A Break and a Visit with Sarah Martin of GS Ranch

A couple weeks ago, I started a TransCanada trip with my best friend, Lisa, who was moving from Yellowknife NWT to Halifax, NS. I flew into Calgary and our first stop was visiting Sarah Martin. We've been talking a while about what makes a good dog, training, etc, and I wanted to mine her brain. She and her husband generously hosted us for dinner and gave us a place to sleep overnight, and Sarah and I talked for hours about dogs while poor, bored Lisa looked at her phone.

The thing I love about Sarah is that she gets where I'm coming from, has some interesting new thoughts and tools that she suggests, and she's doing what I want to be doing in terms of cattle dog programs. I wish to God I'd thought to whip out the notebook during our chats, but she's got some videos and when I get on sheep, I'll show you some of the things she showed me.

One of the things that I appreciated about the visit was that I've been so unsure of how much of what's going on is me, is my dog, is bad training, or what. After her showing me videos, I showed her some old videos of Rippa working and as we're watching, I'm like, "Wait, she's not that bad at all. Wow."

Sarah looked at what she saw and kind of showed me how I'd created certain problems, made me feel a lot better about other things (like how she wasn't confident working out in a large herd at the Wood's ranch) by explaining how that happens and what to do about it. I came out of that night with different expectations and a happier outlook on things. I really am starting to "get" more about how to use the dog's instinct, how to stop looking at it as a pretty photo, and the importance of "teaching the dog" without judging it.

Anyway, I like my Rippa bear quite solidly now. She's a good dog, she just has some handicaps thanks to me, and I feel pretty confident in saying that now. If I can just fix myself and be consistent (easier said than done), I think we'll be trucking right along.

Now that I'm back I'm going to try to double down on stock lessons.

Today we went back after a couple weeks and Sarah's video sessions showed me I need to video and evaluate myself more often. I thought Rippa was so out of control, but when I watch it afterwards, she's not, and I see what I do to cause that, too. I need to stop being lazy and start changing my mind.

So here's the video we got of her first work. Her second, the phone overheated so . . . eh. It got a lot better when I started out babysitting her, she quieted down, calmed herself, moved out instead of into the stock, and I was able to execute an obstacle without too much trouble until she broke it when she felt like the stock were going to run (fair enough., at least for now).

Shannon noticed that she seems to lose it on the outruns at 10 and 2, precisely where I'd kick her back if I was doing half moons. It looks like I need to go back to some basics and do the daisy chain thing that we did on sheep when starting. I think I can make that happen as long as I'm watching my cattle.

And that's the other thing. I really need to get more stock savvy. I know I work WAY better if I watch the sheep and ducks, but on cattle, I really watch the dog. Time to stop doing that, because I feel like Rippa has enough cow sense to make decisions and I can read the cattle enough to know when she's wrong, too.

Habits: help Rippa early and be consistent until she makes good choices 100% of the time (aka, not for a while) and watch the cattle. Watch the dang cattle!!

Side note: poor little dog inhaled so much dust that she's been puking up dust foam for a couple hours. Ooops. She needs a little bandana (as Shannon suggested) or maybe needs to learn to work the cattle at a WALK?.