Trial Entered, goals to work on.

Last time I considered entering a trial, the thought of it made me a little sick, to be honest. This time, I’m reasonably sure I’ll qualify, and I might actually do well. January 4th – so long as I get in. Sheep, ducks, and cattle. And, I’m even entering the Fury. That latter idea might be a bad one, but she’s pretty good – Rippa is better, and why not? Nobody’s going to kill stock, and I can come out of it with more experience and some titles for both dogs.

So now I have have to work on some things that I haven’t: take pens. The course is basically – collect your stock from a pen on one side of the arena, collect the stock wherever they end up once they do that, walk the dogs through panels on opposite corners, and put them back.

I can totally do this with both dogs. But not well, not 100%.

We don’t have taken pens to practice with except with ducks. With ducks, I have it dialed. I went to look at Stephanie’s set ups today while both dogs waited and I basically have a choice of an 8 x 8 panel free standing pen, that weird collection pen with a corner in it, or some big pens that are not “take pens.” I decided to go with the 8 x8 pen, so today was about center pens for both dogs and then taking them out.

Normally, I just have them go on the opposite side of the pen and it goes nicely. But with take pens, the dog is supposed to go in there. That is a very tight space for dogs, me, and sheep.

Kathy trains take pens by having the dog go in on a long line and learning to circle and stop opposite the gate on your command. It’s too small for a long line and I debate using a leash with Fury because she is just so amped that she is good and then if the sheep look at her, she starts heeling and not thinking.

I tried a couple things like having her circle outside the pen to work off the stress, but really, I think I just need the Fury to work on impulse control a bit. I had her grazing chickens the other day and she was whiny and vibrating the whole time with desire to do more than sit there – Rippa, however, has been working a lot more and more often and she’s getting more patient about stuff.

That’s the other goal- work on both of their impulse control and command taking.

I’ve stopped working on Rippa’s drive since the duck quitting and we’re just going back to basic fetches, fixing outruns, and working on finite handling understandings. It’s really fun to watch her work stuff out without me saying much – though she still gets excited and starts getting pushy and I have to correct her.

When I trial, I have to think of it as more a training session than anything else or I have the potential to go backward from what I have got. Rippa made her practice run quite nicely, but she would get excited and push too hard and had to clean things up. Fury is always excited and pushing hard but my strategy with her is to just down her way off her stock because she’s so intense, her control is from very far away. The closer she gets to me, the more intense she gets. That’s bad for the take pen. But we’ll get it sorted.

I’m also working on introducing whistles. Right now it’s just “down.” I whistle, then yell down. Both are getting it, but I think they believe it means more “HEY PAY ATTENTION!” right now.

But that works. It’s sparkly.

And finally, just as I was finishing up the last outrun with the Fury, she comes up lame and won’t walk on her left rear leg. Noooooooooooo.

I’m super sensitive to the fact that she’s almost 12 and that knee injuries can be kind of common and lay a dog up so I have been very careful with how she plays with Rippa and does other stuff to watch this. She was coming in too hard to stop a runaway sheep and the ground at Stephanie’s is pretty rocky, so she probably came down wrong. I’m hoping she just tweaked it, but she’s hopping around right now and I’m worried. I’ll give it a day or two and if there’s no improvement, to the vet I go. I keep poking on it and looking for pain reaction but she’s not giving me much so I’m hoping it’s just a tweak – we all tend to do that. And now she’s banished to the down palace in our bedroom. Tough dog life.