Curt Pate Cattle Clinic Part 1: Two photo essays

I’m not going to pretend to know who Curt Pate is, aside from what his website says. The Woods said I should really go to the clinic, and audit it, so I did. Best $20 I could spend anywhere.

I was very impressed with his lecture and just his style. Everyone, from been-there-done-that cowdog trialers to Cal Poly animal science kids (oh man, throwback to 15 years ago fro me) felt comfortable with him, asked him questions, and he was just generally a supportive, congenial, and good sport. He had a balanced perspective on things and really did demonstrate really beautiful low-stress stock handling (or as he called it, “Smooth Stockmanship”).

In the first couple hours of his clinic, he lectured, and I got about ten pages of notes that I’ll get down, but I did something a little different this time because I had the ability to do so as an auditor: I took photo essays of a couple things he was trying to get people to understand.

So, away we go.

#1: How you REALLY move a herd

Generally, if you see people go out to get herd animals, whether you are talking about in a field or out of a pen, the way I have been taught (and seen it done) is to get the influencer (guy on a quad or horse or a dog) to go out, around the stock and way from their sphere of influence, and then come in from the top. Curt had other plans and demonstrated this.

Basically, it involves turning some heads by getting around them, and then just letting the rest do the work. Movement begets movement. Once a cow is turned, the other cow will see him or her wander and start to follow. You don’t get all the way in the back where you can’t turn the lead head’s cow, you get where you need to. And here’s a photo essay illustrating that.

He not only gets the cattle moving, but he’s able, at the end, to create a little draw by sending a couple behind the complicated panel setup and bend them into a chute without any support. Pretty impressive if you ask me.

#2: Working cattle like you are a dog

This part was interesting to me. Curt has a theory that today’s society makes us line up all the time so we think going straight’s a good idea but it’s not. Dogs wear because they’re catching the eye and pushing the cow, but a lot of times the human doesn’t do that and isn’t effective. So, whether you’re on horseback or whether you’re on foot, being aware of the power of wearing (and how the cow reacts to your position) can get a lot out of them.

You can see him bending the cattle using eye the way a dog instinctually does. The horse moves laterally instead of just directly at it.

Notes to come. I just thought these two aspects of stockmanship were pretty cool and wouldn’t have come naturally to me. Though I do have to admit I’ve seen the herd gather style work really well with my ducks in the take pen. They don’t want my dogs to come at them and then stop at the top. They will move right on out if the dog is just far enough to tip the lead duck and keep moving. It’s not “trial pretty” but it’s effective.

More to come!

An Interlude: What Should I Be Looking For in My Dog?

A lot of people have started to ask if I’m going to be breeding Rippa. Enough, actually, that I was spurred on to do her genetic testing earlier this year (all clear). But I do not have plans, per se, to breed her yet. I need to find the right matches for my goals and know that I have enough homes for my puppies. Rippa, like her mother, is not a great fit for everyone. My line is what I’d call “Advanced Aussie Home Only.” They have quirks, they need management, and they need someone who is going to use them. A couple of Rippa’s siblings ended up as purely companion dogs, but both of those dogs were the lowest-drive and lowest-energy in the lot. One the males we almost kept because he was just so sweet and cute but he was also the slowest and less drivey of the whole pack. Not my speed. Rippa was mid-ground, along with her red bi brother.

Rippa, I’d say, was a success of my breeding program. She has turned into everything I’d hoped to get out of my breeding Fury to her sire, Ben. But having two dogs in contrast, and the opportunity to work them both as adults puts it into a real perspective for me – more than I see from watching other people’s dogs perform in trials at different stages of their training. In fact, both dogs are about at the same level of training at this point and it’s interesting to see what I need to work with on both of them.

Something happened a few weeks back at the Woods that actually shook my confidence a little more than I should admit. They had a puppy buyer in who was dropping his dog off for training for the next few months and he was watching me work Rippa and offering observations. I think I’ve said before that I don’t do well with unsolicited advice.  There is this amazing article that articulates it, though I think few people don’t identify with that feeling of loss of control I get. I just don’t handle it well when I don’t know if I should be taking someone’s criticism or ignoring it. And generally, that’s all the time because I recognize the merit of everyone’s opinion.

One of the things he happened to say was when the Woods encouraged me to put Fury, who happened to be with me, on the goats and sheep. Fury’s style is much more “border collie-esque” – she shows a lot more eye, moves very snappy: sharp corners, quick response. She looks really, really good. He points out that he likes Fury a LOT more than Rippa because she “watches her stock.” Rippa’s a classic working Aussie – looser eye, less responsive. She’s also less intense than Fury – Fury works on instinct more than Rippa does. To a border collie guy, I get why Fury looks better.

But I was seriously thinking, “Am I wrong, is Rippa really not that great a stockdog compared to Fury?” As I said, I’ve had the opinion that I did a really good job in my matchmaking for the litter with my goals and that she was a better dog than her mother.

So, I actually sat down and started an audit process so that I wouldn’t let the outside opinion of watching a dog work for five minutes influence me that much.

I thought I’d share with you what I discovered.

My main source of information came from the Working Aussie Source Stockdog Library. Kay Spencer’s put together some of the best articles out there on stockmanship, puppies, etc. I stuck mainly to the cattle articles, reading everything pertinent and taking down notes. Cattle because that’s what I want my dogs’ strength to be – I want to be breeding cattle dogs. That’s what the demand is for and that is what they’ve been bred to do for generations. Asking them to be fine duck dogs is lovely, but the glory for Tara Aussies is in the cows.

So what is it I should be evaluating?

Let’s start with what I’d consider rule #1 – the less training a dog needs to get to the goal, the better a dog you have. As one article puts it, you could be training a poodle and they’re very trainable, but you’ll always have to be telling the poodle what to do. The end-all and be-all of a good stockdog (and a great strength of the Aussie) is that the dog should be able to figure out the job with minimal instruction and get it done with minimal help. Kathy Warren always described it as you at one end of the arena with your feet kicked up, drinking a margarita under the shade of an umbrella, while the dog gets it done.

Between Fury and Rippa, who is easier to train? Fury is more responsive – she’ll keep offering behaviors and doesn’t quit and stays happy, but she also doesn’t really “get the full exercise” at times and you have to fill holes in. Rippa takes a long time to “get it” and while she is “getting it,” she seems pretty morose about the whole idea, but when it clicks, she’s consistent and a happy worker. Fury responds instantly, while Rippa is slow, but that’s more because I think Rippa is concentrated on the job compared to Fury. I think if you weren’t a real “dog person” you’d give the points to Fury and probably get rid of Rippa if you wanted instant gratification, but I see merit in both. I’d like to take Rippa’s slow but complete knowledge mixed back in with a little more enthusiasm like Fury’s, but I’d say both are different, but good.

And what components beyond that trainability?

There’s generally two other I see in various writings:

• Desire
• Instinct

Both dogs have intense desire. Fury made it through many years of just terrible training by me and still wants to keep going. She both wants to help me and move animals and it’s great. She wants to do both so much more than protect her ego that we did better than I think we could have with a dog like Rippa. Rippa, again, classic Aussie, does not put up with BS for very long. She’s a great second dog (and probably a great first dog for someone with a mentor) because she works very happily and intensely as long as things are going well. If you’re putting too much pressure on her or she doesn’t like the exercise, she’ll quit. But if you’re not messing the picture up too much, she’s there all the way. Again, both of those things have merit in both dogs. I respect them both for their reactions so I don’t really want to call that one.

Bottom line: both dogs will work through pretty much anything. Neither quits when they get kicked or get yelled at for being bad. Very little is going to stop them from trying to work. Having worked with dogs where very little pressure stops the dog, I am quite happy with what I have and would be happy to pass it on.

So that leaves instinct – in which there are many different parts. Here’s what I’ve kind of come up with as things to look at, ordered according to most important to me to least:

1. Responsiveness to livestock (aka, can they read the different stock and adapt)
2. Bravery
3. Desire to dominate stock, not chase
4. Grouping
5. Rating or pacing self and stock
6. Heading
7. Heeling
8. Barking

Responsiveness to livestock:

I feel like this basically is the lead and everything else in the list follows. As a human, understanding the components of this needs to come with general stock sense – either being raised with herd animals and gaining it inherently or studying it through clinics, books, and observation. Examples of this include understanding what the flight zone is, how to manipulate it, where pressure can be removed and applied on an animal and how it affects it. Stuff like what I learned at Betty Williams’ clinic applies, too.  Just how much does your livestock see compared to what you do – is the cow really fighting the dog or just looking at it. Is the dog too tight in to affect the cow effectively or is she just surprising them? Does being really aggressive serve the dog and cow in efficient moving? Does the DOG understand these things – that is the point. And how early in the training does the dog understand it?

A good illustration of this is an early memory of when Fury was just six months old and I was walking her on the dairy part of my grad school’s campus. My previous dog had zero working instinct so what I’m describing needs to be taken into account. Fury, who was adorable and happy – and harmless- walks up to a friendly Jersey cow that I had been petting. The cow puts her nose down to look at fuzzy Fury and . . . Fury hits her on the nose. The cow and I are surprised but then I’m instantly like, “Oh yeah, that’s why I got this dog in the first place.” Fury wasn’t being aggressive prior to the cow, but feeling the pressure of the cow’s nose on her first encounter with a bovine, she nipped it. Now, after several exposures over the years, the same situation can play out and she doesn’t nip initially. She understands that it’s not needed if the pressure’s not on.

I don’t think you can really evaluate this subjectively when you’re in a situation like mine where you get limited and sporadic exposures to livestock. A dog growing up on a ranch with animals you’re moving might figure stuff out pretty dang fast, but a dog taking a lesson a week on sheep and then seeing cattle once a year . . . if the dog just instantly “gets it” – that dog is amazing. But they have got to be pretty few and far between.

I’d love to know if there ever were such “born” cowdogs raised in the above scenario. I watched a lot of dogs at Betty Williams’ clinic struggle because they lived in an urban environment. I see the same thing happening with Rippa. I’d had a year off from working altogether and Rippa just couldn’t get the “fetch” concept down, though she did get the “move cattle” concept. She gets “fetch” fine now because we’ve been working on it.

But then, how do you explain my childhood border collie/old English Sheepdog mix who famously pushed a neighbor’s cow back in the barn when she had never worked a day in her life and they had recently moved to a ranch in Kentucky. Perhaps she just was chasing the cow and the cow headed for the safety of the barn where she winters or gets fed or something?

I don’t know. I don’t have the experience to know.

I also think this encompasses the stuff like how far out the dog needs to be, how the dog turns and watches heads, etc. But all that should theoretically come with a dog managing the livestock effectively.

Bravery

Bravery isn’t bite and bluster. Bravery is standing in front of something scary and having the guts to hold it inside and regard the situation calmly. Bravery is the ability to take control of a situation despite losing propositions. Bravery is backing up the bark.

I think I told you last time that I don’t regard Rippa as the bravest dog – she takes her time in deciding whether to go headlong into a situation after observation and reward. That’s also a nice quality to have that allows her, after getting kicked, to calm down and start thinking instead of let instinct and rage the the most of her and over correcting, or fear and pain and giving up. Fury is brave, but she doesn’t have the same kind of control on her emotions that Rippa does on stock (or in general). Fury goes FULL OUT and ALL IN, but in many foolhardy ways that have left her fairly toothless in her old age.

But I also don’t think Rippa has 100% confidence or she wouldn’t take as many cheap shots on stock when I have my back turned. I always wondered why, but when I think about it in context of Fury’s ALL OUT ALL IN, that makes sense. Fury doesn’t have 100% confidence and acts before she needs to. It just manifests differently.

This is a weakness I need to fix if I produce another generation of dogs.

Desire to Dominate, Not Chase

This is an interesting component I read about as a defining thing to characterize. The difference between domination and chasing, to me, is pretty clear when I look at dogs I’ve worked with very little real instinct and dogs with lots. A dog with very little generally tends to bounce around a lot, they look like they are having fun. There’s not a lot of wheels turning, they’re just seeing animals move and having a good time with it.

That’s totally what this rabbit is doing in this video:

A dog really trying to DO something with stock is WATCHING it and making choices based on that. It’s trying to dominate the stock and control it, not instinctually just run it down and . . . lick its butt or kill it.

A sure sign of  a dog doing that is a dog that watches his stock intently, usually looking for the eye, seeing what they do, and then turning the other direction.

I was sitting there trying to think of a pure viewing of this since most well trained dogs can look like they’re doing it, and then I thought, hey, I have a video of the first time I put Rippa on livestock . . . and I watched it, and there it is:

It took a while for Rippa to want to fully engage with them, but look what she does when she does: she spends the first minute or so in classic Rippa fashion watching and observing and holding back, but when she does make a move, at 1:38, she picks a group, goes out around them and brings them back to the next group and at 1:45, instead of chasing them, she goes to head (and I try to kick her back because back then I didn’t really know how to start a puppy. I think I get that better now. Should just let her circle and reinforce her staying out).

At a couple weeks old – she’s DOMINATING, not chasing. Gold stars, Rippa bear.

Grouping

This is evident in the above video, too. The dog shouldn’t want to dominate a single animal, but  a group. It should be harder for us to train them to shed out a sheep or cow or two out of a herd than to get them to keep them together. Having a herd splattered all over is useless.

I’d say Fury is weaker here for sure. She regularly drops off an animal or two in the pursuit of getting the task done and ignores them and has to be sent back. Rippa is the opposite – it’s hard for her to ignore other animals that could be part of the flock. You don’t have to tell her to look back, she knows and does not like it. So, I like that.

Rating or pacing self on stock

I think you can lose a lot of the natural instinct here to bad handling. Fury always worked out further and balanced up naturally until I stopped holding up my end of the bargain and now she has a hard time dealing with that aspect of things, though I have to say, after only a couple times out on ducks and sheep, Fury’s doing a pretty good job of letting that instinct come back out and staying off them when they don’t need it.

Rippa can be very, very good at this, too, but I don’t see it coming naturally on the ducks or sheep unless I’m watching her. As I said, I think that’s more about her confidence/bravery than it is her ability to do it. In the video of her on cattle I’m going to post at the end of this entry, when she gets corrected by a cow via a kick, she paces herself pretty well to what’s really needed and doesn’t need me to babysit her.

I do also see her pacing herself with our backyard chickens pretty well. I think it has more to do with my timing and my handling than it does her skill set, but she’s a pretty classic pushy Aussie.

So that’s another thing I’d like to work on in the next generation – a dog that does a better job of self-rating him/herself on stock. That’s actually a big reason I chose her sire – his videos show him doing that as a consistent feature of his working style compared to Fury’s intensity.

Heading

Despite a start where Rippa lacked the confidence to head, she sure isn’t lacking it now. I generally can’t see where she’s aiming and if it’s a clean poll or nose shot, but it’s effective. She has the power to do it. She also has restraints – she’s not an alligator that’s just going in for chomps at every opportunity, so, so far I’m happy.

Heeling

Rippa heeled a lot when we first tried her on stock, but she really hasn’t needed it since other exposures so I’m not sure I’ve seen her do it as a mature adult, at least, not on cattle. When I’ve done pen work with her with sheep, she’s used it (and I’m always impressed at how judicious she is with it – she’ll try feinting and little, light bites before going for a full grip).  It’s in there, I’m not stressing it. I’m not sure how fancy and low it is, though. Both dogs tend to grip higher when I’ve seen them do it, compared to the spot you really want them to. It’s safer to hit the right spot but if it gets the job done and no one dies, I’m good with it – which is why it’s lower down the list.

Barking

Barking’s really interesting. People really hate it in a dog – you want a quiet worker. But that’s really situational. In an open field where you can see a dog and they have lots of room to move, barking’s not optimal. But in brush or tight quarters, you can both find the dog by hearing the barking and the dog can get things done without having to come in contact with the livestock.

Fury never had a ton of exposure to cattle so she was a pretty big barker – she’d punctuate every turn of the head with a bark. Kathy told me once it was partly her backing up her threat since she was so small, and I get that. Come at them like a ball of . . . Fury, and they won’t challenge the tiny dog.

Rippa is doing that barking, but when she starts rating herself, she quiets down, so I think she’ll be a judicious barker as she gets more experience.

So, all in all, I think I’ve identified the spots I need to work on from a objective perspective and satisfied myself in that my dog is pretty spot on for what I want to see in a dog.

I think it’s still way too early to tell how great she is, though, since she’s only been on super gentle stock. We’ll come back to all of this again when we’ve done rank, non-dog broke stock or worked cow/calf pairs. And that will come with time, too.  I’d say I think the foundation is good, at least.

And so here’s the video of Rippa’s second cattle work this week – I have all four works I had (goats and sheep included) in the YouTube link, but since I doubt you’re watching for my handling mistakes, I figure I’ll show you the final work when we’ve been fixing a couple things the first works.

Couple thoughts from this video:

• Rippa’s actually making really good arcs around the cattle. Bigger than I thought. Definitely time to start seeing if I can get that from further away.
• This goes double for the times we do an outrun and I’m too close to the cattle for them to come off the fence – which is dangerous. I need to watch my stock, too and not worry too much about the dog because she’s being fine.
• I like how far out Rippa starts – one thing I’m sensitive to is something Betty talked about – where the cattle just can’t see the dog so they should be a little wide instead of right up along the cow when they come around. The cattle have time to see her coming. Rippa will slow down and stop running ragged when she “gets it” but in the meantime, I like her go juice. Better more than needed than not enough.
• I need to lay off commands like “Steady” because I can’t even see to reinforce them and she’s busy trying to figure out what to do with the cows since she can’t see them. It feels like it’s all going too fast from my perspective, but she’s not doing a bad job of working them – they aren’t running or showing signs of panic so more confidence from me is probably useful.
• I’m handling a lot. I think I need to watch less of my dog and more of my cows.

See a theme here? I think I need to work on me more. Which is why I made these videos. 

Broken Ducks, Rattlers, Goats, and Cattle–oh my!

This week was nothing if not exciting. In order of least to most, I’d go with this for stockdog land:

• My attorney met with us to discuss corporate structure and tells us – get this – that it would be a smart investment, based off of what we’re up to, to buy a farm. HE IS THE BEST ATTORNEY EVER.
• Rippa got to work cattle again after time off of them to work on fundamentals. She did good.
• The ducks, myself, and Rippa almost stepped on a baby rattle snake when practicing our center pen. Jennifer, the gal that takes care of my ducks for me when I am not out there (which is not often), saves the day by beheading it.
• When putting the ducks away, one of them gets  her foot caught in a gopher or snake hole and breaks her leg. This isn’t that exciting. The fact that I somehow got convinced to leave her with the Wildlife Center to get four pins installed to fix it is. We named her Lucky Duck.

Let’s start with the most, because I know you’re dying. I’m not a bleeding heart – I’m not. I literally was like, “Well, there is a 4th of July BBQ coming up, but it would be a shame.” So I called my husband who didn’t know what to do. So he had me call my friend who is a surgeon to see if she could set its leg. She couldn’t, so she called our friend who works with wildlife rehab and brought her down. It’s broken really bad, confirms the vet there, but we should get x-rays. That’s where it starts. She’s currently in the wildlife center recovering from surgery from yesterday. You can judge me, but it was probably going to be a dog or me if not a duck so if making a donation and getting a duck surgery makes me feel better about the whole thing, then there we go. A lesson learned and I feel good enough about it to share, right?

Here’s the X-Ray.

Bruce Nelson made me a poem, even:

You fucked up raking,
And and came close to a duck baking
The vet said ah shuck
Thats one fucked up duck.
But for a few bucks, we can unfuck ducks.
No need to baste a duck, down on his luck
With a pin, a stitch and a nyunk nyunk nyunk ,
We will have the duck unfucked with just some luck.
So be kind to a duck, it brings you good luck,
And as Rickles would say, carry on you hockey puck.
Glad his quack up can be fixed.

So there is that.

I’ve been kind of down in the self-esteem department with the dogs lately. We’ve been working by ourselves for two weeks because both the Woods and Stephanie were out of town last week, so it’s just been ducks. Which has been plenty of time for the dogs to realize that they can cheat me by coming in too close to the ducks for me to stop them without smashing a quacker and grabbing them. Again, they grab them pretty light, but they’ll do some jerky stuff to them now because they’re used to it. I really wish I was a better handler and they never get chances to do it, but I’m not. So basically it’s a pattern of the dog starting off nice because they are cautious, losing the inhibitions, and then getting ratcheted back to nice – or so I think it goes. I’m in the inhibition stage so that’s what I worked on this week and then a duck broke its leg and I felt like a bad animal keeper/handler to have let it happen.

You have to understand that I have a LOT going in my life. I’m not a simple person remotely. You can’t expect a lot of attention to detail and perfection out of me because I’m always in about three places at once. The stockdog stuff is pretty much the only time I’m focused on just that. That or climbing are the only things that make that work, aside from meditation.

So, now I’m going to spend tomorrow in the 100+ degree heat raking out the duck pen and finishing the fences by pounding t-stakes in and just DOING IT RIGHT instead of cheating and calling 80% good enough. I don’t regret this attitude, it makes me extremely productive, but stuff like this can happen.

So . . . anyway. I was feeling a little like, well, what am I doing here, really, when I drove to the Woods’ tonight.

Shannon and Dustin are incredibly supportive and mellow. I really appreciate their entire vibe. We’re holding babies, their kitten is hopping up and down on my thigh, there’s a bunch of dogs tied to a fence, but it’s all good. We’re close in age and from the same area and stuff so it’s really different from my usual stockdog land where I don’t have a whole lot in common with dog people. Common friends outside of dogs, we both used to work on the same ranch, etc, etc. It puts me a lot more at ease so I knew I’d be okay. I also told Shannon how I was feeling as soon as I got there and she, in her usual way, was just patient and good natured about it all and reminded me what to work on and away we went.

We’re back to using the big stick again – fundamentals. Two steps forward, one back. But getting a lot out of it. I don’t think Rippa is taking her outs great but I’ve been working more on my handling than worrying about hers, because, well, BIG SECRET – YOUR HANDLING MATTERS MOST.

I’ve also tried whistle training a bit now that I can do it well enough. Fury was like like, “That’s cool – where’ s my treat? This must mean “down.”

Rippa was sure that stuff in my mouth and weird noises meant the apocalypse was coming, but she would try a little and get her treat but . . . let’s just keep our distance and see what happens for a bit, shall we? That’s Rippa. Not stubborn, just wary until she understands. I was talking to Fury’s breeder, Tracey, about it and she reframed it in a cool way: “Self-preservation instinct.” Fury is like, “What is it, let’s do it!” She’s missing a lot of teeth from being a little too easy to commit to stuff, too. Rippa hangs back, generally gives the side-eye to new things, and then as she gets it, then it’s fun. Doing weaves in agility used to make her cringe and now she lets little barks out while she guns it for the poles.

So, anyway, the sheep/goat runs weren’t superb in the scheme of things, but we’ve only been working ducks, but good enough for Shannon to say “BRING IN THE COWS!” again after many weeks off of them.

And, well, Rippa has some learning to do about how to manage them more efficiently because there’s a lot of wasted power and bark right now, but it’s also a lot of me not handling right. Dustin tells me as I go in, “Now remember your rules are still in effect. Expect on them what you expect on the goats.” And these cattle are SUPER gentle so once I got comfortable enough to go through them to get to her – it went from a little too much yahoo, to one good reinforcement and Rippa settling down and keeping them in good control.

She still is a real strong header, which makes me happy – as I remind you again, she started out not willing to go to head. This means she’s probably just as strong heeling if she needs it since that was her first instinct during first exposures. I think, like her mother, Rippa’s going to shine most on cattle.

One thing I don’t like about cattle that I’ve seen with her is that her hits aren’t great – she aims too high. I talked to Shannon about this. She’s probably seen cattle now as many times as Fury has in their lifetimes, which is not much – probably 10 days worth of exposure total – and big spaces in between. Would she settle out and not hit as badly? Shannon: “Maybe” though she sounded more “yes” than maybe. We’ll see. It’s not fancy heeling I need to see, but “self-preservation” heeling would be nice. Especially since her Slash V lineage is pretty well known for good positioning hits, it’s got to be in there. In time we shall see. At least she hits, right?

And, well, I feel pretty good. Rippa settled out tonight really nicely when I got my stuff together, the duck is on the mend, I’m committing to put the work in to make my duck arena nice, and we’re moving forward.

Oh, and I buried this one a little intentionally because I know the anti-AKC people won’t be thrilled at this bit of news, but I have to try . . . I found out Fury’s full sister is somehow AKC registered and apparently there’s this “open AKC” registry where you send in a certified pedigree and photos of your dog and for $20, you get a registration back.

We shall see. It’s way too easy, if you ask me. No DNA (she’s parentage verified, fwiw – not that I was worried), no microchip, nothing. But hey. If it opens up options for me down the road for selling dogs or just a new place to trial (because why SHOULDN’T good stockdogs represent at USASA Nationals?), it cost me a total of $30.

The videos are taking forever to upload so I’ll post one or two here when they’re done.

Ducks and Cattle and Goats, oh my!

This week, the theme was “get the duck pen ready.” The ducks have matured and are working super nice. My dogs are both impressing the heck out of me because they work really nice on them. Shannon watched the video I posted and she says she thinks it’s because the dogs know I can really get after them. Probably true. One of these days they’ll be good for their own sake.

Here’s one video where you see my classic “can’t handle for crap because people are watching” but you can see how nice Fury is:

And here’s one I shot with Rippa where I’m nice and quiet and my timing’s right:

The ducks are REALLY fun. They teach the dogs that getting in close doesn’t solve anything because the ducks won’t move. You have to get away from them to move them. It’s a nice way to work on stockmanship. I have tons of time to work on how I handle them, and I can easily correct the dogs for their mistakes.

And, both dogs respect the ducks enough to just kind of mouth them when they get in too close. There’s one call duck in the group of 10 (we had 11 but one got a bummer leg and eventually died) that can fly  so getting her back is kind of rough – fence crossings, etc. Rippa isn’t experienced enough to get out and bring her back, so basically she just pounces on the duck and then mouths her to hold her until I get there. The ducks don’t seem too worried about it, too, so that’s good. I have a kiddie pool out in the arena to walk them over to during lessons and they take right to it if they see it – not a stressed reaction.

So yeah, duckies are fun stuff!

So I’m all signed up to go back to my alma mater next month and attend a cattle handling clinic with the Wood’s at Cal Poly. I’m tickled that it’s back to animal science classes for me (that’s what I started doing when I came to SLO in the first place). I’ve got some cattle trials locally to check out this summer and then I guess it’s time to start thinking about actually entering them.

I’ve been still working goats and doing the foundation stuff with Rippa so she works as good at the Woods’ as she does at Stephanie’s or with the ducks. We’ve been doing some interesting drills to just get her to start rating and think more rather than run. The sheep/goats all spread out and so she quits trying super hard and we need her to if we put her back on cattle. I brought out the “big stick” – which is a bean pole with a bottle attached to it and Shannon loved that – Aussie west coast style emerges again. It was super helpful in getting the goat/sheep and Rippa under control on the hill pen we work because I got there in time. Thanks to what we did tonight and the practice on ducks I get in the next week, I bet we’re good next week to go back to cattle if she starts as nice as she did today. Steps backward to go forward, doncha know. A lot of it is me and my handling.

And my handling falling apart when people watch.

The fact is, I’m way insecure in certain scenarios. I joined Toastmasters to get some of my fast-talking, filler word stuff out of the way and I feel it creep in when I’m there. I know all the Toastmasters people pretty well and am not scared of them but I still feel the pressure to entertain and get out of there. I don’t feel like I have a right to hold their attention. I feel kind of that way with the stockdog thing. If someone is literally watching me to see how I do, even if it’s to be constructive, I worry about it. And rather than use that as motivation to be better, it takes attention away from the job and I make mistakes.

Trialing is going to be a horror show with that mindset so I’m working on it. I want Rippa to just be automatic so that if I do stupid stuff, she’s still got it handled for me. She still doesn’t work nicely on her own – she needs me there to steer the ship – and I’m okay with that, that’s being green. She may not be young, but we’ve only been steadily at this for six months solid. I’m psyched with what I have out of her – I think I can do pretty much anything so long as our relationship is good and I hold up my end. She’s got enough talent and power to get the job done if I give her the space to figure it out.

So tomorrow we start building out the duck arena with panels and fencing for a more formal environment. I need to practice how we handle panels and such – this is one thing we DO NOT work on. I’m also going to build a ducky take-pen so we can practice that. Rippa does great pen work from working at Stephanie’s, but I can’t do the formal training you need to start a trial off right as it is now. She says she can build me something, but I don’t want to be a bother so this is perfect.

Quack!

Notes from the Kathy Warren Clinic

I’m tempted to write my own thoughts from this week and the last few works, but I’ll never get this down if I do that.

Going to this clinic was sort of like going to lessons with her with mostly fresh eyes. Rather than having an ongoing weekly visit, I don’t think Kathy has seen Rippa and I together for over a year. I am so used to working on my own now that taking the clinic made me see the best use for it in a different way. I used to go to classes and really pay attention to everything, but after a while you look, you don’t focus, and you just do what she tells you. This round – knowing that this was a limited time thing to get her opinions and thoughts – I brought the notebook and tried to watch every dog work, asking questions as much as I could. Moreover, I paid more attention to the advanced dogs workings, as I’m about where I left off with Fury when we stopped training her consistently.

Because of this, and because I don’t have a better way to do it – I’m going to lump the different thoughts into categories. You can read them all, or you can look for what suits you best.

These are my notes – some things are direct from Kathy, but assume it’s my memory of them, not necessarily what she is actually saying. I don’t do that kind of skilled transcription.

General Thoughts

• If you raise your dog right, and don’t spoil them, they’ll work better for you. This means that kenneling them and not living with them, letting them be in your bed, etc is part of that. Obviously you have to make concessions based on what you want the dog for (a friend or a working dog), but it’s much easier to train if you have that kind of relationship.
• Do not trial until you do what you do at home in a trial (I had a terrible first work because I didn’t just start how I do at Stephanie’s or the Woods, or even on my ducks – I tried to do something else). That means, if you’re expected to pick stock up a certain way to start – you better be able to do that, without much thought.
• When training – ask your dog for something, back it up, then test to see if they need the backup the second time. If they do, it’s time to go back to basics until you can test and get consistent success.
• Doing the kind of things you want your dog to do with just you and the stock is helpful – if you don’t know where to place yourself, how will you know where to place the dog? (I think this is something I really appreciate from being able to work without anyone watching – I’m really getting this part down because I have no help.)
• Something I really appreciate about Kathy’s “culture” during lessons – you pretty much aren’t allowed to tell students what you think because Kathy controls those conversations. It cuts down on ignorant yapping and cross talk. I have had problems with this going to other people for lessons – I want to hear from the person I’m taking instruction from only. My temperament does not handle multiple opinions at once. I find most of those opinions aren’t that valid, either – you need to look at what you want from who you want to figure out where to take it.
• When working dogs, don’t have a lot of stops if you can help it – flow makes it all a lot easier.  It creates bad working habits and doggy emotions. (I’ve been asking for a lot of stops because I want that control. Oops.)
• Be aware of what you look like to strange stock. (I was wearing a skirt during one of the works and the sheep did NOT like it.)
• If you’re running backward, you’re doing it wrong. The dog should be giving pressure.
• People seemed to be letting their dogs get up too fast after handlers hit them with a “stay.” Make the dogs stay for at least 5 seconds if you do it or they’ll cheat you.
• Over exaggerate everything and you’ll have more consistent results and better trialing because it will degrade under stress or relaxation.
• Keep the stick low when you use it – make sure that the dog and sheep, which are two foot high, can see it; it’s not for you.
• If you’re going to be keeping a flock or herd, remember to keep light, medium, and advanced sets – especially if you give lessons. Heavy and extremely light sheep can work, but if you’ve got an intermediate dog that needs something in between, you’re in trouble, and mixing heavy and light will just make really frustrating work as one stays and one leaves.
• Light sheep just need a ton of space – half an arena at times. You have to work to get a dog’s confidence to allow that to happen.
• WATCH YOUR STOCK – more than the dog, even, if you can. You’re leaning, you’re getting bad timing, and you’re asking for the wrong things because you are not watching your stock.
• Don’t cheat yourself – work on fixing what’s not right before you move on to new challenges. It’s okay to go backward, too.
• Don’t let your “down” erode into a stay if you can help it. Use different commands.
• Some dogs need boots for the clinics – these are usually the ones that live on urban footing – carpet, concrete, grass. It’s the dry, hard ground that gets them because they aren’t calloused up enough.
• The “Steady” command can only be given if the dog has time to slow down and steady. Don’t give it if it has to slow down and stop (or turn to get out) unless you’re training it.
• A good way to learn whistles? Record yourself making the sounds and then practice along. Make up your own sounds.
• Duck management – keep pools and food out in the working area so it’s fun to go out to.
• Proof your dog a lot on the obedience stuff – if “stay” really means stay, they won’t move even if they’re getting stepped on. But then let them think when you’re working or you can get into trouble with that.
• Outruns: I’ve been crutching on keeping Rippa close so I can have her turn her shoulder and run around. Keep her far away and stay close to the sheep – if she doesn’t turn her shoulder when you ask for it, you have plenty of time to get to her to correct it until she does.

Starting Young Dogs

• When you first start a keen dog – you’re really only worried about keeping them off the stock and learning “out” and how to work the flight zone. If the dog learns to balance him/herself with you and the stock from the get go – that’s all you want. Don’t ask for fetching or being perfect on both sides until they understand to stay off the stock. (After watching a dog this week, though, I wonder what happens if you have a sticky dog – no sticky dogs between the BCs and Aussies this weekend.)
• Watch the head of your dog – they’ll hold it higher when they’re not thinking “biting” thoughts. They will lower it when they go in for a challenge – be there as soon as you see it. You want to keep the dog thinking “calm” thoughts.
• Teaching flanks is easy – just label it when it happens. It’s the square corners and the “out” that are hard. People get excited about the flank commands and don’t spend enough time on the hard stuff.
• Read the dog’s personality – be ready to deal with bad habits and instincts so it doesn’t let it start. If the dog is wild-minded, work at keeping them calm. If they are sticky, move a lot. Etc. Whatever is in there to start will be in there later, so better not to let it come out until it’s controllable by the dog’s intellect and handler’s skill.

Driving Tips:

• Don’t start driving until you can have the sheep parked in front of the handler. Get that “there” command by walking backward with the dog at the top when you give it.
• Handy drawing – I wasn’t doing it right so Kathy physically made me work her like a dog with the stick until I got the body english right. Here’s my notes on that.
• 
• STAY OUT OF THE DOG’S WAY. People have trouble with this – I feel like I don’t, but I probably do.  Plan the draw of the sheep when you give your flanks and “there.” Turn and go with the dog to hold them out. All you need to start is following with you getting out of the way and stopping them when they get to head (either a stop or a fetch flank command)
• Handy picture:
• To start, you’ll be close to the stock as in #2, but when you stick a stick out, the dog has to go around you and you have to change directions a lot to get the dog and you used to driving.
• As you get more advanced, you’ll want to be ahead of the dog’s path, out of the influence of the sheep, and when you stick the stick out, the dog has space to get the flank and stay driving (as in #1)
• If you’re too close, you’ll just feed sheep or force a fetch (as in #3)
• On the drive, you want to stay in front of the dog and out of the way of the sheep’s flight zone so you can fix the outside flank. Logic makes me think you should be behind the dog, but being in front of the dog allows you to draw him to you and then give a “there” rather than the dog do an outrun around you. (see figures 2 and 3)
• If there’s a lean to your dog, fix with a short flank command.
• The next steps are the following – with Kathy’s classic drawings:
1. Verbally, without body english or stick work, get the dog to balance up with a flight zone around the sheep for you and her.
2. Start a drive, but only expect about two steps, then end it with a stop or a flank fetch command.
3. Now it’s time to stop the lean  of the dog (who wants to go to head) with flank commands by watching where you go and helping the dog get it.
4. To start, there will be big flanks that start and stop the drive until the dog fixes herself with no flank commands.

More Advanced Stuff:

• Even if it looks nice, never let the dog cheat the fence line on a take pen.
• As dogs get more advanced, “Out” means “Just relieve pressure” and you let the dog make the call how (turning out of flight zone, slowing down, which direction to turn, etc)
• “There” should literally mean “bring her to the hole in front of you, not to me, wherever I am.” I wonder if it’s helpful to practice using the command with gates and panels to help the dog understand the point of that.
• Teaching shedding
• Start with a person doing the shedding and just let the dog hold the sheep on their end, like a wall, the fine tuning comes from the person.
• Two steps is all it should take to create the division, then call the dog to you. Then let the dog put pressure on them to separate them, but it will fry their brains to let them do that. Have them hold only one group, but do it nicely.
• It’s tempting to drill the heck out of advanced dogs and fine tune them, but remember that you also need to work on things to relax them or that fine tuning will amp them up – do NOT over train. if your dog is doing great, let it be fun! Think of advanced training as times tables. It starts to REALLY suck if you keep forcing the issue.

Cows and Ducks and Sheep–and a video of the stickwork practice.

Stephanie is on vacation the next few weeks so I’ve got just cattle and ducks to work and so that’s a little different than what I’m doing on the sheep.

Which, when I think of it, is pretty interesting. You don’t really work on the same things on the same stock. You work on sheep to get the fundamentals down with your dog and you, and then there’s this whole other ball of wax with the dogs on cattle and ducks.

The ducks make the dogs’ brains fry. They’re used to fetching and driving and having the animal move away faster the closer they get. Ducks don’t do that. They quit and ask the dogs to eat them. I can see value in having dogs learn to work ducks because it has to teach them that heavy pressure isn’t always best. Having watched a lot of stock runs, this is true on all stock – and usually if stock goes sour, it’s because heavy pressure flips them from flight to fight.  When I work the ducks right now – I generally am just looking for the dogs to get a feel of it and take my obedience commands, whether its driving a little or fetching. I can’t run into the dogs to reinforce “out” because the ducks won’t tolerate me, either, and that’s why you have to get those fundamentals down on sheep before you do serious work with ducks, or at least I think so. ESPECIALLY if your dog wants to chomp them. Since I have chickens at home and these are MY ducks, I’m more confident if I cause a little duck nip once in a while – the dogs aren’t very prey-drivey with them and seem to nip them a bit to see if they’ll do something rather than try to really do anything to them. I think they get they’re helpless and don’t need real toothing. Soft mouth for the win.

On the opposite-but-same spectrum, you’ve got the cattle. Cattle are “like ducks” in that you can’t do a lot of “get in there and correct.” The dog either takes what you want her to or not. The last video, as  Dustin said, I was wanting Rippa to just figure it out on her own, but what she was figuring out was that she could do whatever it took to get the cattle to come to me. (I want to say I’m happy about it – her first exposures to cattle she wouldn’t go to head – now she loves it, so hey). We don’t want that “Whatever it takes.” Plenty of cattle people do want that and I’m glad I’ve got dogs that will figure that out and do it, but we want more finite work. Dustin is always reinforcing the concept of “If you’re able to put a dog anywhere you want, you can get a lot done. Wild cattle or not.” So that’s what we’re doing there. That’s why I spent the last few visits with them working their goats and sheep. We need Rippa to understand what she needs to be doing fundamentally better before we put her back on the cows and can’t step into them because, well, they’re cows. They’re huge and can be dangerous when you get cavalier and too focused on the dog.

A commenter asked about my May 7 posting – could I show some video about the stickwork I described there.

Basically, I didn’t ever do ground work to teach the dog what the stick means – they are usually just picking it up during lessons, but the Woods suggested I do that to get some more performance on the dog when working. Their dogs see the stick and immediately turn their shoulder away and head in the other direction when you do what I do in the video.

First, I picked Fury because I haven’t really worked too much on her with that – her big issue was the stick in general so when I work her, I don’t use a stick at all, just my body. I show you Rippa because she does it really nice . . . but for whatever reason, probably me videoing, you don’t see the turn shoulder and leave in an arc. You could reinforce it by having the dog on a line – but normally they do what they’re supposed to – in both cases, the dogs just decided to leave the front yard after I did it. I wasn’t working with them, I’m talking to you, so they weren’t having it. Best I could do without help.

Kathy Warren Clinic and the Impact It Had on Us

If you’ve been following along with us – you’ll know that I signed up for a KW clinic as part of a drawn out “empowerment” move  that also caused me to go get Rippa cleared for breeding to know how much of an investment I was looking at with this. People were telling me to start trialing but I didn’t feel like it was a good idea – but this farm trial came up and it was a lot of pen work – something Rippa and I really excel at, so I was like, “Maybe.” The thought of my first trial in years, with Rippa, being under KW, my mentor, made me a little sick, so I called the person I knew who felt like that – Trish Alexander – and she said lay off trialing and take a clinic with KW instead. So I wrote my check that night and sent it in.

It gave me some concrete things to work on, too. I wanted to fix our outruns and be ready to start the driving process because I kind of stopped right at that point when I retired Fury.

I have tons of notes I need to get down at some point here, but I’ve been slammed with work and having an awesome time so it hasn’t happened yet.

Here’s the basic gist, though:

1. I started the clinic horribly. It was like taking a million steps backward and Kathy razzed me that I didn’t start out the way I did at home, and she was right – I, for whatever reason, checked my senses at the door and handled like crap. One session of working on that, though, and we had it back together.

2. I buggered the sheep by working them wearing a skirt. Yes – I do work on occasion in skirts with shorts built in – it was hot. Big lesson learned that when going to a trial, you really need to be looking like something the stock are used to seeing.

3. I got to see some border collies start – and they look like Aussie starting. You’ll remember I had a bit of an existential crisis a few months back about this. It made me feel a lot better about everything – especially watching Trish tune Rook up after her litter and not seeing them work for two years since the California ASCA Nationals. Rook, friends, looked amazing, and so did Trish. Every bit as good as the Woods’ dogs. Time + talent = a good dog, no matter what the breed.

4. I basically got reinforced that I need to be more aggressive with Rippa’s outs and basic commands. By the end of the weekend, she was doing pretty well and Kathy started having me call her off the top and apparently I’d broken the system there – the last work of the clinic found me working Kathy – stopping her with the stick and learning new body English. She chastized me, “I knew you had to have broken somewhere down the line, this is it – you could do it before!” But after a few repeats of that, I got a “Good girl” for putting the stick and myself in the right place and I called it good.

The proof of this clinic is in the pudding, though. As I said, I have scads of notes and Kathy did some drawings to show me the next steps for driving – I spent as much time as I could watching the more advanced dogs and trying to “get” those problems, too, since I’d not really paid attention in the past because I wasn’t there.

And then I took Rippa to Stephanie’s on Monday – four days on, yeah? But that’s what I had. She did great – our sorting work was great. Stephanie has weaned her lambs so there were new mammas in there I wasn’t supposed to work, so I had to do a lot of sorting into different pens to get the sheep I wanted (and two sets, one for Fury and one for Rippa) – no problem. I really love how helpful Rippa is with that stuff. I’m not sure why but the functional chores make me really happy – especially because she’s so good about it.

Worked Fury – and I actually got her to slow down and balance up a bit, so that was awesome. Neither dog made it very long compared to usual – but it was a pretty draining weekend.

Tuesday, I went to go work on the duck management and the Best family said I could totally saddle up their horse and take her for a ride. I thought that was a good time to try the dogs out (they’ve been encouraging me to take them for rides, but I didn’t want them to mess up the horses and get people bucked). It went pretty well. I tried to bring a rope to toss at them if they were bad, but my horse was scared of the rope so gave up on that idea. Just kind of yelled at the dogs and when they were really bad with the horse following us (no rider, so more stock-like), I’d just chase them off from my horse. They need some more work to stop trying stuff, but I think it went well.  Living the dream, right?

At least, I think so. I am feeling pretty blessed to have these rich opportunities and I am starting to feel like I’m living totally according to what I’ve been wired to do – feeling the flow, seriously.

And then finally, I went up to the Woods’ today for a session and they kept me on goats – after watching me on that cattle video, I was like, “I give up – I don’t know anything – do with me what you will.” And so they put me there to work back on fundamentals instead of teach her that she can do whatever she wants to get the cattle to me. Rippa absolutely killed it compared to any other work she literally has ever had. She got out, did nice out runs, stayed off the goats . . . it was like both of us clicked.

Dustin had me give some driving a try and I was like, “We’re not going to get much, I’m just warning you.” But, between the both of us, we did pretty great – Rippa took her little finessy mechanics commands to fix her inside flank and stop when I asked and I got out of the way most of the time.

More notes there, too, and I got to watch them start a 2.5 month old puppy and get a sense of that, but that’s for a later time.

I think the goal is to start going to some of the cattle trials around here, learn a thing or two, and hopefully be good enough to go with the Woods to a trial in October and give it a whirl.

So, on track to start thinking about trialing in the fall – and really hitting that goal of helping be an emissary for Aussies in the cattle ranching world if this keeps up.

I’m feeling pretty blessed that Rippa seems to be able to do whatever I want with her now. We’ve got our relationship worked out and her confidence is really getting there. 

SPARKLE!