Broken Ducks, Rattlers, Goats, and Cattle–oh my!

This week was nothing if not exciting. In order of least to most, I’d go with this for stockdog land:

• My attorney met with us to discuss corporate structure and tells us – get this – that it would be a smart investment, based off of what we’re up to, to buy a farm. HE IS THE BEST ATTORNEY EVER.
• Rippa got to work cattle again after time off of them to work on fundamentals. She did good.
• The ducks, myself, and Rippa almost stepped on a baby rattle snake when practicing our center pen. Jennifer, the gal that takes care of my ducks for me when I am not out there (which is not often), saves the day by beheading it.
• When putting the ducks away, one of them gets  her foot caught in a gopher or snake hole and breaks her leg. This isn’t that exciting. The fact that I somehow got convinced to leave her with the Wildlife Center to get four pins installed to fix it is. We named her Lucky Duck.

Let’s start with the most, because I know you’re dying. I’m not a bleeding heart – I’m not. I literally was like, “Well, there is a 4th of July BBQ coming up, but it would be a shame.” So I called my husband who didn’t know what to do. So he had me call my friend who is a surgeon to see if she could set its leg. She couldn’t, so she called our friend who works with wildlife rehab and brought her down. It’s broken really bad, confirms the vet there, but we should get x-rays. That’s where it starts. She’s currently in the wildlife center recovering from surgery from yesterday. You can judge me, but it was probably going to be a dog or me if not a duck so if making a donation and getting a duck surgery makes me feel better about the whole thing, then there we go. A lesson learned and I feel good enough about it to share, right?

Here’s the X-Ray.

Bruce Nelson made me a poem, even:

You fucked up raking,
And and came close to a duck baking
The vet said ah shuck
Thats one fucked up duck.
But for a few bucks, we can unfuck ducks.
No need to baste a duck, down on his luck
With a pin, a stitch and a nyunk nyunk nyunk ,
We will have the duck unfucked with just some luck.
So be kind to a duck, it brings you good luck,
And as Rickles would say, carry on you hockey puck.
Glad his quack up can be fixed.

So there is that.

I’ve been kind of down in the self-esteem department with the dogs lately. We’ve been working by ourselves for two weeks because both the Woods and Stephanie were out of town last week, so it’s just been ducks. Which has been plenty of time for the dogs to realize that they can cheat me by coming in too close to the ducks for me to stop them without smashing a quacker and grabbing them. Again, they grab them pretty light, but they’ll do some jerky stuff to them now because they’re used to it. I really wish I was a better handler and they never get chances to do it, but I’m not. So basically it’s a pattern of the dog starting off nice because they are cautious, losing the inhibitions, and then getting ratcheted back to nice – or so I think it goes. I’m in the inhibition stage so that’s what I worked on this week and then a duck broke its leg and I felt like a bad animal keeper/handler to have let it happen.

You have to understand that I have a LOT going in my life. I’m not a simple person remotely. You can’t expect a lot of attention to detail and perfection out of me because I’m always in about three places at once. The stockdog stuff is pretty much the only time I’m focused on just that. That or climbing are the only things that make that work, aside from meditation.

So, now I’m going to spend tomorrow in the 100+ degree heat raking out the duck pen and finishing the fences by pounding t-stakes in and just DOING IT RIGHT instead of cheating and calling 80% good enough. I don’t regret this attitude, it makes me extremely productive, but stuff like this can happen.

So . . . anyway. I was feeling a little like, well, what am I doing here, really, when I drove to the Woods’ tonight.

Shannon and Dustin are incredibly supportive and mellow. I really appreciate their entire vibe. We’re holding babies, their kitten is hopping up and down on my thigh, there’s a bunch of dogs tied to a fence, but it’s all good. We’re close in age and from the same area and stuff so it’s really different from my usual stockdog land where I don’t have a whole lot in common with dog people. Common friends outside of dogs, we both used to work on the same ranch, etc, etc. It puts me a lot more at ease so I knew I’d be okay. I also told Shannon how I was feeling as soon as I got there and she, in her usual way, was just patient and good natured about it all and reminded me what to work on and away we went.

We’re back to using the big stick again – fundamentals. Two steps forward, one back. But getting a lot out of it. I don’t think Rippa is taking her outs great but I’ve been working more on my handling than worrying about hers, because, well, BIG SECRET – YOUR HANDLING MATTERS MOST.

I’ve also tried whistle training a bit now that I can do it well enough. Fury was like like, “That’s cool – where’ s my treat? This must mean “down.”

Rippa was sure that stuff in my mouth and weird noises meant the apocalypse was coming, but she would try a little and get her treat but . . . let’s just keep our distance and see what happens for a bit, shall we? That’s Rippa. Not stubborn, just wary until she understands. I was talking to Fury’s breeder, Tracey, about it and she reframed it in a cool way: “Self-preservation instinct.” Fury is like, “What is it, let’s do it!” She’s missing a lot of teeth from being a little too easy to commit to stuff, too. Rippa hangs back, generally gives the side-eye to new things, and then as she gets it, then it’s fun. Doing weaves in agility used to make her cringe and now she lets little barks out while she guns it for the poles.

So, anyway, the sheep/goat runs weren’t superb in the scheme of things, but we’ve only been working ducks, but good enough for Shannon to say “BRING IN THE COWS!” again after many weeks off of them.

And, well, Rippa has some learning to do about how to manage them more efficiently because there’s a lot of wasted power and bark right now, but it’s also a lot of me not handling right. Dustin tells me as I go in, “Now remember your rules are still in effect. Expect on them what you expect on the goats.” And these cattle are SUPER gentle so once I got comfortable enough to go through them to get to her – it went from a little too much yahoo, to one good reinforcement and Rippa settling down and keeping them in good control.

She still is a real strong header, which makes me happy – as I remind you again, she started out not willing to go to head. This means she’s probably just as strong heeling if she needs it since that was her first instinct during first exposures. I think, like her mother, Rippa’s going to shine most on cattle.

One thing I don’t like about cattle that I’ve seen with her is that her hits aren’t great – she aims too high. I talked to Shannon about this. She’s probably seen cattle now as many times as Fury has in their lifetimes, which is not much – probably 10 days worth of exposure total – and big spaces in between. Would she settle out and not hit as badly? Shannon: “Maybe” though she sounded more “yes” than maybe. We’ll see. It’s not fancy heeling I need to see, but “self-preservation” heeling would be nice. Especially since her Slash V lineage is pretty well known for good positioning hits, it’s got to be in there. In time we shall see. At least she hits, right?

And, well, I feel pretty good. Rippa settled out tonight really nicely when I got my stuff together, the duck is on the mend, I’m committing to put the work in to make my duck arena nice, and we’re moving forward.

Oh, and I buried this one a little intentionally because I know the anti-AKC people won’t be thrilled at this bit of news, but I have to try . . . I found out Fury’s full sister is somehow AKC registered and apparently there’s this “open AKC” registry where you send in a certified pedigree and photos of your dog and for $20, you get a registration back.

We shall see. It’s way too easy, if you ask me. No DNA (she’s parentage verified, fwiw – not that I was worried), no microchip, nothing. But hey. If it opens up options for me down the road for selling dogs or just a new place to trial (because why SHOULDN’T good stockdogs represent at USASA Nationals?), it cost me a total of $30.

The videos are taking forever to upload so I’ll post one or two here when they’re done.