It is starting to come together!

Remember how I said I needed to work on outruns and take pens? Hmm.

So, following yesterday’s cattle runs, I took Rippa and Fury out to Stephanie’s for sheep this morning. I was SO tired. It was a late night accidentally and I could barely keep my eyes open. Perhaps that has to do with it.

When I got Rippa going, on new sheep, nonetheless (not our usual heavy ones – we usually have a rough go of it when I take CA along – which I did today - because my heavy sheep are occupied), things were pretty much close to perfect.

I decided to work on her outruns, but found that she was naturally turning her shoulder out and going out wide without me asking. If she turned in too much, I just had to lay her down and ask again and she’d go further out. If she was going too fast, I just had to ask her to be “easy” and she’s slow to a trot. There was not a single out of control moment. I was doing outruns from 50 meters away and I never do that.

When we did fetching, she balanced up super good and if she got too close, it just took a “no” for her to get out. The sheep actually lined out instead of bunching up because she was chilling out enough to let them naturally cruise along.

I credit this monumental leap in training to Shannon and Dustin (though mostly Shannon lately). They’ve been having me put a little more obedience on her – and ask for more than I usually would – when I work with them. The day before, Rippa was worried about going to a cow on the fence and buzzing, so we had to lay her down before she got close enough to really get in a mess and since the stakes were higher with the cattle, she was down with that. I think that she found that taking my commands kept her safe and helped her be calm and she carried that forward with the sheep today.

The balancing up on the fetch I also totally credit to a method she taught me where you lay the dog down and walk ahead of the sheep, letting them drift and not letting the dog get up until they need to get up because the sheep aren’t feeling the pressure. No commands, you just lay the dog back down if they get up too soon. Otherwise, the dog is allowed to get up and work, and as they start moving faster you slow them down with either a down or an “steady” and if they take it, work continues.

I’m trying it with Fury, who has had a very hard time balancing the sheep because of bad experiences. She works ducks and cattle fine (no, my 11 year old dog isn’t on cattle anymore), but sheep is issues because of my bad handling in the past. Once she gets that relaxation thing and the game, it should go well, too. Pretty neat.

The other thing we “worked” on was take pens. I don’t have a really good take pen setup at any place. The ducks have a full trial setup now, but it’s hard to practice take pen skills on ducks because the are different from other stock and the take pen is so small. That said, we have inadvertantly been doing that because the ducks like to mash in the corner where the door to their enclosure is, so both dogs have learned to be patient and how to get them out of that corner.

Rippa’s been doing pen work via sorting her sheep out at Stephanie’s but it’s a smaller, weirder setup than what you’ll find at a trial. I figured it was good enough to try it today, so I did.

The first go, the sheep got packed into the back of the pen (it’s not square, more like wide on one side and narrow on the other) and Rippa couldn’t get enough space to get around them. Instead of telling her what to do, I let her sort it out. The sheep would stamp at her, and after trying a couple things, she went outside the pen, got into a bow and gave them ugly face and a little bark and they made space. When I got her back in the pen, they came out and she was nose-to-sheep leg, calmly waiting for them to file out. We did it three times before I was satisfied we had that dialed and. . . that was that.

Sometimes I feel like I’ll never get there – so much power and drive and so little perfection on my part and then my dog goes and shows me she’s getting it. It’s one day and she will likely get worse before she gets consistent, but it’s in there. We got this.

Psyched!

Going to work ducks tomorrow and sell my obnoxious call duck and one runner that just refuses to work. Next week we are off – the huz and I are going to do some epic canyoneering and climbing in Yosemite. Give the dogs plenty of time to think about this awesome week.