Last week, Rippa was super flirty with the Woods’ dogs and sure enough, she’s coming into heat. Not standing or anything, just flirty . . . I hadn’t thought much about it until Dustin asked me last night about how I felt I was doing and what my goals were.
I told her about the ram incident and how I was pleased with her, but maybe her confidence was bad. The last work I had on ducks and sheep before going there, she was a mess. She stopped wanting to take flank and Way To suddenly meant WAY AWAY OVER THERE. She was doing great on sheep and our driving was going well, but then her mind just seems to drift.
I mentioned she was in heat.
“Well, that could be some of it?” It’s true –I forget. Cranky pets and cramps can affect it all.
So yesterday we did some exercises. Dustin had me work on getting her outrun cleaner and just thinking and slowing down. He also put a big emphasis on me working on my own stockmanship. I did a couple send outs, but then I had to make Rippa stay while I moved the cattle. They aren’t as light to me so it was a lot harder. Then he had me do some obstacle work – get them around trees or hold them. You’ll see me trying here, but Rippa’s not precise enough (or I am not timing it early enough) to get them to settle right where they need to. He says it shows me holes in training, and it did.
Something I’m noticing from watching these videos (there are a lot of them, you’re just getting parts that illustrate a thought) is that Rippa is doing a lot better than I think she is.
I told him that I thought she was lacking confidence. She seems slow and not engaged to me. This, ha ha, is what Rippa thinking and working seriously looks like. I don’t see the Woods dogs working like that (they’re typically fast moving and responding) and Fury doesn’t work like that (I broke her, plus she’s just a lot more intense naturally), so it’s hard to watch Rippa go about things slowly and not in a “snappy” way and think she’s working. But watching it third person like this – uh, yeah, she is. She isn’t even that slow to respond. It just feels like it handling.
So here I am trying to get Rippa to get the cattle in the area between the two feed buckets up by the camera. It’s not super smooth because I’ve got to put some training on her where she doesn’t take things.
There’s parts in this video where I think she’s blowing off a flank, and she’s not. It just doesn’t look wide enough from my perspective. At the very beginning, I lie her down and she takes a step to turn and face the cattle – staying in contact with them – which in hindsight looks like good instinct against my bad instinct. I need to command her earlier so she can do things like that and stay in control if I’m going to obedience the commands out of her.
I haven’t been using obstacles in training much because I’m working on commands and instinct, but he added some goals and it did indeed show me things to work on for both of us.
Today we went to ducks and sheep and Rippa did a perfect started B course with me. That’s all I asked for today and that’s what we got. Fury did a decent one, but the ducks were hot (I used the whole flock, which is currently down to 7 since one died mysteriously, two wouldn’t work so I sold them, and one is in my backyard with pins in her leg). I had them hang out in the kiddy pool for a bit and started over: golden success.
Went over to Stephanies and did sheep with Rippa – sorting is a real challenge these days, so that was good. Rippa had a hard time keeping them all together for sorting, but we got it done, and then practiced driving again – going really well. I’m not sure what changed but I think both of us are getting it (and off the fence, too).
Fury had to sit out sheep this time because someone else came to rent and I was in the middle of business calls so figured it was a good time to bounce.
Really happy with how things are coming together and really, really glad I video taped the works so I could see where I needed to fix things.
And now: your moment of happy family zen.
No comments:
Post a Comment