’d video what I was doing just then to show you, and also get an idea of how I look from the third person.

The pen work is not a slam dunk because I didn’t set it up right (lazy, so lazy), but I knew she’d get it done if I just helped her, and she did. We haven’t really practiced penning. Rippa is just really good at these sorts of jobs. I think we’d done it twice before and both other times it looked this nice if not nicer. She even knows to go around to the other side of the pen to push them out – and in this case the sheep didn’t come in and I asked her to “get em” and she totally knew what I meant.

The handling after the pen work isn’t great on my part, either. My stickwork and body language aren’t helping things.

If I’m not getting what I want out of Rippa, it’s because, again, I’m lazy, lazy, lazy.

She was pretty over these sheep so I added in the lambs again, but as I was, Fury came over unattended. I guess Y had her off leash and she’d gone to the bathroom and he was occupied with cleaning it up. Fury hasn’t been on sheep in a very, very long time. She popped in unhurriedly, and I downed Rippa because I knew I’d have to handle Fury on her own here to keep it calm. Sure enough, Fury does her bat-out-of-hell method of going up to the sheep and then picking them up and bringing them to me, but it was so nice! And she was so wide as she started getting into me! I popped her on the head with the stick to get her out, and she took it – going really wide and suddenly being very biddable.

She still has that “RUN AS HARD AS YOU CAN” thing that I accidentally taught her years ago, but I felt totally in control of what was happening and that I could totally handle her and fix it with time. I don’t know if I will or not – I’ll need to talk to Stephanie about that. But . . . it was interesting, it was SO CLEAR that Fury was so much more comfortable in the arena compared to when we had her stuck in the duck pen back when I was doing lessons with her. It seems like if I had just got her into the arena and then relaxed, I could have fixed it pretty quick.

Of course, I’ve had a lot of miles on me with Rippa since then and have learned to CALM DOWN a lot more, so I am quite sure that’s really the element that was missing. It was pretty sweet, however, to know that I’d come along far enough that I felt like I was easily able to handle Fury. I was tempted to just use her to put them up but not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I called her in and handed her off to the huz and finished working Rippa.

It was  a pleasant surprise all around, even though, you know, oops for letting Fury get in there in the first place.

And then we went to duckies.

It was time for their first grass and sunlight so huz and I set to fixing up the fortress for them. And man, they loved it, snapping at the weeds and grass.

The dogs were pretty excited.

Fury got a tiny round of working them before we went home. I’m not really sure when you can start working them for real, but I figure I’ll wait until they at least look adult-ish. I think three months is the magic number? Will do research. They’re currently three weeks.

The fortress:

A Little Interlude About Breeding Screenings

I worked Rippa this Monday and it went awesome. I used all of Stephanie’s sheep and since she was doing so well, I thought it would just be kind of a “chore day” where we went in and out of different pens and field options she had. Lots of opportunities for us to see where we’re at and what to work on. Rips needs some distance work because she’s lacking some confidence there, but she did some great lifts that I wouldn’t call “outruns” but I’d take it if that becomes her MO. She just kind of walks calmly up to the sheep, takes a side, waits for them to move, and then starts fetching them to me. Not the “Border collie” field outrun I think we tend to train for, but super useful and using her own smarts rather than obedience training to get it there.

Anyhow . . . so this whole week I’ve been kind of angsty. As part of my, “Don’t let things hold you back,” I decided to start up the breeding screenings to see if even thinking about pursuing breeding her was going to be in the cards. I got the DNA verification kit and sent that off, and next was hips and elbows.

I feel like, since this is my blog and I like to be super honest, that I feel really funny about health clearances. As I’ve gotten into this thing, I really feel that if I’m breeding, it should be to do outreach to local ranchers and provide working dogs to the cattlemen. And, to a cattle man, usually breed and pedigree and such don’t mean a thing. Most people do not ask about health clearances. You will hear about those things from people in “the fancy” – dog nerds such as myself who speak a certain way and share information and really just . . . it’s a hobby.

Ranchers? Does the dog work? Will it live for a good while and stay healthy? Does it have the temperament I want? That’s usually where the conversation ends. Rippa and Fury both have a proud lineage of dogs owned and bred by these kind of handlers, so not a ton of information on health clearances behind them. It was interesting choosing a sire because of that – many people feel that without that information, it’s a crap shoot, but I feel that it’s not – if these breeders answered affirmatively to the questions above, that’s miles ahead dogs with allergies and early cancer and debilitating dysplasia. It’s a risk I took.

So, yeah, it’s funny. I’m going all out to do the clearances, but the people getting dogs from me aren’t so much worried about it. From what I see, interacting with ranchers who’d buy the dogs, the more I have that stuff available easily, the more they think I’m just a show dog breeder, so I’m actually not going to make the info that available on my site (which I’ll need to redo) unless asked. But, being diligent, I’m going to do it anyway.

So, to the hip xray development.

We have a vet in town that I specifically go to because they’re supposed to be “the best” for breeders and they do hip xrays without anesthesia. I’ve had my troubles with them for a long time, but I still stuck with it because people told me to long ago and I tend to just go that way unless otherwise prompted. Fury got her hips done and came up “Good” with OFA and that’s all I needed.

So, Rippa went in last week, and despite some issues I had with how weird they were being, “Oh, we might not get the images we want, please clear us to use anesthesia, really, we prefer you to use anesthesia” etc for people who are supposed to be good at anesthesia.

And then they sent me the films. Her elbows look really good, but her hips? Uhh . . . she was tilted. But without asking, they just sent them off. At first I tried to be chill and just let it happen because, of course the OFA people would see it as less than ideal, right? But then I posted it online and everyone said to make them retake it.

I pointed it out to them and they offered to do so. I made an appointment, but being me, I spent a lot of time sitting on the computer reading about OFA readings and comparing the films. And what I got was this: the quality of the films is totally dependent on the quality of the people taking them. One website I looked at, one I’ve very much respected for years has a whole article about how a dog can go from dysplastic to not depending on the way someone shoots the photo.

And I’m supposed to trust a vet that sent in bad films to begin with? So, talking to a friend, I decided to ask for a refund (which they gave me) and look into other options. He suggested I look into PennHIP, since now that I was armed with the thoughts in my mind about subjectivity regarding OFA readings.

PennHIP, looking not just at the classic dog-with-legs-extended view (which is supposed to evaluate formation of the joint itself and any arthritic signs or deformities within it) also measures how the joint seats. As someone with terribly lax joints (two surgeries and bad knees right here with this gal), I can appreciate that. The laxity of the joint is something that can definitely cause problems and it’s more scientific: it’s a measure that’s taken and then compared to animals within the same breed. You can actually have a specific goal to breed toward and it’s from a sample that’s sent in whether the people getting the results like it or not (aka, more reliable).

And so, despite costing me 3X more (and I’ll never make it up in breeding), I felt a lot better about that. Science, always.

She had to get anesthetised, which really freaked me out, but the vet did a great job explaining it to me and making me feel okay about it.

And here we are, with a fresh set of images, a not-dead-dog (though she’s a bit cranky since coming home), and a lot more peace of mind. The vet sat me down for twenty minutes, answering all my questions and pretty much demonstrating that he’s a huge geek for PennHip and I made the right decision.

Want photos?

Here’s her elbows from the first vet:

And here’s the OFA shot with the legs pulled down from first vet:

Here’s the new one:

So, uh huh. Quite different, don’t you think? Dr Shechter said if I sent in her hips to OFA she’s probably rate Good to Fair because the joint could sit a little more in there, but that at 4 years old, no sign of degeneration and he thinks she’s got healthy hips for his taste. Good news, considering some people, upon seeing the first shot, were like, “Hmmm, crossing my fingers for you” which made me more than a little worried. Fair’s just fine in my book.

And, more interestingly, here are her other shots

This is a compression image – where the dog’s hips are set into the joint to show how they fit.

And then:

This is the laxity shot – they put the dog’s up as if she’s standing there and measure the movement from compression to this position. It’s then set against a percentile within the breed (aka, some breeds might have more lax joints than others) of all that are submitted (and anyone using PennHIP is submitted, whether the owners want it or not. The average percentile for Aussies, from my research, is 47. Percentiles 30% and below seem to show unlikelihood for development of hip degeneration, so rooting for that.

He suggested I send the hip in for OFA so buyers used to OFA will be satisfied (same with elbows), but at this point, I’ve got the films, and I’ll have the PennHIP eval, and I’ll just educate people. I’m a little freaked by OFA at this point and I’d rather not buy into it unless I really have to.

Either way, a nice, complete picture and a satisfied (albeit poorer) customer here.

Side note: the new vet, Dr Schechter? That last name is Hebrew for “slaughterer.” Hah. I’m also friends with an ER doc in town named Dr. Slaughter. Accident or NO? In Judaism, there’s a teaching that people are born under a blood sign and can end up as murderers but when directed right, they tend to end up in farming or doctoring. Wive’s tale or SOMETHING TO IT?

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.