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.
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