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.