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!
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