Shannon and Dustin Wood with their mentor, Merle Newton of Crystal Rose Cowdog College. I wish I could have gotten Sandy in the shot, too, but she seemed to hang back the entire time and never give me photogenics.
So where did this photo come from? This week I took hump day off and audited a Curt Pate cattle handling clinic at their suggestion (notes in the link).
One of my first thoughts was, “Crap, man, I don’t even know how to ride horses that nice. I’m going to mess them up.” Mainly because Dustin says they’ll put me on his horse come this fall when I go trial with them and I’m used to lesson horses. It’s going to be a WHOLE OTHER ball of wax compared to ASCA trials where the goal is for you to just sit at one end of the arena and command the dog. I mean, yipe!
They both assure me it’s way easy once I get the hang of it and they’ll get me practiced up when the time comes. I don’t know if they assume I’m an ace-rider or not, but I hope they assume not and it’s that easy. I’ve just started riding again after 15 years off . . . and I was doing hunter-jumper stuff primarily then, definitely not cattle work. (Though I did totally go to a camp when I was a kid to do just that.)
I’m way into the whole cattle horse thing now, too. That’s a whole other ball of wax compared to trail riding or doing some jumps. It looks like Western-style dressage, and with an end purpose to it.
Anyway . . . lots of thoughts rolling around in my head.
I got a chance to rent sheep this week and work ducks, and go to cattle with the Woods.
Sheep – sheep went really well. I tried this technique Shannon had me practice last time where I lay down Rippa and walk out ahead of the sheep and she needs to stay put while they drift with me. When they stop, she’s allowed to get up. It took a few minutes to establish the rules, but it really got her minding the sheep and me well, compared to the constant “out out out” pushing I had to do. We were doing it all over Stephanie’s field, fencelines and not, and she didn’t break once. She’s getting more and more self assured – but still takes a bit to get the confidence to work out further from me. That’s okay. Baby steps. We’re still only just starting out.
Ducks went super nice, too. Now that Rippa gets the point, it’s almost automatic from the pulling them out of their housing to the take pen, then putting them out to the take pen, and put thing them through the obstacles. I only just introduced the chute and Rippa was like, “OMG, this is a take pen. I go to the top and hold them, right?” We’re working on that. I also don’t really have much experience with obstacles because Kathy likes to lay down the foundation without that stuff. So, I’m working out the best way to navigate them and where to put Rippa for clean runs.
Cattle went really well. We warmed up on goats and sheep and she was super good. She’s still a lot more power than I want for them – it’s so hard for her to just dial it back a bit, but I’d rather have power than not. I can control it, but it’s never just a casual stroll to start out. Shannon put us out back with the obstacles this time and said I should fetch the cattle to the arena and then pick an obstacle. Which, I did. We put them in the take pen. Some of it was ugly, some of it was great, but the ugly stuff wasn’t Rippa’s work, it was just that she’s not precise on the commands and neither am I.
So that’s my job from here on out – stop working on being relaxed now and start demanding excellence from Rippa. I feel like my cattle handling’s weak still, but Shannon agrees that I should work on Rippa first ,because once I can relax that she’ll take all my commands when I give them, then I can work on me. She’s not bad. She just takes too many steps and tends to want to test me. Shannon stopped me and told me I needed to give stronger corrections, and when we went to start the next round, things changed even before I did. Rippa must have sensed I meant business, and it was NICE. She was thinking and she was obeying.
So, precision. I still don’t love her outruns yet. Just gotta do it a million times. Outruns can set the tone for the whole thing so I need to get it down. It’s really the weakest part of the link, and I think its because Fury was SO easy to teach in comparison that I didn’t have to work as hard as I do with Rips.
We also need to figure out how to do formal take pens. Rippa is good at chore take pens, but she doesn’t know how to do a little trial one – the last thing I want is a “thank you” at the start. Nobody has a formal setup to practice that so I may have to travel when I get close to trial time and practice it somewhere else. That’s good for me, too.
All in all, I’m pretty psyched. It’s coming together and my confidence in myself and my dog is beginning to climb. I just might be ready for this trial stuff soon.
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