I keep this blog mostly for myself to track what I’m doing and thinking and to just get it down. It’s public because I figure some people can get some good out of it here and there, and also so many people have helped me when I had issues after I posted here.
This is one of those posts that’s definitely a mix of both.
First, The Fury ruptured her CCL (ACL in humans) and we decided to go ahead and get the TPLO surgery on her so she can get back in action. I had a feeling it would happen. She’s an athlete that does not really think much about what’s happening with her body because her head is in the game. The older she gets the more I worried about it, but I’m of the school of let them enjoy it if they do. She blew it cornering on sheep, but she could have easily done the same thing playing fetch.
She’s an intense little dog for a 12 year old and I have a feeling that unless something horrible happens, she’s still got a lot of time with me left and I’m not going to let it be hurty and depressing for her. So, she’s got hurty and depressing for a few months instead.
They say they have a 50% chance of blowing the other side and “the vets don’t know why that is,” but as an athelete with some decent sports medicien knowledge . . . it’s pretty obvious. If there’s a weakness, it will get exacerbated. A dog limping on a limb for months and compensating and then going right back to hard work without therapy and probably some ongoing work is totally going to compromise the weaker side. I’m feeling pretty good about things on that end, but again, she blew the first one in the first place and the plan is not to restrict her fun when she’s ready.
I set her up in a pen in the office and she is sooooo sad and it’s only day one. We’ll get through it. So much for trialing her in January! Oh well!
When we dropped her off for surgery, we then headed over to the Woods to work some calves. I am sure I’ve mentioned this before, but the Woods are always switching out their livestock to keep things fresh which I love. I’m so used to people keeping a set flock of sheep and just replacing older ones, but this new stock all the time does a lot for me and the dogs on the handling things. There’s no getting used to patterns. It’s different in some ways and similar in others.
What do I mean? Well, the animals are different so a dog and a person can’t settle into, “Oh, well, that’s how I work THAT animal” mentality. It’s the same in that the stock handling principles become really apparent.
I work my chickens pretty regularly with the dogs, too. When the Spring comes, grasses stop being dormant and start popping up everywhere. In my old house, I’d just let them loose to mow the lawn and let the Fury hold them from going into the street or bushes, but in the house, the grasses pop up in the mulch and fake riverbed in front, so I pulse graze them with an ex-pen.
The neighbors love it. Seriously.
I generally use Rippa for this because the mileage has paid off and she is really good at moving them faster than me alone while also team working it with me.
Anyway, the point I’m making is that a day after Thanksgiving, one of the neighbors came over with me herding them into the pen and asked how it was I was able to herd them at all and I told them about this hobby of mine, and it’s true. There are basic tenets of stockmanship, that, once you understand it, apply to pretty much everything. Watching the eye, understanding pressure and the direction things will flow in avoidance . . . Chickens aren’t hard to work at all if you know what you’re doing and they’re not tame enough to blow you off. In fact, last year a bird flew into the house at night and could NOT figure it and it took me settling and realizing it was heading toward light sources, so we just turned off the lights, opened the door and had the porch light on. Fixed.
Anyway . . . we’ve got Rippa entered in a trial in a month and my main focus right now is getting her to mind me more responsively (aka, “Down” when I say down, not after five or me yelling) and take pens, because I don’t practice that a lot, no real good opportunity.
Both of these hinge on my ability to chill out. I get pretty yelly instead of being consistent and it’s not good. And I also put a lot of pressure on the dog in the take pen. Looking at photos of me, I can see that I probably just need to get out of there.
So, we went to the Woods and Dustin worked with me on getting Rippa to just be easy. Reality is – she gets uncomfortable when she’s faced up close to a cow and I get why. Her instinct is less to run than it is to fight (which is good), so she will take pressure to a point until she needs to break loose and hit something and run to relax. It’s fine with me, that’s something we can work with, but it’s a fact. Our session consisted mainly in having Rippa learn that chilling while facing stopped cattle can be okay, both in the pen and outside.
We have a free-standing pen and Dustin and his dog would work one side and Rippa and I would work another to repen them when she pushed them out and again. After an hour of this, we were getting really great teamwork together and Rippa was starting to get that it’s okay not to bust stuff up when something moves.
I, on the other hand, got a solid reminded to think more.
Dustin asked me with regard to the pen, where I should send the dog. At Kathy’s, the way the pen was set up, it was ALWAYS on a go by and lay down at the back end. It was the lowest pressure way to get them out of the gate and into the arena. So, I never thought much. That’s pretty much how all of the take pens I work are set up, so I told him.
“No,” he said, “Look at your cows.” The heads were facing counter clockwise outward. If I opened a pen wide and sent her on a way to, they would pop right out. If I sent her clockwise, they would have to turn around and probably cause a little dog fight in a tight space before coming out.
OH NO! I KNOW BETTER THAN THAT! Once he realized I wasn’t thinking like that, he started asking me before we sent her in to take them out. It was a great lesson.
During the team work, I also learned something important on my end. I was using Rippa to hold one side and me to hold another while helping her get repositioned, but twice when a cow made a break for it, I would run laterally in that direction and it would spook and overreact, and then Rippa would.
“You did that,” he says. “Next time, don’t move laterally, think about moving out and back and then laterally.” (AKA, don’t cut my corners, but square off when I take the pressure, like we want our dog to do.)
Again, I SHOULD KNOW BETTER. Shannon says it’s a lot of me worrying about the dog and my handling will get better when the dog gets right, but it was a leap forward in sensibilities for the both of us this time.
Dustin sent me home with toy stock to set up some stuff and practice my strategies. next post, I’ll probably share that with you.
Or, maybe it will be observations from this weekend’s horseback trial. We’ll see!
Me backing up to take pressure off, Rippa minding herself, too.
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