Cattle and record breaking temps

We took the dogs to the beach today because it was 85 at 9 am and waited until 6 to visit the Woods today. The entire area broke heat wave records (it’s always pretty hot around this time of year, and then hot in September), and our area doesn’t really have A/C because it’s not usual to get that high. Toasty! But that doesn’t stop good cow dogs!

Once again, Dustin ended the lesson by telling me that Rippa was way better than the last time she was there (two weeks ago) and I’ve only worked her once on sheep since then. Really interesting how she is learning is a really clear progression. Usually I’d expect one step forward, two back, at least once in a while, but she seems to “get it” pretty well now.

I feel like it’s time for me to “get it” on cattle, though. Granted, I’m battling Death Allergies right now and it took two Allegra and two Dayquil to get me upright after three days, but as I write this, I feel like I’m drunk. So, I felt better when I was out there, but I wouldn’t say I’m handling at my finest.

We started, as usual, with the goats, and Rippa did pretty well. My new homework is:

a – learn that when I throw the dog into an outrun and want her to change directions, I need to stop her brain (or, as Dustin put it, throw her into neutral) with a down or a there before I switch her. I’m sure I probably learned that a while back because it makes sense, but I certainly unlearned it.

b – it’s definitely time to start over flanking her and preparing her for driving. She’s AMPED on the goats still (far more interesting than sheep), but I’ll work on it harder on sheep.

They had me handle their dog, Cat, who is pretty much finished and I got a feel for how to drive, but man, it’s a thing. I have that clinic with Kathy Warren coming up and I really want to be ready to start that with her because I haven’t gotten there with the Fury so it’s not in my bag of tricks body-English-wise (intellectually, yes, but that means jack most of the time).

They also had the huz handle their dogs – he’s pretty good at it. He’s been paying attention to the commands so I’m very impressed at what he does have going on. I suspect he has no interest, but they want him to get involved, too, so I think he humors them.

We then went over to cattle and I think my main thing is to help Rippa learn to read them. She gets really excited in the beginning and stops thinking, but once she is thinking, it’s all good. I lose a lot of the control I have on her with smaller stock, but for now, like I said, better to let her learn to read her cattle. Again, some good things today. I can’t get her to heel the cattle, but she tends to want to wait them out to make them move and I’m up for her not being too rowdy if she doesn’t have to be. She’s a heading fool, though – but she does take my command to stay back so that’s getting better. It’s fun watching her think. It fries her little brain, though, and the works aren’t very long before she gets tired and starts looking for Yishai. This annoys me a little because Fury never quit, but I do know that once her brain stops frying, she’ll be good.

Interesting thing, when I tell her she’s good, she quits. I don’t know how it happened, but it’s her release word (I definitely didn’t train that – the huz noticed it and says she’s like that for lots of things so he never tells her she’s good). So, now I have to break myself of praising in that way. Oops.

So, that’s that. I’ll have video to show you (it’s not wonderful, but hey) soon, but I’m too “drunk” to focus on editing it to something useful right now. I think I’m going to lay down . . .

Sheep and ducks tomorrow.

Fury begins training again!

Today I picked up CA Sharp and Kira and we rode up to Creston. Rippa usually needs a lot of help on these days because we are stuck with lambs instead of heavier sheep, and I went into it thinking that way. Thinking that way mean I didn’t ask for too much out of Rippa and it had a surprise result – I got a lot more! Why? Less pressure  on Rippa = more ability for her to get things done.

I’d been doing stick work at home and man, that’s really fun. Once the dogs got it, I’d direct them through the house and it worked on sheep, too. I used the stick really clearly and Rippa took it – really clearly. We also working on our responsiveness – her downs got faster, she started facing out from the sheep and giving them her shoulder. I even got to call a flank or two from behind her. So much improvement from each lesson – it’s awesome. She gets me, I get her.

I was thinking I keep saying I’m lazy, but I should really cut myself slack. When I wasn’t lazy, I was INTENSE and it made training hard for both of us and Fury before her. By not being 100% on every thing perfectly, I was able to scale back my emotions about performance, and I think the result is “lazy” handling. That’s a fine problem for someone that’s been training too intensely for ten years.

It sounded like Kira’s lesson with Stephanie was going really well, too, and so it was. Apparently this was the best work yet. Kira finally gets that she has to listen to Stephanie or not work and she’s chosen to work. She only comes out once a month, so I was happy for CA because I can imagine being frustrated that each lesson isn’t ideal and then waiting a month, but she’s patient and kind of left me with the impression that she was expecting this, so yays.

And then, I showed Stephanie what the Fury had going on. When I asked her, Stephanie was like, “You really want to overwork an old dog like this?”

“Fury isn’t an old dog, she is every bit as fit and active as she was five years ago. Trust me. I’ll watch her.”

We went through the gate, I sent her to get the sheep, and she did it. Coming in wide and kind of intensely once they got into contact with them, but all I need to do was side step and walk into her and she was out again. Her go-by side is really an issue, and I remember me training that into her from terrible handling. She lays down when you tell her and she takes her flanks honestly.

Stephanie seemed pretty surprised, “She doesn’t work like I thought she would. She is definitely under control, and she doesn’t look like she wants to kill the sheep.” I told her that I’d retired Fury because she was too hard to control for me, but I never said “kill sheep.” The Fury’s never come close to that. I have to shake my head because I know someone’s been talking about me behind my back to her. I don’t know what disparaging my dog did for that person, but we’re back and we’re going to prove quite otherwise I think.

Stephanie asked me if she always worked that wide and I said, that yes, that was one of her things. “I like an Aussie that works wide.” Yup.

So, by not getting obsessed with results and knowing that I just have to watch my timing and show the Fury that I’m not going to fight her, I think we’ll have some real progress quickly if I work her every time I take Rippa out. I should keep improving on my handling now that I have two dogs with two different issues to work on. But I am very grateful to Stephanie for giving me the sheep to rent to put mileage on Rippa and to Rippa for being less intense than the Fury (which is what I wanted out of the litter anyway) which allowed me to get more relaxed in handling, because now I have none of the fight and aggression I used to feel when I started the Furball in lessons.

I know the Woods are open to me putting her on cattle, too, but I think at his age we’ll stick to ducks and sheep (not even goats). She may not be less healthy that she was a few years ago, but she’s not going to heal well if she gets stomped – that’s natural. She poked her eye on a plant a few months back and she’s got a little cataract in the spot because it didn’t heal that cleanly. (BTW, yes, the vet confirmed that’s what the cause was, not genetics).  So Fury probably won’t ever get her WTCh and I’m not putting any titling expectations on her, but it will be interesting to see how far I can get with her now, now that I have the opportunity to put real mileage on her with my new headspace.

I was supposed to go try to finish her elite gambler agility title and CD this weekend, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I think where I used to have goals of versatility championships, I’m just so much more interested in getting good at the stockdog thing, especially since I have every opportunity I had wished for (and didn’t think would come a year ago). So, you know, I know Fury can get her GS-E and her CD, and most people who have seen me trial know that, and what do I have to prove? Let’s do stock. All of us like that more anyway.

After the lesson, I took CA to the Best Family Farm to check on the ducks and give them some exercise. They are SO funny looking right now. They are feathered out on the stomach and sides, but they have fuzzy little mohawks down their backs and up their heads. They’re starting to quack more, too. I think they’re a mix of chocolate, blue, and black. Nothing super fancy looking.  I still don’t know the sex ration, but Trish tells me there’s a runner breeder up by her if I need some more girls to even things out. They are TERRIFIED of people and dogs right now, which is good, and QUITE gregarious. There’s a weaker one in the batch of 11 (they sent me a baker’s dozen, if you will, when I ordered 10) that gets a bit trampled so I’ll have to remember to sort it out when working. I’m hoping maybe legging it up will help it, but it’s seemed sort of weak from the beginning, not quite as upright.

I think in a couple weeks we’ll be ready to work them. As it was, Stephanie’s lab/BC Obi got to show what he had (run wide, go to head, lay down) and it helped moving them around the field, with Kira pushing really hard to get in there. I left my dogs in the car, but in hindsight my dogs would have probably done a better job moving them controlled than two PSYCHED dogs with no training on them. As it was, it seemed pretty low stress for the ducks, but they were TIRED.

Fun times ahead, I think. I took home my bean-pole bottle stick. Stephanie had hid it during her Jack Knox clinic this weekend and between my better handling and Rippa taking the stick pressure and me seeing that Fury does NOT need stick pressure right now but freedom, we’ve graduated off of it. I have never been able to do that in ten years of stock training.

I’d say that is a red-letter day.

Oh, and PS, the vet called and told my huz that Rippa scored in the high-eightieth percentile for Australian Shepherd hips – meaning that she’s got excellent little hips and likely won’t have any issues in the future. I’m really glad I went with my gut on that testing stuff. Time to do the rest of it now that the main concern is out of the way.

Second lesson on cattle at the Woods’

This afternoon, I loaded Rippa up and we paid Shannon and Dustin Wood’s little spread in Atascadero, pretty much on the same road I use to get to Stephanie’s sheep rentals, just the opposite direction. Highway 41 is the big win in stockdog land.

I’m still feeling out how to approach the Woods’ lessons. They’re pretty open to me just doing my thing, but also super psyched to help me out and I’m trying to learn when to do my thing and when to take their advice – my thought is generally to listen to what they have to say, give it a try a couple times and I or the dog aren’t getting it, to go to what we know and ponder it. I think it’s working.

For example, Dustin had just built a round pen on his property (a dang fine one, by the way – post-holes dug and strung tight) and he says since they put it up, they’ve been using it every day. They like to warm their dogs up on it with their goats before putting them on cattle, and work on fundamentals.

Rippa and I haven’t been in a round pen in forever because of how Stephanie’s set up is, so we gave it a go, trying some outrun training handling advice but not getting so far so I went back to what she and I know well.  Basically, again, is that the message is, is that I’ve been lazy.

With Fury, who naturally took her outruns pretty easy from what I remember, I never really had to worry about the finesse of starting them (for example, laying them down with their shoulder to the stock so they’re facing the way you want them to run), and so with Rippa, who I had had so much trouble starting in the first place, I have been letting just laydown facing them. No more. The Woods got on me about consistently asking for it and it would come. Good. Thing #1 to work on. Okay.

I should also note that working with them, with their dogs, I feel like the laziest trainer ever – their dogs take commands. Rippa takes the suggestion and I have to handle her harder. Partly, Rippa’s never been fast on the response during stock and I was happy to get what I got, and partly I am being lazy. There’s no reason I can’t get the same level of obedience out of her at this point, so I need to start working on my expectations of her trained behaviors. She’ll take ten feet to down, five feet to stop, and a while to “get back” or take her flanks. I need it now and I need to remember to make sure I get it now. It will help her outruns, too, if I an get her to stop and take her flanks. Thing #2 to work on.

Shannon talks to me about how I really need to train Rippa to respect the stick. She shows me with her own dog on a leash how if she points the stick at her dog (off stock), she’ll immediately turn her shoulder and try to get out of her space. I take the stick and poke at my dog, who looks inquisitively. We laugh. This is a really big point to me because when I worked both my dogs, I saw the stick as the enforcer and direction giver, and both Stephanie and the Woods see it as a little something more. I’m not sure I’ve seen Kathy Warren do the kind of stick ground work my BC people have suggested, but I may just not have been “seeing it” back when I was regularly taking lessons. Either way, thing #3 to work on.

We then moved into the cattle. They’d recently lost one of their Holstein heifers so picked up some replacement beef calves at the sale. Dustin said they hadn’t really been worked or dog broke yet so if we had to separate them out, he would. Well, no worries there. Rippa went right to them this time and got to work and they stayed just fine with the dairy cattle, with one red heifer seeming to always get herself out and chased back in – but I’d also say that she was also doing that because Rippa was too tight and pushing her out to start.

I started Rippa by just having her walk up their heels to keep her easy and cranked down (because Rippa is PSYCHED to actually WORK CATTLE) and once she started lifting them off the fence, we started the real training. The Woods’ have a lot of panels set up in their arena for finite obstacle work and to use to help teach the dogs to work in that kind of pressure, so I was able to use the panel to send Rippa out wider than I could without them. Once she figured that trick out, we had things pretty much dialed to lift them and fetch them to me. 

Despite me starting her at the heels, Shannon observed that I should send her to the heads, and so I did, pushing her back after they turned. The one time I didn’t was the one time the fetch didn’t work out, so I learned a really good lesson there for my dog – despite her early starts being more heel work, she’s got big head instinct and to let her use that to feel in control.

The other thing that the Woods taught me was something I definitely wouldn’t have thought about . . . what happens when your group divides? In the beginning and occasionally toward the end of the lessons, one or two of the cattle would break off. This blows Rippa’s mind because she has a really strong sense of group but she’s also a bit insecure about working without me at a distance on the cattle (and I mentioned this is an issue on bigger distances with  the sheep, too). She doesn’t know whether to come into me with the lots of cattle or to go get the ones she wants to. So Dustin told me, hey, if she has a group handled, you go to the other one. Doing that makes her feel secure and she’ll think better and just bring the cattle over, which she did. In the same vein, if I have a group handled and one lone cow, if I want her to bring that cow to the group, just walk up to the cow without saying anything to her and she’ll go pick it up and then I can walk back to the group. Generally you want to follow the “bring the many to the one” rule I like to live by, but if you have a relatively easy straggler, man, that works so well.

Well, it works so well if your dog has the instinct and power to do it, which, hey, sparkle, mine does.

When we finished up, Dustin was very effusive about her, “She did really, really, really, good. That was really nice. By the end there she was getting them out of the corner, biting them where she should be, and 100% better than the first time in there today and way better than last time you were here.”
That means a lot coming from them, as they’ve got some very, very fine dogs and their handling is beautiful, quiet, and confident.

Rippa’s improvement is pretty in keeping with how it’s been with her. Once she gets it (or I do), she gets it pretty thoroughly. Having done what we did in there with half unbroke calves and only our second time on cattle in almost a year . . . I can confidently say we’d get through an ASCA started course, no problem. Maybe not get the highest score out there yet, but like her mother, she’s definitely more a cow dog. All that power and grip she wants to use on the sheep and goats stops being quite as stress-gratuitous on cattle and she settles down really easy and reads her stock.

No problems walking up on their heads if the cattle we standing, lifting out of corners patiently, lifting off of fence panels. It was pretty dang awesome.

And it looks like I have a standing weekly date with them if we’re both available. Can’t wait to learn more. Better get started on that ground work.

Back to Fundamentals . . . on both dogs?

So today, I went out  to Stephanie’s with the goal of working on Rippa’s fundamentals. I sorted out the heavier sheep and basically worked on her flank commands and getting her to both take her out and downs faster. And, of course, her outruns. I had posted this blog last week and Carol McLaughlin suggested I basically just do more fundamentals work with her and take smaller baby steps, which sounded about right so here I am.

We entered the arena really calmly and got ourselves set up nice for the outrun practice. I started facing her with the sheep behind and calling flanks and looking for her to turn her shoulder out to me and make a wide circle. When she did, I got next to her and did the same. Then I went behind her and had her come around me. It works. I tested it by going behind her and sending her but fail. It’s clearly just going to take some mileage there, but I could see the gears turning and I think I’ll have it where I want by the end of the month.

Then we just did stuff like I described above – simple, easy things with heavy sheep so I could easily get after her without losing them and without worrying so much about my handling and timing.  When we were tired, I put them up in a small pen and then got out the lambs.

The lambs are soooooooooo squirrelly that I wanted to take what she got from the early lesson about taking my commands and such and use it here to show her that when they freak, it’s not as useful to freak her self, either. It worked pretty well, but man, Rippa really has to charge those lambs to stay in contact and I have to work on my end because they’re pretty scared of me. Lamb work doesn’t last long because the little guys just give themselves a ton of running to do.

So, Rippa put them back up and went to water. I was going to work her again with the heavy to leave on that note but the huz had convinced me to bring Fury and I wanted to see if what I saw last time was the same. I figured five minutes off some outruns and balance work and putting them away would show me what I had.

Sure enough, like last time, Fury still has her nice outruns, takes her flanks, and works wide. She downs really easy, too.  She just comes in way too hard if I try to do balance work on her. I had started out with the big stick (I don’t use it much with Rippa any more because it’s made me get better at handling to use my body), but I could clearly see that Fury was so used to fighting me and my job was to show her that I wasn’t here to do that anymore, so small stick it was.

That made her relax a lot more. I didn’t say anything to her when she came in too tight and fast, I just kind of got out of the sheep’s way and pushed Fury around. She was getting it after a few minutes and I daresay in a few sessions I might be able to pick up where we left off and get that Started Sheep leg I need.

The key was giving her tons of space to not feel constricted and me not being hyped up about how she was dealing. It was just basically me watching where Fury gets worried and doing my best to show her she has nothing to fear. I’m actually really, really impressed with her. She’s so much more responsive to me than Rippa is – Rippa’s more a chore dog to Fury’s ability to finesse when she calms herself down.

So, we’ll see if Stephanie is up for having me rent sheep for a second dog. We talked about it a bit last time I saw her and it seemed like it wouldn’t be an issue.  More $$ for me, but I’ll feel a lot of satisfaction being able to both let Fury do something she LOVES to do and also being able to come back from the bad place we ended things. How many people have the chance to take their first “broken” dog and go back and make it right? That’s a real opportunity.

And what happens on Wednesday? Cattle!

So where are we at with our goals?

I’ve had a hard time making all my priorities work. I’m training for an adventure race (12 solid hours of biking, hiking, and kayaking) and stuff with work and such is making me choose between training Rippa and training. I’m slightly annoyed with myself, but I have been choosing dog stuff over fitness.

I guess I’m annoyed because in my personal life, I’m a super dog freak. It’s not a mutual admiration society and I never talk about my dogs or other people’s dogs. I talk about rides and work and climbs. And I don’t climb or ride as much as I want to.

Of course, I also didn’t get any stockdog training whatsoever for a few years there so I’m pretty psyched right now. The drive out to Stephanie’s is super gorgeous with poppies, lupine, and mustard just blanketing the green hills. Stephanie is fun to talk to, her dogs like me, and Rippa is psyched. I feel really bad for Fury when I pull out of the driveway with Rippa, but that’s the breaks. I talked to Stephanie about working with Fury and she had the same main concern I do: that I won’t be able to relax with Fury and that will be the issue. I think I need some time to work until I’m totally good with Rippa.

I know I’m not TOTALLY good because Stephanie’s property has rolling hills. When Rippa doesn’t listen, my yelling at her echoes back and I feel bad for the neighbors. It alone seems to help me calm down because I don’t want to. So, bonus there.

I went out the last two days in a row and didn’t have the greatest works ever. It’s not that Rippa’s not doing well, even. I think it’s to do with me. I’m getting better and better outruns on her – I’m starting to get the knack of slingshotting her and then going to the sheep, and she’s starting to understand that the only success she’ll ever get is when she goes out wide if we’re using lighter sheep.

But two things are annoying me now –

1. Rippa does not take flank commands if I am behind her. It’s totally situational and I feel like I have to obedience the hell out of her to get her to do it. I’m kind of hoping that the outrun work will help, but right now she runs around me all wide and then tear-drops and comes in tighter when she approaches the sheep, which makes them fan out and then her run hard against the last one or split them if I use all Stephanie’s sheep (I try to mix it up. Small batches, heavy, light, and big flock). Looking forward the the KW clinic I signed up for at the end of May to see what she does with me to fix it. I’m sure I “know” what to do but need reminding.

2. Totally related to the above – Rippa is SO insecure about working independently of me. This is the same behavior that makes people think Rips is stubborn, but I know better. She’s not. She just . . . JUST CAN’T HANDLE THE PRESSURE! The pressure, I think, is me. I’ve been going in the afternoons and it’s about 70 degrees out. The sheep and Rippa get tuckered faster than the 50 and 60 degree mornings. After we’ve picked them up and worked on outruns, I invariably start working on distancy stuff – having her pick them up on the other side of the arena, or look back if she missed one, etc, and it’s like . . . she can’t. She tries, gets up over the crest of the hill, looks at the sheep, looks at me (I can’t see the sheep), and eventually comes running to me. It’s very, very clear that Stephanie’s comment the other day that I was “making her right” has a lot to do with this. And it’s probably why Rippa is so good at pen work. When I tell her she’s right and help her be right, she’s happy. When she has to go out on a limb, she’s really insecure about it.

I don’t worry too much about it from a functional standpoint, though. Per the usual, I think Rippa just needs to figure out what I want and it will come. I might just be putting too many expectations on her. I am not sure. We had gathering around that crazy take pen where the sheep live dialed and now she can’t seem to remember to get out to bring them to me unless I position differently.

Again, I can’t be lazy and I can’t get mad. I’m not a great trainer (yet?) and this is my second dog, and she has only had 6 months of twice-a-week training on her. I had her driving sheep around the arena and fetching them to me today to a point where I think I could fudge an open run on super heavy sheep, so looking back from that to when we started in October or so, yays all around.

I’m on this Facebook group that’s mostly border collie people who ranch called Cattle Dogs Only.  As I said before, being on there is pretty illuminating. The most interesting post so far has been the question: “What do most people expect of a well bred working border collie with 60-90 days work in them. Starting from knowing nothing but being leash broke and being friendly.”

Given that I don’t do the straight training each day, I had to sit back and think about how many days I have on Rippa now. The blog is pretty faithful to my training. Lately I haven’t written every day but every week because nobody, including me, needs to. But if you count up the blog posts, I’m at 90 days. Some of the posts have nothing to do with whether I worked or not, other condense, but I’m probably at that window of 60-90 days. So, clearly, it’s been interesting to see people’s responses.

The basic response was “It depends on the dog” but the gal who seems to be the one I most respect says: “within 30 days of solid training I expect the dog to be pretty useful, unless the dog wasn't yet ready to handle training or isn't the type that can learn the way I teach, some just need to learn by being used. Put the initial 30 days on them to get a good stop and a basic understanding of their job and send them home to be used.”

Well, I would say we’re at that. So . . . yays me.

This response: “Well bred dog at 60-90 days, I'd say the dog should have a good outrun, know to and off balance flanks and be driving well. Dog should be gathering decently and be doing real jobs. Should have experience on fresh stock.” Not there yet, aside from the real jobs and fresh stock.

It’s cool. I think it’s dangerous to say that in x amount of days a dog should be doing something, though it would be interesting to mark it that way if you were consistently training dogs of a certain age to see how long certain ideas take hold.

Sheep looking good (on video), duckies getting ready!

Today the huz and I dropped by Stephanie’s to rent some sheep for a bit and then head out to the Best Family Farm to finish up the “Duck Fortress” (it cannot be called a “coop”).

As I have said before, training just isn’t linear, is it? Last work I had – we only had lambs again because I was with CA Sharp and she gets the heavy sheep for lessons while I rent unattended. I was thinking about doing a farm trial at the end of May, but it was so ugly that I really thought better of it. Plus, Kathy was judging.

If you haven’t had to be judged by your mentor, you won’t get what I’m saying when I felt sick thinking about it. You want to do your mentor proud, your dog proud, etc, so there’s a lot of pressure. One person I know who totally gets how I feel is Trish Alexander, so I called her up and she convinced me to wait until *I* felt ready despite everyone telling me to trial now when I’m out at sheep. Them telling me got me off my butt and getting ducks and a cattle situation, but I still want Rippa’s outruns better – and I want her to work as well on lighter sheep as she does on heavy sheep.

We’re at a weird stage now where working heavy sheep bores the crap out of her so I do a lot of chore work, interspersed with tweaks to work on stuff, to start her out mellow and then add lambs later so she’s working a larger group and having to pay attention.

It went so well today – so quiet and nice on both our parts that even though the huz doesn’t like videoing, I ask him to. I’d just had a slam dunk penning job and thought I’d video what I was doing just then to show you, and also get an idea of how I look from the third person.

The pen work is not a slam dunk because I didn’t set it up right (lazy, so lazy), but I knew she’d get it done if I just helped her, and she did. We haven’t really practiced penning. Rippa is just really good at these sorts of jobs. I think we’d done it twice before and both other times it looked this nice if not nicer. She even knows to go around to the other side of the pen to push them out – and in this case the sheep didn’t come in and I asked her to “get em” and she totally knew what I meant.

The handling after the pen work isn’t great on my part, either. My stickwork and body language aren’t helping things.

If I’m not getting what I want out of Rippa, it’s because, again, I’m lazy, lazy, lazy.

She was pretty over these sheep so I added in the lambs again, but as I was, Fury came over unattended. I guess Y had her off leash and she’d gone to the bathroom and he was occupied with cleaning it up. Fury hasn’t been on sheep in a very, very long time. She popped in unhurriedly, and I downed Rippa because I knew I’d have to handle Fury on her own here to keep it calm. Sure enough, Fury does her bat-out-of-hell method of going up to the sheep and then picking them up and bringing them to me, but it was so nice! And she was so wide as she started getting into me! I popped her on the head with the stick to get her out, and she took it – going really wide and suddenly being very biddable.

She still has that “RUN AS HARD AS YOU CAN” thing that I accidentally taught her years ago, but I felt totally in control of what was happening and that I could totally handle her and fix it with time. I don’t know if I will or not – I’ll need to talk to Stephanie about that. But . . . it was interesting, it was SO CLEAR that Fury was so much more comfortable in the arena compared to when we had her stuck in the duck pen back when I was doing lessons with her. It seems like if I had just got her into the arena and then relaxed, I could have fixed it pretty quick.

Of course, I’ve had a lot of miles on me with Rippa since then and have learned to CALM DOWN a lot more, so I am quite sure that’s really the element that was missing. It was pretty sweet, however, to know that I’d come along far enough that I felt like I was easily able to handle Fury. I was tempted to just use her to put them up but not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I called her in and handed her off to the huz and finished working Rippa.

It was  a pleasant surprise all around, even though, you know, oops for letting Fury get in there in the first place.

And then we went to duckies.

It was time for their first grass and sunlight so huz and I set to fixing up the fortress for them. And man, they loved it, snapping at the weeds and grass.

The dogs were pretty excited.

Fury got a tiny round of working them before we went home. I’m not really sure when you can start working them for real, but I figure I’ll wait until they at least look adult-ish. I think three months is the magic number? Will do research. They’re currently three weeks.

The fortress:

A Little Interlude About Breeding Screenings

I worked Rippa this Monday and it went awesome. I used all of Stephanie’s sheep and since she was doing so well, I thought it would just be kind of a “chore day” where we went in and out of different pens and field options she had. Lots of opportunities for us to see where we’re at and what to work on. Rips needs some distance work because she’s lacking some confidence there, but she did some great lifts that I wouldn’t call “outruns” but I’d take it if that becomes her MO. She just kind of walks calmly up to the sheep, takes a side, waits for them to move, and then starts fetching them to me. Not the “Border collie” field outrun I think we tend to train for, but super useful and using her own smarts rather than obedience training to get it there.

Anyhow . . . so this whole week I’ve been kind of angsty. As part of my, “Don’t let things hold you back,” I decided to start up the breeding screenings to see if even thinking about pursuing breeding her was going to be in the cards. I got the DNA verification kit and sent that off, and next was hips and elbows.

I feel like, since this is my blog and I like to be super honest, that I feel really funny about health clearances. As I’ve gotten into this thing, I really feel that if I’m breeding, it should be to do outreach to local ranchers and provide working dogs to the cattlemen. And, to a cattle man, usually breed and pedigree and such don’t mean a thing. Most people do not ask about health clearances. You will hear about those things from people in “the fancy” – dog nerds such as myself who speak a certain way and share information and really just . . . it’s a hobby.

Ranchers? Does the dog work? Will it live for a good while and stay healthy? Does it have the temperament I want? That’s usually where the conversation ends. Rippa and Fury both have a proud lineage of dogs owned and bred by these kind of handlers, so not a ton of information on health clearances behind them. It was interesting choosing a sire because of that – many people feel that without that information, it’s a crap shoot, but I feel that it’s not – if these breeders answered affirmatively to the questions above, that’s miles ahead dogs with allergies and early cancer and debilitating dysplasia. It’s a risk I took.

So, yeah, it’s funny. I’m going all out to do the clearances, but the people getting dogs from me aren’t so much worried about it. From what I see, interacting with ranchers who’d buy the dogs, the more I have that stuff available easily, the more they think I’m just a show dog breeder, so I’m actually not going to make the info that available on my site (which I’ll need to redo) unless asked. But, being diligent, I’m going to do it anyway.

So, to the hip xray development.

We have a vet in town that I specifically go to because they’re supposed to be “the best” for breeders and they do hip xrays without anesthesia. I’ve had my troubles with them for a long time, but I still stuck with it because people told me to long ago and I tend to just go that way unless otherwise prompted. Fury got her hips done and came up “Good” with OFA and that’s all I needed.

So, Rippa went in last week, and despite some issues I had with how weird they were being, “Oh, we might not get the images we want, please clear us to use anesthesia, really, we prefer you to use anesthesia” etc for people who are supposed to be good at anesthesia.

And then they sent me the films. Her elbows look really good, but her hips? Uhh . . . she was tilted. But without asking, they just sent them off. At first I tried to be chill and just let it happen because, of course the OFA people would see it as less than ideal, right? But then I posted it online and everyone said to make them retake it.

I pointed it out to them and they offered to do so. I made an appointment, but being me, I spent a lot of time sitting on the computer reading about OFA readings and comparing the films. And what I got was this: the quality of the films is totally dependent on the quality of the people taking them. One website I looked at, one I’ve very much respected for years has a whole article about how a dog can go from dysplastic to not depending on the way someone shoots the photo.

And I’m supposed to trust a vet that sent in bad films to begin with? So, talking to a friend, I decided to ask for a refund (which they gave me) and look into other options. He suggested I look into PennHIP, since now that I was armed with the thoughts in my mind about subjectivity regarding OFA readings.

PennHIP, looking not just at the classic dog-with-legs-extended view (which is supposed to evaluate formation of the joint itself and any arthritic signs or deformities within it) also measures how the joint seats. As someone with terribly lax joints (two surgeries and bad knees right here with this gal), I can appreciate that. The laxity of the joint is something that can definitely cause problems and it’s more scientific: it’s a measure that’s taken and then compared to animals within the same breed. You can actually have a specific goal to breed toward and it’s from a sample that’s sent in whether the people getting the results like it or not (aka, more reliable).

And so, despite costing me 3X more (and I’ll never make it up in breeding), I felt a lot better about that. Science, always.

She had to get anesthetised, which really freaked me out, but the vet did a great job explaining it to me and making me feel okay about it.

And here we are, with a fresh set of images, a not-dead-dog (though she’s a bit cranky since coming home), and a lot more peace of mind. The vet sat me down for twenty minutes, answering all my questions and pretty much demonstrating that he’s a huge geek for PennHip and I made the right decision.

Want photos?

Here’s her elbows from the first vet:

And here’s the OFA shot with the legs pulled down from first vet:

Here’s the new one:

So, uh huh. Quite different, don’t you think? Dr Shechter said if I sent in her hips to OFA she’s probably rate Good to Fair because the joint could sit a little more in there, but that at 4 years old, no sign of degeneration and he thinks she’s got healthy hips for his taste. Good news, considering some people, upon seeing the first shot, were like, “Hmmm, crossing my fingers for you” which made me more than a little worried. Fair’s just fine in my book.

And, more interestingly, here are her other shots

This is a compression image – where the dog’s hips are set into the joint to show how they fit.

And then:

This is the laxity shot – they put the dog’s up as if she’s standing there and measure the movement from compression to this position. It’s then set against a percentile within the breed (aka, some breeds might have more lax joints than others) of all that are submitted (and anyone using PennHIP is submitted, whether the owners want it or not. The average percentile for Aussies, from my research, is 47. Percentiles 30% and below seem to show unlikelihood for development of hip degeneration, so rooting for that.

He suggested I send the hip in for OFA so buyers used to OFA will be satisfied (same with elbows), but at this point, I’ve got the films, and I’ll have the PennHIP eval, and I’ll just educate people. I’m a little freaked by OFA at this point and I’d rather not buy into it unless I really have to.

Either way, a nice, complete picture and a satisfied (albeit poorer) customer here.

Side note: the new vet, Dr Schechter? That last name is Hebrew for “slaughterer.” Hah. I’m also friends with an ER doc in town named Dr. Slaughter. Accident or NO? In Judaism, there’s a teaching that people are born under a blood sign and can end up as murderers but when directed right, they tend to end up in farming or doctoring. Wive’s tale or SOMETHING TO IT?

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.