Week 2 - Going Okayer

The house dynamic is so weird now. Like, nobody is sad because Rippa's not gone permanently, but The Fury has gone FULL LASSIE on the babies and feels the need to be with them all the time, circling, nudging, keeping them from leaving, etc. It's kind of annoying. We used to have to yell at Rippa for this and now it's Fury. She seems a little lost.  Also, the house is so clean. I don't know why. She must just roll in the dirt all day and bring it inside.

Anyway . . . Friday rolled around and I made my second call to Sherry about Rips. My cell phone reception is bad and I tried to play it off like it wasn't, but I might have missed a bit with her as a result. We bought a booster because it's seriously impeding my ability to work these days and it's all fixed now. :)

Anyway, so I am feeling somewhat better about my own handling hearing about how it's going with Sherry. I thought for sure she'd be like, "Well, here's someone who knows what she's doing, let's kick some ass," but she's giving her all the trouble she gave me.

Sherry says that it can be through bad handling as well as some of what she's seeing is just in them. Specifically - her top is flat. I think this is because of bad habits and what not and obviously Sherry hasn't seen how she started, but she has a theory that it's conformational/genetic and that she's been breeding away from it. She says, "think about it like a quarter horse is fast on the straight and a thoroughbred is fast on the curves." It's an interesting perspective that I literally had not even considered. Time to do some research!

Anyway, since she is her mother's daughter, and I trained them both, it's kinda hard to say right now what is her and what is me. People ask me if sending her to Sherry is something I regret because she's not coming along that fast - no. I have realistic expectations of what one can do with a dog this far along in training with my handling. What I DO know is that Sherry knows what she's doing and I can never make excuses for myself or her - what she is and what Sherry can get out of her will be what she is. And if I choose to breed her and who I choose to breed her to will be well informed. I care very much about the path I have in this breed, and that's invaluable.

Anyway, she says that Rippa really needs a lot of round pen work to get her habits better. She didn't take her "out" or much of anything, and if timing wasn't right, she'd take it out on stock, which I knew. I quote, "she is a heat seeking missile." Yup.

The big theme of my bad handling is that when she's bad, because I couldn't emotionally or expediently fix it, I'd lay her down and get my bearing, and so Sherry's having to stop her from laying down but instead fix her own mess and not lose the stock. The goal is to get her to be rounder and move out wider. She's not that naturally a wide working dog, but combined with her fast and intense up the butt style, she has a lot of power and needs to learn to work with it.

Basically, what I'm getting from Sherry is what I knew: that she needed a smaller arena with more dog broke stock to work some of this out. Going from a round pen to a huge area just didn't work for us and while no one's handing me a gold star for doing what I have with her, I'm giving myself one.

It's been interesting hearing that she's not handling pressure in alleys and tight spaces because that's exactly what I've been doing with her. That and just taking sheep for walks. Sherry says it's like she's never had that. Maybe it's a new handler and new situation, or maybe I was bandaiding bad foundations and it worked "enough" for us.

She thinks what little trialing I did that made her be mechanical didn't hurt things. She was like, "So THAT'S why when I told you to just let her work, you wouldn't." That this week is all about working her with loose reins and earn trust to take care of her stock. "You can't work this kind of dog with your guard up," she told me.

If you have followed my path with her, you know this has been a major issue with me. Stockdog training is so hard, but it is also therapeutic. Rippa is truly a gift. I have to learn to work her and all my future partners with my guard down and my trust high.

I miss my brown dog. I hope she's having a nice time.