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!
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