Ducks and Cattle and Goats, oh my!

This week, the theme was “get the duck pen ready.” The ducks have matured and are working super nice. My dogs are both impressing the heck out of me because they work really nice on them. Shannon watched the video I posted and she says she thinks it’s because the dogs know I can really get after them. Probably true. One of these days they’ll be good for their own sake.

Here’s one video where you see my classic “can’t handle for crap because people are watching” but you can see how nice Fury is:

And here’s one I shot with Rippa where I’m nice and quiet and my timing’s right:

The ducks are REALLY fun. They teach the dogs that getting in close doesn’t solve anything because the ducks won’t move. You have to get away from them to move them. It’s a nice way to work on stockmanship. I have tons of time to work on how I handle them, and I can easily correct the dogs for their mistakes.

And, both dogs respect the ducks enough to just kind of mouth them when they get in too close. There’s one call duck in the group of 10 (we had 11 but one got a bummer leg and eventually died) that can fly  so getting her back is kind of rough – fence crossings, etc. Rippa isn’t experienced enough to get out and bring her back, so basically she just pounces on the duck and then mouths her to hold her until I get there. The ducks don’t seem too worried about it, too, so that’s good. I have a kiddie pool out in the arena to walk them over to during lessons and they take right to it if they see it – not a stressed reaction.

So yeah, duckies are fun stuff!

So I’m all signed up to go back to my alma mater next month and attend a cattle handling clinic with the Wood’s at Cal Poly. I’m tickled that it’s back to animal science classes for me (that’s what I started doing when I came to SLO in the first place). I’ve got some cattle trials locally to check out this summer and then I guess it’s time to start thinking about actually entering them.

I’ve been still working goats and doing the foundation stuff with Rippa so she works as good at the Woods’ as she does at Stephanie’s or with the ducks. We’ve been doing some interesting drills to just get her to start rating and think more rather than run. The sheep/goats all spread out and so she quits trying super hard and we need her to if we put her back on cattle. I brought out the “big stick” – which is a bean pole with a bottle attached to it and Shannon loved that – Aussie west coast style emerges again. It was super helpful in getting the goat/sheep and Rippa under control on the hill pen we work because I got there in time. Thanks to what we did tonight and the practice on ducks I get in the next week, I bet we’re good next week to go back to cattle if she starts as nice as she did today. Steps backward to go forward, doncha know. A lot of it is me and my handling.

And my handling falling apart when people watch.

The fact is, I’m way insecure in certain scenarios. I joined Toastmasters to get some of my fast-talking, filler word stuff out of the way and I feel it creep in when I’m there. I know all the Toastmasters people pretty well and am not scared of them but I still feel the pressure to entertain and get out of there. I don’t feel like I have a right to hold their attention. I feel kind of that way with the stockdog thing. If someone is literally watching me to see how I do, even if it’s to be constructive, I worry about it. And rather than use that as motivation to be better, it takes attention away from the job and I make mistakes.

Trialing is going to be a horror show with that mindset so I’m working on it. I want Rippa to just be automatic so that if I do stupid stuff, she’s still got it handled for me. She still doesn’t work nicely on her own – she needs me there to steer the ship – and I’m okay with that, that’s being green. She may not be young, but we’ve only been steadily at this for six months solid. I’m psyched with what I have out of her – I think I can do pretty much anything so long as our relationship is good and I hold up my end. She’s got enough talent and power to get the job done if I give her the space to figure it out.

So tomorrow we start building out the duck arena with panels and fencing for a more formal environment. I need to practice how we handle panels and such – this is one thing we DO NOT work on. I’m also going to build a ducky take-pen so we can practice that. Rippa does great pen work from working at Stephanie’s, but I can’t do the formal training you need to start a trial off right as it is now. She says she can build me something, but I don’t want to be a bother so this is perfect.

Quack!

Notes from the Kathy Warren Clinic

I’m tempted to write my own thoughts from this week and the last few works, but I’ll never get this down if I do that.

Going to this clinic was sort of like going to lessons with her with mostly fresh eyes. Rather than having an ongoing weekly visit, I don’t think Kathy has seen Rippa and I together for over a year. I am so used to working on my own now that taking the clinic made me see the best use for it in a different way. I used to go to classes and really pay attention to everything, but after a while you look, you don’t focus, and you just do what she tells you. This round – knowing that this was a limited time thing to get her opinions and thoughts – I brought the notebook and tried to watch every dog work, asking questions as much as I could. Moreover, I paid more attention to the advanced dogs workings, as I’m about where I left off with Fury when we stopped training her consistently.

Because of this, and because I don’t have a better way to do it – I’m going to lump the different thoughts into categories. You can read them all, or you can look for what suits you best.

These are my notes – some things are direct from Kathy, but assume it’s my memory of them, not necessarily what she is actually saying. I don’t do that kind of skilled transcription.

General Thoughts

• If you raise your dog right, and don’t spoil them, they’ll work better for you. This means that kenneling them and not living with them, letting them be in your bed, etc is part of that. Obviously you have to make concessions based on what you want the dog for (a friend or a working dog), but it’s much easier to train if you have that kind of relationship.
• Do not trial until you do what you do at home in a trial (I had a terrible first work because I didn’t just start how I do at Stephanie’s or the Woods, or even on my ducks – I tried to do something else). That means, if you’re expected to pick stock up a certain way to start – you better be able to do that, without much thought.
• When training – ask your dog for something, back it up, then test to see if they need the backup the second time. If they do, it’s time to go back to basics until you can test and get consistent success.
• Doing the kind of things you want your dog to do with just you and the stock is helpful – if you don’t know where to place yourself, how will you know where to place the dog? (I think this is something I really appreciate from being able to work without anyone watching – I’m really getting this part down because I have no help.)
• Something I really appreciate about Kathy’s “culture” during lessons – you pretty much aren’t allowed to tell students what you think because Kathy controls those conversations. It cuts down on ignorant yapping and cross talk. I have had problems with this going to other people for lessons – I want to hear from the person I’m taking instruction from only. My temperament does not handle multiple opinions at once. I find most of those opinions aren’t that valid, either – you need to look at what you want from who you want to figure out where to take it.
• When working dogs, don’t have a lot of stops if you can help it – flow makes it all a lot easier.  It creates bad working habits and doggy emotions. (I’ve been asking for a lot of stops because I want that control. Oops.)
• Be aware of what you look like to strange stock. (I was wearing a skirt during one of the works and the sheep did NOT like it.)
• If you’re running backward, you’re doing it wrong. The dog should be giving pressure.
• People seemed to be letting their dogs get up too fast after handlers hit them with a “stay.” Make the dogs stay for at least 5 seconds if you do it or they’ll cheat you.
• Over exaggerate everything and you’ll have more consistent results and better trialing because it will degrade under stress or relaxation.
• Keep the stick low when you use it – make sure that the dog and sheep, which are two foot high, can see it; it’s not for you.
• If you’re going to be keeping a flock or herd, remember to keep light, medium, and advanced sets – especially if you give lessons. Heavy and extremely light sheep can work, but if you’ve got an intermediate dog that needs something in between, you’re in trouble, and mixing heavy and light will just make really frustrating work as one stays and one leaves.
• Light sheep just need a ton of space – half an arena at times. You have to work to get a dog’s confidence to allow that to happen.
• WATCH YOUR STOCK – more than the dog, even, if you can. You’re leaning, you’re getting bad timing, and you’re asking for the wrong things because you are not watching your stock.
• Don’t cheat yourself – work on fixing what’s not right before you move on to new challenges. It’s okay to go backward, too.
• Don’t let your “down” erode into a stay if you can help it. Use different commands.
• Some dogs need boots for the clinics – these are usually the ones that live on urban footing – carpet, concrete, grass. It’s the dry, hard ground that gets them because they aren’t calloused up enough.
• The “Steady” command can only be given if the dog has time to slow down and steady. Don’t give it if it has to slow down and stop (or turn to get out) unless you’re training it.
• A good way to learn whistles? Record yourself making the sounds and then practice along. Make up your own sounds.
• Duck management – keep pools and food out in the working area so it’s fun to go out to.
• Proof your dog a lot on the obedience stuff – if “stay” really means stay, they won’t move even if they’re getting stepped on. But then let them think when you’re working or you can get into trouble with that.
• Outruns: I’ve been crutching on keeping Rippa close so I can have her turn her shoulder and run around. Keep her far away and stay close to the sheep – if she doesn’t turn her shoulder when you ask for it, you have plenty of time to get to her to correct it until she does.

Starting Young Dogs

• When you first start a keen dog – you’re really only worried about keeping them off the stock and learning “out” and how to work the flight zone. If the dog learns to balance him/herself with you and the stock from the get go – that’s all you want. Don’t ask for fetching or being perfect on both sides until they understand to stay off the stock. (After watching a dog this week, though, I wonder what happens if you have a sticky dog – no sticky dogs between the BCs and Aussies this weekend.)
• Watch the head of your dog – they’ll hold it higher when they’re not thinking “biting” thoughts. They will lower it when they go in for a challenge – be there as soon as you see it. You want to keep the dog thinking “calm” thoughts.
• Teaching flanks is easy – just label it when it happens. It’s the square corners and the “out” that are hard. People get excited about the flank commands and don’t spend enough time on the hard stuff.
• Read the dog’s personality – be ready to deal with bad habits and instincts so it doesn’t let it start. If the dog is wild-minded, work at keeping them calm. If they are sticky, move a lot. Etc. Whatever is in there to start will be in there later, so better not to let it come out until it’s controllable by the dog’s intellect and handler’s skill.

Driving Tips:

• Don’t start driving until you can have the sheep parked in front of the handler. Get that “there” command by walking backward with the dog at the top when you give it.
• Handy drawing – I wasn’t doing it right so Kathy physically made me work her like a dog with the stick until I got the body english right. Here’s my notes on that.
• 
• STAY OUT OF THE DOG’S WAY. People have trouble with this – I feel like I don’t, but I probably do.  Plan the draw of the sheep when you give your flanks and “there.” Turn and go with the dog to hold them out. All you need to start is following with you getting out of the way and stopping them when they get to head (either a stop or a fetch flank command)
• Handy picture:
• To start, you’ll be close to the stock as in #2, but when you stick a stick out, the dog has to go around you and you have to change directions a lot to get the dog and you used to driving.
• As you get more advanced, you’ll want to be ahead of the dog’s path, out of the influence of the sheep, and when you stick the stick out, the dog has space to get the flank and stay driving (as in #1)
• If you’re too close, you’ll just feed sheep or force a fetch (as in #3)
• On the drive, you want to stay in front of the dog and out of the way of the sheep’s flight zone so you can fix the outside flank. Logic makes me think you should be behind the dog, but being in front of the dog allows you to draw him to you and then give a “there” rather than the dog do an outrun around you. (see figures 2 and 3)
• If there’s a lean to your dog, fix with a short flank command.
• The next steps are the following – with Kathy’s classic drawings:
1. Verbally, without body english or stick work, get the dog to balance up with a flight zone around the sheep for you and her.
2. Start a drive, but only expect about two steps, then end it with a stop or a flank fetch command.
3. Now it’s time to stop the lean  of the dog (who wants to go to head) with flank commands by watching where you go and helping the dog get it.
4. To start, there will be big flanks that start and stop the drive until the dog fixes herself with no flank commands.

More Advanced Stuff:

• Even if it looks nice, never let the dog cheat the fence line on a take pen.
• As dogs get more advanced, “Out” means “Just relieve pressure” and you let the dog make the call how (turning out of flight zone, slowing down, which direction to turn, etc)
• “There” should literally mean “bring her to the hole in front of you, not to me, wherever I am.” I wonder if it’s helpful to practice using the command with gates and panels to help the dog understand the point of that.
• Teaching shedding
• Start with a person doing the shedding and just let the dog hold the sheep on their end, like a wall, the fine tuning comes from the person.
• Two steps is all it should take to create the division, then call the dog to you. Then let the dog put pressure on them to separate them, but it will fry their brains to let them do that. Have them hold only one group, but do it nicely.
• It’s tempting to drill the heck out of advanced dogs and fine tune them, but remember that you also need to work on things to relax them or that fine tuning will amp them up – do NOT over train. if your dog is doing great, let it be fun! Think of advanced training as times tables. It starts to REALLY suck if you keep forcing the issue.

Cows and Ducks and Sheep–and a video of the stickwork practice.

Stephanie is on vacation the next few weeks so I’ve got just cattle and ducks to work and so that’s a little different than what I’m doing on the sheep.

Which, when I think of it, is pretty interesting. You don’t really work on the same things on the same stock. You work on sheep to get the fundamentals down with your dog and you, and then there’s this whole other ball of wax with the dogs on cattle and ducks.

The ducks make the dogs’ brains fry. They’re used to fetching and driving and having the animal move away faster the closer they get. Ducks don’t do that. They quit and ask the dogs to eat them. I can see value in having dogs learn to work ducks because it has to teach them that heavy pressure isn’t always best. Having watched a lot of stock runs, this is true on all stock – and usually if stock goes sour, it’s because heavy pressure flips them from flight to fight.  When I work the ducks right now – I generally am just looking for the dogs to get a feel of it and take my obedience commands, whether its driving a little or fetching. I can’t run into the dogs to reinforce “out” because the ducks won’t tolerate me, either, and that’s why you have to get those fundamentals down on sheep before you do serious work with ducks, or at least I think so. ESPECIALLY if your dog wants to chomp them. Since I have chickens at home and these are MY ducks, I’m more confident if I cause a little duck nip once in a while – the dogs aren’t very prey-drivey with them and seem to nip them a bit to see if they’ll do something rather than try to really do anything to them. I think they get they’re helpless and don’t need real toothing. Soft mouth for the win.

On the opposite-but-same spectrum, you’ve got the cattle. Cattle are “like ducks” in that you can’t do a lot of “get in there and correct.” The dog either takes what you want her to or not. The last video, as  Dustin said, I was wanting Rippa to just figure it out on her own, but what she was figuring out was that she could do whatever it took to get the cattle to come to me. (I want to say I’m happy about it – her first exposures to cattle she wouldn’t go to head – now she loves it, so hey). We don’t want that “Whatever it takes.” Plenty of cattle people do want that and I’m glad I’ve got dogs that will figure that out and do it, but we want more finite work. Dustin is always reinforcing the concept of “If you’re able to put a dog anywhere you want, you can get a lot done. Wild cattle or not.” So that’s what we’re doing there. That’s why I spent the last few visits with them working their goats and sheep. We need Rippa to understand what she needs to be doing fundamentally better before we put her back on the cows and can’t step into them because, well, they’re cows. They’re huge and can be dangerous when you get cavalier and too focused on the dog.

A commenter asked about my May 7 posting – could I show some video about the stickwork I described there.

Basically, I didn’t ever do ground work to teach the dog what the stick means – they are usually just picking it up during lessons, but the Woods suggested I do that to get some more performance on the dog when working. Their dogs see the stick and immediately turn their shoulder away and head in the other direction when you do what I do in the video.

First, I picked Fury because I haven’t really worked too much on her with that – her big issue was the stick in general so when I work her, I don’t use a stick at all, just my body. I show you Rippa because she does it really nice . . . but for whatever reason, probably me videoing, you don’t see the turn shoulder and leave in an arc. You could reinforce it by having the dog on a line – but normally they do what they’re supposed to – in both cases, the dogs just decided to leave the front yard after I did it. I wasn’t working with them, I’m talking to you, so they weren’t having it. Best I could do without help.

Kathy Warren Clinic and the Impact It Had on Us

If you’ve been following along with us – you’ll know that I signed up for a KW clinic as part of a drawn out “empowerment” move  that also caused me to go get Rippa cleared for breeding to know how much of an investment I was looking at with this. People were telling me to start trialing but I didn’t feel like it was a good idea – but this farm trial came up and it was a lot of pen work – something Rippa and I really excel at, so I was like, “Maybe.” The thought of my first trial in years, with Rippa, being under KW, my mentor, made me a little sick, so I called the person I knew who felt like that – Trish Alexander – and she said lay off trialing and take a clinic with KW instead. So I wrote my check that night and sent it in.

It gave me some concrete things to work on, too. I wanted to fix our outruns and be ready to start the driving process because I kind of stopped right at that point when I retired Fury.

I have tons of notes I need to get down at some point here, but I’ve been slammed with work and having an awesome time so it hasn’t happened yet.

Here’s the basic gist, though:

1. I started the clinic horribly. It was like taking a million steps backward and Kathy razzed me that I didn’t start out the way I did at home, and she was right – I, for whatever reason, checked my senses at the door and handled like crap. One session of working on that, though, and we had it back together.

2. I buggered the sheep by working them wearing a skirt. Yes – I do work on occasion in skirts with shorts built in – it was hot. Big lesson learned that when going to a trial, you really need to be looking like something the stock are used to seeing.

3. I got to see some border collies start – and they look like Aussie starting. You’ll remember I had a bit of an existential crisis a few months back about this. It made me feel a lot better about everything – especially watching Trish tune Rook up after her litter and not seeing them work for two years since the California ASCA Nationals. Rook, friends, looked amazing, and so did Trish. Every bit as good as the Woods’ dogs. Time + talent = a good dog, no matter what the breed.

4. I basically got reinforced that I need to be more aggressive with Rippa’s outs and basic commands. By the end of the weekend, she was doing pretty well and Kathy started having me call her off the top and apparently I’d broken the system there – the last work of the clinic found me working Kathy – stopping her with the stick and learning new body English. She chastized me, “I knew you had to have broken somewhere down the line, this is it – you could do it before!” But after a few repeats of that, I got a “Good girl” for putting the stick and myself in the right place and I called it good.

The proof of this clinic is in the pudding, though. As I said, I have scads of notes and Kathy did some drawings to show me the next steps for driving – I spent as much time as I could watching the more advanced dogs and trying to “get” those problems, too, since I’d not really paid attention in the past because I wasn’t there.

And then I took Rippa to Stephanie’s on Monday – four days on, yeah? But that’s what I had. She did great – our sorting work was great. Stephanie has weaned her lambs so there were new mammas in there I wasn’t supposed to work, so I had to do a lot of sorting into different pens to get the sheep I wanted (and two sets, one for Fury and one for Rippa) – no problem. I really love how helpful Rippa is with that stuff. I’m not sure why but the functional chores make me really happy – especially because she’s so good about it.

Worked Fury – and I actually got her to slow down and balance up a bit, so that was awesome. Neither dog made it very long compared to usual – but it was a pretty draining weekend.

Tuesday, I went to go work on the duck management and the Best family said I could totally saddle up their horse and take her for a ride. I thought that was a good time to try the dogs out (they’ve been encouraging me to take them for rides, but I didn’t want them to mess up the horses and get people bucked). It went pretty well. I tried to bring a rope to toss at them if they were bad, but my horse was scared of the rope so gave up on that idea. Just kind of yelled at the dogs and when they were really bad with the horse following us (no rider, so more stock-like), I’d just chase them off from my horse. They need some more work to stop trying stuff, but I think it went well.  Living the dream, right?

At least, I think so. I am feeling pretty blessed to have these rich opportunities and I am starting to feel like I’m living totally according to what I’ve been wired to do – feeling the flow, seriously.

And then finally, I went up to the Woods’ today for a session and they kept me on goats – after watching me on that cattle video, I was like, “I give up – I don’t know anything – do with me what you will.” And so they put me there to work back on fundamentals instead of teach her that she can do whatever she wants to get the cattle to me. Rippa absolutely killed it compared to any other work she literally has ever had. She got out, did nice out runs, stayed off the goats . . . it was like both of us clicked.

Dustin had me give some driving a try and I was like, “We’re not going to get much, I’m just warning you.” But, between the both of us, we did pretty great – Rippa took her little finessy mechanics commands to fix her inside flank and stop when I asked and I got out of the way most of the time.

More notes there, too, and I got to watch them start a 2.5 month old puppy and get a sense of that, but that’s for a later time.

I think the goal is to start going to some of the cattle trials around here, learn a thing or two, and hopefully be good enough to go with the Woods to a trial in October and give it a whirl.

So, on track to start thinking about trialing in the fall – and really hitting that goal of helping be an emissary for Aussies in the cattle ranching world if this keeps up.

I’m feeling pretty blessed that Rippa seems to be able to do whatever I want with her now. We’ve got our relationship worked out and her confidence is really getting there. 

SPARKLE!