Getting to the fun training (at least for me)

Didn’t have cattle this week, which was okay, but slightly disappointing, because after watching the video, I want another go at it. And I will have it next week . . . so no whining, right? Opportunities abound.

It’s been a fun ag week for me. The husband and I went out to pick out our replacement hens – this year I just went for the prettiest ones because me going for good layers hasn’t worked out so well (one died, one went broody, and two quit laying).

Here are the little guys:

Today I took the girls out to Stephanie’s to work on stuff. I have my Kathy Warren clinic weekend next weekend (and I will bring both dogs since the huz is away working during that same time period) and there’s some goals I have before I show up: improve that outrun, and get Rippa ready to learn to drive with her. I haven’t gotten this far with Fury so I think having Kathy teach me to do it would be the best use of this clinic.

Here’s the things I think I need to be able to do for Kathy to do it:

1. Be able to pull your dog off the top and circle off-balance without affecting the sheep. Check (mostly – sometimes she’s a little tight and they drift, but nothing big).

2. Be able to down your dog at anywhere around that off-balance circle. Check (mostly – Rippa isn’t an instant downer, she’ll take a couple steps before she stops).

So this lesson was making sure I had that part down. We used a small flock (only 3 sheep) and worked on Rippa’s obedience in taking the down and getting out.

I’m sensitive that she gets pretty bored with this kind of training so we did some fetching, and then I worked on that outrun. She still obviously doesn’t “get” that she should stay out to gather them if I’m not there to help her – and taking people’s advice, I have started to obedience it a bit. It’s funny, because people generally when they tell me to do this say that I’m teaching the dog to think rather than use obedience, but I’d say using commands is obedience. Relative perspective?

I took a video of me doing this. You’ll notice two things: 1 – I don’t yell NEARLY like I used to. I love being calm and happy. Stockdogging is zen! 2 – Snuffly me – a combination of having a cold and having allergies made me the sick kid. Sorry for all that sniffle.

It was a nice, quiet stockdog day. Toward the end, to make things interesting, I worked on penning and Stephanie’s chute-panel. We need more work there. Rippa has no idea whether to follow them through the chute (which makes them panic and her lose control) or to stay on the outside and hold them. The answer is neither. We’ll figure it out.

We  got in her really tight sorting pen today to move sheep out for Fury and I was really impressed. She didn’t take any pot shots, hit legs gently to move them, and generally the sheep stayed super calm. Fun times.

And then it was Fury’s turn. As I said, I don’t expect a lot from her right now. She hasn’t worked in like five years. She takes her flanks and downs and it’s just time to teach her how to balance to me gently and kindly. I had to video this because the way these two dogs work are night and day.

Rippa is upright upright upright and tight working. Fury has more eye and wider working. You can guess which dog the border collie person likes. I think Rippa works more like her dad, but the more I do this, the more I appreciate Fury’s natural style, too. I hope it’s in Rippa somewhere because it would be nice to have a blend of the two in future generations.

There’s not much to the video, I’m sorry, but I was just really happy at how calm everything is, even with Fury bear. I’m again so blessed to be able to try training her again after everything else. So blessed for that foundation and blessed that my eleven year old dog has plenty of go-juice left.

The time honored dip-in-a-stock-tank tradition.

And then we headed out to visit the ducks at the Best Family Farm. Jennifer has been so cool about them – she takes them out to leg them up for me, I left her my stock flag, and they pop pretty easily out of their pen and into the field now without a lot of work. One of them has a messed up foot, but it’s easy to sort her/him out and leave it behind to work the others.

I decided that they could handle some short works with Rippa and so, I did. She did quite awesome – taking her commands to stay off them and drive them, fetching them thoughtfully . . .

But then when she gets too close she gets all kinda panicked about why they don’t move off her and starts kind of nipping on them trying to stop them. It’s okay. With time she’ll learn to take the pressure off. V, Jennifer’s daughter, wanted to see what their dog did (he’s half BC/half lab) so after a 20 minute ducky break in their posh duck waterfall:

I let Obi give it a go. He’s funny. His border collie sense is like, “Go to head and stop.” He’s fabulous at that. I worked at getting him unstuck but there’s not a lot clicking for him yet. I have a feeling in time, he’ll be kinda fun to work on the ducks, but definitely missing a couple instinctual pieces that I’ll need to help him with.

But yeah, le sigh, very good stockdoggy day.

Oh, and I finally figured out how to podcast today. I’ll be posting interviews from breed greats in the future, but for now, the first one’s mostly about me.