Visit to the Santa Maria Ranch

So, today started out pretty rocky, and I was a half hour late to my appointment to meet my new friend, B. (I am going to hid her name as while I may put myself out there, I don’t think it’s good to put other people out there without their permission.)

It’s an hour drive from where I live. Exit the highway, head east into the hills and I’m driving through some amazing canyon terrain. Part of me wonders if I’ve over shot it, but I know enough about homesteads by now to keep going anyway. The road gives way to dirt, which gives way to sweet river crossings that my 20-year old 4-Runner eats up while squealing in glee the entire way.

We get to the gate and there B is with her three adorable, patient, and precocious young children. We met on the Internet after I posted desire to work livestock. Today was a discovery for both of us, but I had a feeling I’d like her – that she was my people.

And, I turned out to be right. As we pull up to her main area and the kids unload and some seriously beautiful cattle dogs come up to say hello, we kind of get an eager feel for eachother and I tell her my story and she tells me hers. She’s hoping that I can use her stock and in turn help her learn how to teach her cattle dog to fetch and take flank commands.

I tell her I would really like to see her work with her dog first (this was Kathy’s advice) and she was really adamant that her dogs just do chores and it’s nothing to see, so we and the kids and her blue dog walk out to the hill/pasture and take a gander.

She’s got about 40 kids and goats and some mixed sheep in there and we talk about the plan. I tell her probably the goats are the best bet as she is worried that if the sheep get worried they’ll take off and not come home, whereas the goats stay calm. Sounds good.

Problem is, there’s no pen. It’s just an open field on a hill with chaparral-covered hills beyond it, a road lined with deer—proof fence, her, her dog, her kids and me and Rippa. I took Fury along for the ride but told her that Fury wasn’t going to be put out on the sheep – I just wanted her to have a nice car ride.

SHe’s like, “Can you just send her to gather them up?”

Nope. Not good enough for that yet.

“Well, maybe you can just get one part of the two herds?”

Okay, so we try that. I’m kind of wondering what’s gonna happen with the other herd that’s only 100 feet away, but Rippa has managed to stay focused working sheep while cows stood around, so maybe . . . The two herds separate, and I lay Rips down, get between her and the goats and tell her to get around. Not so nice. There’s too many, they’re not condensing into a group, and I can’t help her get out with my stick so the first thing she does is heel one of the bigger goats. I call her off and stop and think for a minute as everybody moves further up the hill.

B notes it’s funny, as that’s the goat her dogs always bite too, so I figure there’s a reason, but it still wasn’t very controlled and I wasn’t going to let crazy happen.

“You think your other dog can do it?”

Fury is pretty good at the outrun, but again, two years off. I am not going to risk it today. New plan.

So we’re standing on the hill with B down below kind of following us as I try to get the goats back into a herd and stalled. No such luck. They divide into two groups and I yell that I’m going to try to get them to her deer fence and see if that works.  Rippa, for her part, does a lovely job of driving them pretty calmly as I remind her to “wait.” But I put her down to push them back down the hill. They go laterally to the fence so I leave her there (again, goooooood dog) and try to push myself.  Even 100 meters out from Rippa, and 100 meters out from me, the goats won’t stall so I can get them set up. B notes they probably want to regroup with the rest of the herd, and she’s probably right and, with memories of messing Fury up by trying to make this workable, I tell I can’t work the sheep.

”Cows?” she suggests.

I wasn’t expecting that, but any exposure Rippa can get to cows is good by me.

She keeps three cattle. A bull and two cows that are beef breeds, but she milks.  We let Fury out of the truck along with her dogs and we all ride up in the mule with the dogs following us (she points out this takes the edge off them if they’re tired, which is a great idea).

When we get there, they’re up in the top of a hill in chaparral, no pens, so I figure I’ll call it good if I can get them moving a little and fetching along the road. If nothing else, some “legal” exposure for Rippa seems like a good idea. I do have the ability to call her off.

B settles in with the kids in the shade and just lets me go to it. She’s so mellow. She keeps yelling encouragement while I feel like a crazy yokel on her goats and saying it’s good for the dog and such. Sometimes you need to run into someone like that. I am all worried that I’m going to piss off these people and she’s as chill as it comes.

Anyway, I tie up Fury and let Rippa off and ask her to get around. These cows are pretty used to people and dogs and she goes up to them and they just look at her. I don’t have to worry about her heading – she’s standing there, trying to turn them, and they’re like, “Uhhhhh, nah.” She won’t hit their polls and she doesn’t really want to get behind them so it’s just a lot of snarling and waiting for something to happen, so I call her off and think this is a situation where Fury might get a little more respect first, even though she hasn’t been formally worked in a few years.

Tie Rippa up, let Fury off. Fury quickly gets behind them, but they turn around on her and go, “Yeahhhh, we’re not moving.” If I had a camera, I would have had some GOREGEOUS stand off photos of Fury and the cattle, but neither one was giving. She’s trying to move them – she barks, moves in, and they just move back at her. She doesn’t want to hit their heads but I’m going, “Ssssssss-skit” and she moves in but won’t bite. I remember Kathy telling me that she’s so small, she better make a big show to get their respect or she’s getting trampled so I go, “KILL IT” (which is sort of her command to go hog wild on a stuffed toy) hoping maybe that extra bit would motivate a bite, but she just stands her ground. I think maybe I have too much pressure on the cows and back up, but nothing. Finally they do give, and they head straight into the chaparral. Crap. Now I’ve lost the cows.

I think, well, maybe I can at least get them back on the road so I can ask B what she does with her dogs but they get so into it that I can’t do anything. I go down the hill a bit and tell Fury to get around, which she does, but again, she’s not moving the cattle. I try to physically help her by pushing them myself, and they just ignore me, too.

I was thinking maybe they were just too used to people and dogs and as I write this, I am more convinced that’s the issue.  If they were range cattle, which is what I’m used to working, they would have been a lot more easy to move off of both Fury and I. Driving home, I kept thinking, “Man, I really am a yokel if I can’t move cows with my dogs after all this time,” but, and correct me if I’m wrong, if B has got her cattle dogs on them, and they aren’t really trained so much but bite them pretty liberaly when needed, and she comes out and milks them, they probably don’t care about me or my dogs: my little dogs trying to use finesse really are going to fail, and me helping won’t matter. I can walk right up to them and pet them.

So, I bail and call Fury off and we go off to find B and her kids, who are still just chilling under a tree. I apologize for looking like a yahoo and she says didn’t expect much but I have control over both dogs and that’s way more than most people. We talk a little about her dogs and her friend that wants to sell her a kelpie and how she really does want to get back into trialing. I feel a little more confident in our relationship now and offer that she probably needs pens to be able to get control on both her dogs (and mine) before trying to do stuff like this and she agrees. We head back down to my car and her home.

So . . . yeah, that’s not going to work out. But B was really cool and it was neat to meet a kindred spirit my age trying to make the ranch life work. My dogs and her dogs got along fabulously, and my dogs even liked her kids. She’s good people and I hope that with me getting my own sheep and maybe her building up pens, we can kind of work this out together. It would be nice to have dog friend like her.

And, as icing to this story of Epic Fail, as I’m saying goodbye, Fury and Rippa are trucking around with the other dogs, looking at the ducks and the chickens and then Fury finds a kid (baby goat) out somewhere random away from the herd and  . . . I don’t know what she was trying to do to it – stop it? Treat it like a puppy? Chase it? But basically she starts pushing it around with her nose all gentle like, but follows it as it tries to escape, and I call her off and she totally ignores me. It honestly looked like she was trying to clean it and it wouldn’t let her but she was obsessed with achieving this goal. She keeps pushing it down the road as it tries to escape and she’s trying to get her nose in its ear and I’m chasing her and yelling at her and then Rippa comes up and I am like, “Oh geez, this is gonna be bad” but Rippa actually listens when I say to leave it, whereas my usually totally obedient veteran Fury dog is enjoying pushing this poor little kid down the hill. I am screaming my head off and apologizing to B who is like, “It’s okay, she’s not trying to hurt her.” But OMG, dog, STOP DOING THAT AND COME.

Eventually I got her back, but MAN. I looked like a screaming fool. Partly I just was overcompensating because I wanted to be respectful to B and her livestock, but partly, dude, FURY, REALLY? I think she wants a pet pygmy goat.

B, "Don’t worry about it, seriously, I probably sound like that with my kids.”

What a day. I think I need my own sheep. Don’t you? That or, man, I really got to throw in the towel on this one because I have no business doing this.

I probably should have taken one look at the situation and said, “Yeah, my dog can’t handle this yet.” But I’m learning. At least no harm done and B got an amusing diversion to her day.

I keep imagining what it must have been like to watch me crash through the bushes with Fury and the cows screaming at her to GET AROUND! AHH!! COME! WITH ME!! GET AROUND!! AHHHHH! and silence. And here suddenly I am with my broken stock stick and a dog with a big smile on her face. At least Fury got to finally have a sanctioned livestock adventure.

Looks like we’re getting sheep: a whole new adventure.

So I have been really frustrated with my complete inability to get Rippa on livestock more. I’ve put ads on craigslist, and I take lessons when I can, but I don’t have the time even to do as many lessons as are offered. So . . .

As I said, I did put an ad on craigslist and so far nothing has panned out until this week – I met someone who has a small family farm with a large herd of sheep and goats and some cattle that she has worked her three cattle dogs on. She seems really cool and while I am terrified to take my willful little red dog to someone else and use her animals, if anyone is going to be patient with it, it’s someone who owns cattle dogs. So that happens Friday. Apparently I need a four-wheel drive vehicle to get there and it’s a half-hour off the highway so if you don’t hear from me, call the police. Otherwise, a grand adventure.

But anyway, I’ve been kind of jonesing to see this whole thing through the right way and ever since Kathy was supportive of me taking my show on the road, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get access to livestock.

The kicker is that I do a lot of work on this 14,000 acre working cattle ranch. The cattlemaster uses his dogs daily as he does pulse grazing (ie, moves them each day to a small place so the ranch never gets overgrazed), and the owner keeps telling me that the guy would love to work with me, but let’s just say I don’t think he does. He probably thinks I’m a yokel and that’s fine.

So, anyway, I told my husband that for my birthday I wanted sheep. My birthday is in two weeks. Obviously it won’t happen that fast, but he talked to the ranch owner who then said, “You know, I have a 2-acre parcel of land in the middle of town that I have nothing to do with. Fence it and it’s yours.”

So, here it is:

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It’s the lot that’s between the train tracks and H street, flanked by Encina and a park. You can zoom in and get street view of it, too. It looks quite a bit different from this now – this photo is many years old. The trees have grown quite a bit and the field is now a lot of scrub along with grass.  The animal science degree I almost got tells me that if I want this to sustain my little baas, I am going to have to work on making that field a lot nicer, but that’s a fun project since I never got to use any of that stuff I learned in college.

So, anyway, I’ve got to figure out a water system for  the sheep, we’ll have to feed them, and I need to build them a shelter, some pens, and – oh yeah – fence a full two acres to keep kids, dogs, coyotes, etc out.

I was sort of hoping to get  a plot of land actually ON the ranch because I would LOVE to take the little guys for long walks in the hills, but it is just down the road to a gate into the ranch so maybe when the time comes, the owner will let me do that. Anyway, it’s at least a good place to start a flock and work on arena trialing.  It’s also a good place for now because people are all over that and they’re good neighbors. I can make a little sign asking them to call me if there’s trouble and it’s not so much in the huge, expansive ranch where they’ll get eaten. Just today as I was driving out from there, I saw some coyotes hassling the calves, right along the road.

But this is a whole other ball game, and I do know something about keeping sheep, but am looking forward to learning from Kathy how to manage them so they stay ideal for what I need them for. I’ve got some friends already interested in having them graze their land, too, so I think I could probably make it work in my favor and maybe turn that into something as there’s definitely a demand for grazing animals in the area. Anyway, as my husband says, we should just focus on getting them there and living well and come what may.

So . . . end of summer, if all goes right, I will get my own flock. And in the mean time – maybe this gal in the boonies is going to be my new best friend.

Learning to handle better . . . and it starts to click for Rippa, too.

I am two weeks behind in videos and lessons and I’m sorry for those of you who regularly follow this. I took Rippa to classes along with my laptop as requested, and Kathy wanted to show me something in the latest video, which I will show you now:

The key part is at 1:29. See me hitting the ground with the stick? Yeah. Bad me. You'll see me do it over and over again. I think I started doing this when I started moving the stick in front of the sheep to build up my flight zone there. I think I thought I would add pressure if I bopped the ground repeatedly.

But what it really does is take pressure on and off Rippa, when she really either needs it ON or OFF and not this little trick I’m doing here. You’ll see me back off while I’m doing it. This is bad because the dog needs to take pressure from the stick, which is really an extension of me. It’s easy to forget what it’s for and start trying to drive the dog with it (which you’ll see me do a lot later) – but you’re supposed to kind of be the control the dog needs in with the stock. Otherwise, even the best dog is going to do stuff that’s fun, but not necessarily right, if he doesn’t have handler back up.

So the next video up is the two-weeks ago video. I am tempted to axe it and not show you, but I want you to see what different amounts and kinds of sheep will do.

Normally you’ll see me with 4-5 sheep in a lesson, but in this one, Kathy gave me a mix of newbie lambs and established sheep.

What?

It’s a good idea to keep different kinds of sheep on hand. Round pen sheep are heavy – they trust the handler, don’t worry too much about the dog – they’ve been there, done that, and gotten the postcard. You can use these sheep for a long time if you have a dog that isn’t super instinct-driven. These kinds of sheep are really good for training stock sense into a dog. But a dog with a lot of instinct will get bored. You’ll see in earlier movies, Rippa just kind of stops occasionally in the round pen because she doesn’t have much to do – the sheep follow me and stop when I stop.

So, as a dog progresses in stock sense, you put progressively lighter (ie, more scared) sheep in the pen when you train. Though that’s not totally right. It’s really dependent on what you’re trying to do. In the duck pen (where we are), you can’t use REALLY light sheep because the dog and you can’t get far enough away from them to make them comfortable. That’s also why trying to work cows in a small space if they aren’t used to dogs is trouble.

But say we’re out in the arena, just working on Rippa’s fetch – lighter sheep will start happening as she learns to read the sheep more and more and needs less work from me. As she understands her job, we ask more from her. But when we go out back (as we have in camp) or when we start working on the drive, you want calm, “old hat” sheep that won’t make a break for it at the slightest provocation so the dog can rest a little on watching them and take more direction.

So anyway, at this lesson, Kathy had brought down some fresh lambs which weren’t “with the program” yet, and put them with some that were. You’ll see how the sheep respond. The leader sheep (calm ones) will help the spazzy ones figure out how to stay safe and work with people and dogs. We’re “training the sheep.”

This is a pretty ideal way to do it if can. One of these days I’ll talk about how you work sheep that don’t have calm leaders if you want to trial or just give your dog lessons. Generally, just buying some calm sheep and replacing your flock with lambs is just a good call.

Anyway, this video is just to show sheep behavior, not dog training.

So today I went back after a video-less lesson yesterday and remember my most recent post about why I don’t train like “you” for those of you who ask that question? It was pretty sweet – today I got footage of exactly what I’m talking about.

Lesson one: don’t have the waterproof thing on the camera because you can’t hear ANYTHING.

You may be wondering what that yellow string is on Rippa’s collar. Well . . . despite her looking AWESOME when she is actually on the stock right now, when I tell her to down or stay, she just dives in and ruins everything. Same if I walk her off. I am trying to figure out how I caused this, but Kathy says it’s just Rippa testing me to see how things are going to be. So I brought a little “tab” to grab on to for corrections.

Anyway, you can see some good things in this video: how I correct it when she decides to take matters into her own hands (usually this is just testing me), see her getting out and me reinforcing that having an effect, and you’ll see her start balancing the sheep because I’m doing it right and she’s got some self control – which, as I said in the last blog, is why we don’t obedience them – we just keep pushing them out until they keep themselves out without all the nagging. So yay!

I keep trying to get access to other livestock in the meantime to keep building on this, but yeah  . . . no luck.

Unless I can get Rippa to down instantly and stay reliably, we can’t really move on. It’s all well and good, but to teach a good outrun and the drive, we need both. Kathy said as I was leaving that we’re well on our way to fixing it after the session I taped above, and I hope she’s right. It’s frustrating to have a nice little stockdog that won’t STOP. Funny thing is, she’s great off of stock. Guess she just has a lot more drive to do that than do what I want. Keep chipping away at it . .  .

“So why don’t you train like me?”

Strangely, I’ve had two separate off-the-blog conversations with people from different areas and different experiences who are asking me some poignant questions about my training style (which, as stated before, is purely the Kathy Warren method at this point).

Mostly this has to do with why the heck I am letting Rippa run back and forth at full speed instead of turning her back and forcing her to move straight or using a line to teach her to walk.

So, here’s my stab at an answer to this:

It seems like, in my limited experience of “other methods,” that there are a number of good short cuts to the end product,  including things like forcing a dog back and using a line. I actually tried a couple of others’ advice when I was working with Fury by myself on super light sheep. But these methods are ‘training the dog.’

And I think what Kathy’s trying to do is “train the handler.” The dog will, if using these methods, slow down and balance up (yes, by God, she WILL walk) because she will finally figure out that it’s better than running back and forth. What we’re doing with all this back and forth with sticks business is working with the dog’s instinct to circle and letting her essentially teach herself what works.

How?

We start out by not asking much except for the dog to not eat the sheep. Then we ask for them to stay out from the sheep. Then we ask for wearing by using the stick to block the circling, and, if the dog has good instincts for this, when we ask for it, that will seem natural. Once the novelty of this back and forth wears out, the dog usually starts to think more and use less instinct, and you’ll see it in some of these videos I post – the dog will settle down and start just reading the sheep and doing the minimal work to keep them going how they should be. You can do this all with out “training the dog” and without commands if you are good. You don’t even need the stick (but that is a LOT of running around). Essentially, you’re not telling the dog what to do, you’re just telling the dog what not to do.

You can actually see this really easily in the first video I have of Rippa working:

She gets faster as time goes by because she’s more and more confident and she’s working lighter sheep. You put Rippa on some heavy woolies right now and I promise you she will slow plenty down and pretty much check out. We need her to keep learning and stay interested, so we don’t let that happen.

It is then, when the dog understands how to balance herself and read her sheep, that we start to teach what to do. That way, when you mess up whether you’re trialling or working your cattle on the ranch, the dog will think for herself and be a good stockman without you telling her how.

Having worked Fury with very little commands on a large head of sheep, I find this “working with instinct” very valuable. My favorite story is of having to move sheep from one pasture to another with this road and wide open space to go between. Once, the sheep banked left and got out and it became a full afternoon’s operation to get them back in. After that, Fury always banked left to protect the hole and the sheep went from pasture to pasture without incident. That’s thinking without me telling her to.

As I know from training extensively in other venues, a dog that’s taught to look for you for direction will default to that and I’d simply rather not be the driver of my dog but let my dog make the decision. A good ranch dog knows the drill once you’ve shown them what you want, and so does a trial dog. It’s not like a seasoned dog is going to go, “My God, you want me to put them THROUGH THOSE PANELS? GASP.” They know what they’re for. And my favorite dogs, which may not always win, are the ones that show it with minimal help from the handler.

As Kathy says, the ideal fully trained dog is one that will bring in the sheep and pen them, and all you have to do is sit in your lawn chair sipping your Mai Tai (with umbrella, this is key). Same with an ideal ranch hand. And that’s why we do it this way.

Rocking the Stockdog GoPro Camera: also–squaring those flanks

So I got a new little toy for my work, a GoPro camera. They’re HD camcorders in bullet proof mounts that stabilize so action stuff becomes actually watchable. Since I am an outdoor competitive event planner, we needed video footage of rides and such so I got one for marketing.

But it has an obvious use in that I can take really interesting perspectives with it. I’m still working out the kinks, though, so the quality’s kind of bad this first go round. Sorry. Kathy was pretty amused at my idea, and that made me pretty happy, too. I actually think it may help me see my mistakes.

She whipped out her own little pocket camera and got a couple shots of me:

What, I am totally normal with my bike helmet while handling in a giant stick. What about it?

Any how, here is a little of the footage from the first day of lessons:

I saved this clip specifically because I told you last time that we were working on pulling her off the top on a go-by both to prepare her for driving and also to fix her tendency to overflank on the way-to and shorten the go-by. Here is me doing that.

I came to lessons the next day and she was like, “NO WONDER RIPPA SNARLS AT THE STICK! LOOK AT YOU WHACKING IT AT HER! NO MORE WHACKING!” Oops. I think I learned that form moving the stick up and down in front of the sheep to build my flight zone.

Anyway, it does provide a neat perspective because you’re really only seeing one thing – how the sheep are reacting to things. You REALLY see them bank off me and the dog. Also, you can see Rippa does actually GET OUT even though I think she’s right up their butts.

So today we went back to work on that “get out” and also her total lack of stopping when I ask. Since we saw this particular perspective, I was easily reminded that I need to really push through the sheep and reinforce the get out with my body. Which totally worked.

I tried a different setting on the camera and obviously I need to go back to the first one because you mostly see sheep. Sorry.

I’ll let you watch the next video. If you don’t find yourself craning to see past the screen, I’d be surprised. Sorry. In this you’ll see how I’m working on getting Rippa to frickin’ reliably take her stop command, how I pull her off the top,how I get her get OUT really nicely, and how I read and react to her.

Though the sheep look like knee-knockers, they’re actually a mix of light and heavy. Kathy says at one point that Rippa must be doing something to them and I say “sending evil thoughts” – not entirely wrong. She’s feisty, but it’s good.

My main thought watching this is how much time we poor Aussie handlers spend going, “Out, out, out.” But remember, they’re not meant to work four sheep in a pen – they’re meant to work many thousands. A little push is a good thing in that case.

Hey looka me–I made a meme.

So, Rippa’s sire’s owner posted an agility “what people think” graphic and said she wished there was a stockdog one. Of course, I work from home and lately my drive to really get stuff done is a little dead so why not?

So, I hereby bequeath to you:

Enjoy.  I have to say, it’s fun participating in viral things like this  - I am curious to see how many “shares” on Facebook it gets and where it ends up.

Starting the Drive

Well, I went for three lessons in the past two days and didn’t bring a camera because I didn’t anything but a tune-up would happen as we haven’t been to lessons in a few months due to wedding, honeymoon, and lack of funds. Should have brought a camera. The cool think about Rippa, and my current stage in stockdog handling, is that we still keep learning even though we have a lot of time off.

I am resolved that I really need to get on stock more regularly and it looks like my only option’s going to be cows. Should be an interesting experience when that pans out, as I am used to training on sheep primarily (for good reason – they’re not as dangerous and hard to manage).

Anyway, so, I was handling really good first day and fell apart today. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I had things to worry about today. Rippa dove into the sheep when I handled her poorly and nearly killed one, running it into the fence. Horrifying. I hear stories and I am sure it happens more than people admit, but I like animals and hurting and scaring the sheep bummed me out. So, I think my nerves ruined my handling the first work of the day today.

The first work, of the three lessons this weekend, was on light sheep in the duck pen. We're staying in the duck pen to get the kind of control and consistency we want. When I first started, I was SO eager to get into the arena because it "meant something." But the reality is, the arena is good for trial practice, but it's also great for losing good habits. So we stay inside the littler pen for now. Kathy has us on light sheep because Rippa gets bored and stops working on heavier sheep - she needs something to do. She told me "be careful, you're essentially dog breaking these sheep" and I have to say, that felt night. I don't know that I've ever done that with hot-and-heavy Fury, and it's good to know that when/if I get access to sheep off the ranch, I'll be able to handle them.

But, as I said, my first work the second day was kind of weak. Rippa wasn't covering her "go by" side and was overreaching her "way to" side, so Kathy put me back on heavy sheep, but we began the drive exercises that she does to prime you for this.

First, I do want to note that Rippa's down is a lot better. She doesn't slam on the brakes, but she is downing when I ask so that's good. That's step one in being ready to teach the drive the Kathy Warren way.

So what about the drive?

Well, first, the drive is pretty key for when you need a dog to push animals away from you, and the way that Kathy teaches it, it's key to teaching the dog to handle its stock without your directions. You kind of wait until your dog is fetching with good balance and control and taking commands. Then you start throwing flank commands whenever you can ("go by" and "way to"). And, of course, you need a solid stop on your dog.

So I don't think Rippa knows her flanks yet, but I'm working on it. We have the rest, and this first step should help Rippa stop coming up short on one side.

What Kathy does to teach the drive is teaches the dog to "pull off the top" - that is, stop fetching and circle the stock and the handler on command - keeping out of the flight zone. This is what we practiced.

Once a dog can do that with finesse, you lay the dog down next to you as it comes around and then you hit the dog with a "there." "There" means to walk up directly into the stock and keep them going that direction.

Oh. My. God. This totally blows the dog's mind. They are so used to you being up front to control that they only want to get around and when the animals start leaning or bending a certain direction, the dog wants to run around the outside and bring them back. Nope. The dog has to learn to watch the inside flank - the side they normally don't watch - where you would normally be. Their little brains explode here.

Kathy usually starts dogs on the drive in a big open field with no fences so the sheep can just keep going straight and the dog has time to just watch the sheep without other interference. This only works because she has seasoned chore dogs that fetch lost sheep when the baby dogs' brains fry and they lose them in the hills.

Anyway, so we're going along with our heavy sheep and I carefully position myself out of the flight zone, get my stick to a place where it will push Rippa past where she wants to flip back, and give her a "go by."

And darn it if she doesn't totally get around like she's supposed to, except she does it with her ears pinned back and a snarl on her face. Rippa is so weird. When she doesn't get something or is frustrated, she is definitely angry. I have to watch her and keep her going so she doesn't take it out on a sheep, but once she gets stuff, she mellows out. She's like that with everything. We're taking agility lessons, and you'd swear I was bringing Eeyore into the class, but once she figures out what I'm trying to teach her, she's perky and waggy. Same thing here. I miss Fury's spunky can-do attitude, but Rippa definitely gets it done.

I have to admit, though, it still makes me grin to see this snarling little dog taking her flank and going all the way around me. I like quirks. I got quirks.