A little update on things

Here’s my to-do list:

• Meet with organizations to get buy in on my Ranch Sheep Project
• Get sheep
• Meet with a local trainer to both use her sheep and maybe buy them
• Get back in touch with Nathan, who says it’s time for return to Adelaida, and he’s been using his puppy a bit so that might be really fun

So, as I last left you, I was working on getting my own sheep. I was asked to come to a meeting of The Ranch Development committee to present my idea, and pretty much had them excited the minute I opened my mouth. (Background, The Ranch is leasing the land that I got married on, owned jointly by the Jewish Community Center and my synagogue, to develop its unused acreage as both a fundraising ranch and educational opportunity for disabled youth and adults – my project would be part of that.)

What became a flock of five sheep with a small breeding program to restock them, me working them, and maybe letting other people have a shot, became “You are now the chair of the Animal Husbandry Committee!” They were firing off wanting turkeys, goats, chickens, horses . . . and while that is pretty neat (my own ranch without owning it), it was also not something I was prepared to be responsible for. Realizing the amount of space they wanted this stuff to be on wasn’t going to work, I sat down with my drafting stuff (yes, I have drafting stuff – when I was a little kid I REALLY liked designing floor plans of homes) and did some calculations, with room to grow and sent it to my friend who was like, “Woah, woah, woah, let’s just start with sheep.” Which is pretty relieving, as I’ve got a big pile of work in front of me in the meantime.

The cool thing about the project is that I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing kosher laughter lambs either at Adelaida or somewhere else and The Ranch was super on board with it. We’ll see if that pans out in the future.

Anyway, so now I  need to meet with the “wheat gal” and figure out the layout of the pens and then, as my husband says, “I got a hankering to pound some t-stakes.”

So that’s where we’re at. We’re in the middle of hiring and business trips so I haven’t really had time to visit Adelaida or hook up with the gal I might buy sheep from, but we’ll see.

Just thought I’d give you an update.

Stockdog Clinic at Trish’s New Digs

So, Kathy announced her retirement and sold all her sheep to Trish Alexander, who, after many years of renting a small house with so-so sheep facilities, managed to get AN AMAZING DREAMHOUSE in King City (and this is an even bigger deal to me, since King City is not exactly the pinnacle of places to live). First order of business?Host a stockdog clinic with Kathy before she heads north for the Winter.

Well, after a few months off entirely, and a month of confusion about whether I was breaking Rippa at Adelaida with my non-conventional training ideas, I figured I’d better take the opportunity to get out with Kathy and figure out what to do, now that I’m effectively on my own.

Some basic thoughts that I had:

1. Only taking lessons is a double-edged sword. I was a lot more confident with Kathy following me around and advising me pretty much what I knew, but I also stopped thinking about stockmanship because I guess I’ve always felt like Kathy was there to tell me how far I could “push” the sheep. At first it was super necessary, I think, to have her hand on the bike, stabilizing it, but I definitely feel like it’s time to let go and balance on my own, if you get that. I need to stop letting Kathy be a crutch for what I really know, and have confidence in myself because, well, I guess I do know enough to do this on my own without breaking Rippa.
2. I honestly think that teaching stockmanship as an instinct is job one. When I am at Adelaida, I do not make foolhardy choices because I feel like I need to protect these people’s stock before I train my dog. This weekend, with Kathy there, I let that slide a bit. That was both good and bad for me. When I saw that these sheep were, indeed, different from Adelaida in that they would settle and fetch to me, I relaxed a lot more, but that also caused me to make mistakes I normally wouldn’t make – like not preventing dive ins soon enough (on the first day) to starting an outrun with the sheep not settled and mashed on the fence (giving my dog nothing to do but dive bomb to get in between them and the fence on the third day) to just plain working the sheep longer than I needed to for success (that, I fear, was more the effect of knowing I was paying to be out there and wanting more than five minutes).
3. There was a time when sitting around all day was fun – especially when I was knew and standing there, watching the lessons and trying to understand what was happening provided a lot of new experiences (which I thrive on), but largely I felt like I knew what was wrong and Kathy helped me figure out ways to fix it, and so watching other people was more an exercise in seeing what they weren’t doing right. I’ve been stuck so long at just the handling facet of fetching that until I feel ready to drive, it’s all the same now. I’m there, effectively, for maybe thirty minutes a day, and I guess I really would rather be doing something else with the other part of my day – though I did plow through an enormous book. It’s definitely time to get my own sheep so I can do that.
4. I really need to find some sturdy bamboo to make the bottle sticks. Rippa needs them.
5. In the same vein, Rippa really really needs to know that I will get really mad if she does anything bad. I think we all fantasize that we can stand out in a field and whisper commands and they’ll just go right through it. Unfortunately, I think most dogs – or at least dogs with some real drive behind them – take a bit more than that. Rippa is a really honest dog for the most part, but she’s also an alpha and headstrong. You gotta be a real alpha to make her listen, and then it’s really fun. Kathy’s big lesson for me was “PREVENTION, NOT CORRECTION.” IE, start out being tough, and you can always soften up. Kind of like how, when I was in my mid 20s, I dressed up a lot to teach my college students so they’d perceive me as someone to respect, and then progressively got more casual as the semester progressed.

This was pretty much my entire weekend – Rippa chilling, me reading . . . waiting, waiting, waiting. I am definitely over that “new hobby” syndrome where you spend all day talking about whatever it is (I have done it with lacrosse, climbing, and dog sports) forever and ever and feeling like you have a corner on the market of happiness, so I don’t generally engage conversations at lessons. I’m an introvert, so sue me. I did however discover that I like Gina’s cake pops (though, right after found out that the filling was cake and frosting mixed up and swore off them for sheer badness for you), learned a lot about septic systems, and got to talk horse war stories.

Oh, and I got to pet a lot of dogs, which is always lovely.

Duke gets a belly scratch from me. We’ve been friends from way back when – it was nice to catch up.

Other things I thought were wise lessons from Kathy – most gleaned in casual conversation, before I get to the actual training:

• When I set up my sheep, don’t be married to the arrangement. You won’t know the ideal setup until you actually use it enough to create problems that might exist.
• When I buy sheep, I should work the group first, decide if they are good for my dog, and then buy them. Don’t just buy sheep someone wants to sell me.
• The secret to maintaining your weight as you age is portion control and forcing yourself to exercise (not stockdog related, but Kathy has been quite successful in this way) and not letting those around you convince you to get lazy about this.

So, onto the actual lessons.

The first day, she was a bit of a wild child – which I expected from many months off of this type of work and two months off from stock in any form. Kathy told me I wasn’t correcting strongly enough, and I needed to just go in there and be serious. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea in training, she warned, but that’s what Rippa respects and that I should enforce it quickly and then life will be easier. She also had me put a tab on Rippa so if I have trouble with  her (as I have in past lessons when she got confident and bratty) I’d have an easier time catching her.

I was so scared of doing outruns with her, but basically Kathy had me do what I was doing at Adelaida: obedience call offs. I’d lay her down on one end of the arena and call her to me. And back again. In a z pattern, getting closer and closer to the sheep. That way, we got Rippa calm and thinking “obedience” and the sheep calm because Rippa gets in there, gets low, and zeroes her beady yellow eyes at them with all the upright eye control that any Aussie has ever had behind her. 

This got her to relax, and then, interestingly, she started going to me kind of wide like she was going around me. I should note that when I call her, I call her to my outside leg – which builds up the dog’s outrun because instead of just coming in and facing the sheep, the dog will naturally have to swing wide around you, getting a wider arc, during outruns.

Well, this wide arching thing seemed to be a solution to my usual outrun of me between the sheep and the dog because instead of amping her up with a “get around” (which, if you use in casual conversation now, the dogs perk up as much as if they’d heard “cookie” or “sheep”), she would casually trot around me and get ready to lay down when I told her. So was born the sneaky “get around.”

I just called her around to me, kind of walked toward the sheep as I did it, and just never told her to lie down. We found that as long as I wasn’t running to protect the sheep, Rippa stayed pretty chill and in control. And thus, we have accidentally begun her slingshot outrun training.

Next, when I got them going, I had to trust Rippa to come back to balance, which she did. If I didn’t watch the sheep, and instead watched Rippa, we got into trouble. My handling always improves if I worry about what the sheep are doing.

BUT, I also needed to be much more “hardcore” about my unhappiness if Rippa came in too quick. The first day she got away with stuff because I was busy protecting the sheep from her. The second day, I got all kinds of serious and yelled at her and  . . . bammo. The next two days, the ratio of yelling or stick dropping  to “no, out, good dog” was a lot lower. In fact, there was one point that I clearly remember where she was ready to go for a sheep hock and I said, “Ahh, no” and she shot out of there like a bat out of hell. That’s my honest Rippa bear!

So, here’s your video of this, on day 3.

So, hoping that getting my own sheep works out soon so I can put the kind of mileage on her that she needs to get her calmed down so there’s less “out” and we can work on flanking commands and driving. And maybe reintroduce “get around” without overly stoking her. . .

2012 ASCA Nationals and I might get my own sheep after all!

Well, despite not having anybody to really trial at Nationals this year (I was really hoping to have Rippa bear ready for started, to go Most Promising Started – which is about a good award as any to get at Nationals), I thought since it was only two hours away, I should go. And I dragged the bandy (read, husBand) with me.

My friend Amy, who helps run my AussieBoard online bulletin board, was coming down and said that Finals needed duck handlers, which I was totally on board with. But, since I was going to be there Sunday and Monday, why not see if I couldn’t get into an agility pretrial, too?

So that’s what I did. We drove out to Bakersfield Friday night and got a hotel, up early on Saturday, and got there in time to hear the morning chicken song:

I am still wondering if that’s the club doing that or it’s an automatic fair thing. Either way, it definitely stoked me. It still does, even when I hear it on YouTube.

And so we were off. Fury hasn’t been trained in years – I just brush her off, maybe go up to the practice field once or twice before a trial, and we do okay. Rippa took an agility class with me back in April but my finances weren’t what they should be so I never continued it. But Y had built me a teeter totter because that and weave poles are her challenge. So, I’ve been poking at that half-heartedly and figured if I embarrass myself, who cares.

Well, I learned two things:

1. Don’t bring the husband next time. The dogs ran like this – oh, jump, and .. . Daddy? What? Oh, obstacle. Daddy? Daddy! And then it was over.

2. My tactic of training very rarely still works really great because my dogs have desire to please and learn. When they weren’t running to “daddy,” we did pretty good, with a qualifying and first place score for each! It’s not awesomely consistent, but it’s fun and I got myself a matched towel prize set for the bathroom!

Ribbons to match their red coats, and drinky cups for hot days (and it was hot!)

And then, I was so worked. 12 hours of hot weather, coordinating runs, helping everything run smoothly, etc took it’s toll.

But gotta do it all over again!

Only we did it in style, me and Amy:

Duck handling was super fun, when people weren’t complaining about how it was set up or what we were doing – but it was Finals, so I guess people get a pass, even though I think what we were doing was nicer to the duckies than what some of the Finalists wanted done.

At the end of the weekend, I was tuckered. I’d run scores for sheep and cattle and saw some really good dogs in some really good runs. I was inspired. It was gonna be okay.

And what of this blog and my training?

Well, Kathy Warren sent out an email a month ago essentially announcing her retirement and she has liquidated her sheep. Uh oh! But good for her – I’m sure she’s in love with her new grandson and her family in Oregon, and this has been coming a long while.

Last week, Nathan called to check in with me and said he’d finally finished harvesting and was going to classes with Laurie Batson, who I don’t know anything about. Missed the opportunity to go check her out last week, but may yet. She’s giving lessons in Atascadero, 30 min away.

In the meantime, Trish Alexander had moved an hour away to a ranch where she’ll give lessons and clinics, and trials, so there is that, as well. There will be a KW clinic there at the end of the month that I will be going to – which should help me address my questions and fears that I’ve come up with here on this blog. And hopefully make some good progress with Rippa bear.

And then . . . I went for a walk with my friend on the grounds I got married on – 15 unimproved acres that also houses my synagogue. A few years back, I asked about putting sheep on it, and everyone was amenable, but then a new project came to town: the Ranch. And they were ambitious, thinking the buildout would happen in months. I knew better.

A year or so later, they’ve broken ground and I tell my friend I’d be happy to help set up the animal part of the ranch, to which she sounds supportive and . . . one thing led to another, and I’ve got a proposal in front of the ranch committee for a sheep facility. For the cost of sheep and their housing, I’ll be contributing to a great project, have a sheep training facility right in my town, and even have people to help take care of them and benefit them in the same breath . . . can I say, yay?

Here’s a youtube video:

Next update will be whether that has gone through or not. I hope it does. We’ll know next week, hopefully.

The idea is they’d be behind that tree line there.

I Think I Get It Now

So after a day of fielding advice from people, and watching those videos over and over . . . (Poor Rippa goes crazy when she hears them)

I think I get it completely:

1. SHUT UP, Kristin.

2. Trust your dog. I keep watching this videos and even the ones where she “chomps” aren’t even horrible chomps. They’re measured.

3. I watched the one where I got a video of me trying to get her around and I am putting WAY too much pressure on the sheep to set up Rippa to be successful. I  have to just try it without being afraid of her wool pulling.

4. My timing’s not great. I understand that sometimes when I’m yapping, poor Rippa has no idea what I’m trying to show her because my body and my mouth are not in sync.

I am still worried that #2 will result in a wool pulling fiasco because in order to take the pressure off the sheep, there’s a moment between sending her and her fetching them to me where I can’t protect them if I need to stay off them to take pressure off and it could end up poorly. But, I guess, we can always stop it if it doesn’t work.

Ms. Calm-Chomp

So, today Nathan sorted out what he called the “PolyFace” lambs for me to work and had a little sorting pen to do so. It worked pretty well but I showed him how to catch sheep a little less stressfully (go for the webbing in front of the rear leg and then twist the neck into you). They give up when you do it right. That’s how “wild” sheep accept shearing.

Anyway, so I had eight sheep to work and set to my usual standing around and line walking to keep Rippa mindful. I tied Fury out on a line on the other fence and she chirped for a solid half hour. I thought she was over that crap, but nope. I don’t think I’m letting her back on the sheep unless she stops doing that.

So, basically, Rippa is doing pretty awesome on the obedience front. Her downs are solid, she listens really well, and her only fault now is that “stay” sometimes means “stay with me” to her, but it’s better than diving after sheep. The line and the mileage are working for that.

What’s not working is getting her to get around the sheep. I took Carol Mac’s advice of using a smaller amount of sheep (first I tried five, then three) because I was thinking I couldn’t protect the sheep, but I think what’s happening is that Kathy’s sheep are pretty much trained to run to the handler when the dog puts pressure on them, and these sheep feel my pressure too much and I can’t both protect them from Rippa getting in to tight and walk away.  The result looks like a calm outrun followed by a quick dive in for a sheep and then hanging on some wool until I yank her line and yell at her. I tried it a couple of time with the same results. I have no idea how I’ll get the sheep to come to me enough to get them off the fence and take the pressure off Rippa so she can feel good about getting around them. As you’ve seen in the past, as soon as she gets around them, we’re good and then we’ll be cooking. But I can’t do it.

So, it was back to leash walking and driving and half-moons. She is like 85% good on this. Leash walking is lame to her, so as soon as she gets in tight, her instinct to MOVE via chomp comes in. Her preferred method is to grab wool and hang on. It sucks, I hate that. The sheep don’t seem overly rattled by it so I think I’m doing okay dog breaking them, but *I* am, which makes me a crap handler. There was one time when she was walking up and did a pretty headturn and low heel with light pressure on a sheep, but I corrected her anyway. I do think she’s getting that I want nice nice on the sheep.

This is the “calm-chomp” I’m not in love with:

No chomping, though, because I have the line. HAHAHAH.

ANd then another video, but this one is later on after some corrections like you saw above:

She’s not SUPER engaged like she would be if she was on the other side of me, but you can see some improvement after working her a while. There are a number of times where she could have/would have dove in for wool but didn’t, but then it falls apart at the end. Watching this video, I realize I should lay off the commands because while I’m using them to get her moving, she’s not taking them so I’m either “not teaching her” or they’re becoming pretty useless. At the end of this, she gets too close and the sheep challenges, and she accepts, which is fine. Of course, the problem is, I don’t have someone to help me feel okay about that so I am pretty sure I corrected her after the video stopped. I just really want it to be easy on everyone. Y has agreed to go next time so I have someone letting me know if I make corrections I shouldn’t.

Half moons – at the start I had too many sheep and they would run and I couldn’t get to Rippa to back her off so I got four or five out and that worked pretty well. Rippa has a pretty good time with all of this – you can see her ease off and she REALLY appreciates being told she’s a good dog afterward and my experience with her means that she is trying really hard and starting to “get it.”

We also did some pen work which was really good for both of us and our relationship. She demonstrated she was not an alligator, she stayed and got placed where I needed her to be while I put the sheep in and out of that little holding pen . . . and it was pretty good. The only times she “calm-chomped” was when I inadvertently drove the sheep into her and she established her space and then wool grabbed after. Sigh . . . I hope I don’t make so many mistakes while I do this that she stays all “calm-chompy.”

I guess it’s better than the poor puppy the ranch has. We were sorting sheep so I tied him to the pen to help keep them up against the pen but he has NO presence and they just squashed him while he stayed quiet.  I put him on the sheep before I got started with Rippa and he vaguely did stuff but was more worried about his friend. Six months old . . . we’ll give him some more time to grow up. Again, it would be nice if we had sheep that came to us . . .

I’m glad I shot some video, though. It helps me see that at times when it looks like BAD THINGS are happening, it’s really not that bad. I don’t love how she hangs on sometimes, but I do see that every time she does it, it’s not unprovoked. I just need her to learn that diving in won’t help, but getting out probably will.

But what I worry about now is that she is just getting trained to work them on the fence. I know lots of people do this, but if the end goal is to bring in all 120 sheep from the hillside and do trialing tasks like center pen and chute, I need to figure out a way to get the sheep off the fence. Part of me wonders if I should just send her and hope for the best, but I’m torn between letting her be a wool puller and getting them off the fence. I feel like the former is something I want fixed before I’m ready to trust her, especially since they aren’t my sheep.

Again, the things lessons don’t prepare you for.

Anyway, I won’t be back for a bit because it’s grape harvest time and the ranch needs all hands on deck for that for a while – it takes about four guys to herd the sheep into the pen from as far as a half mile – and it’s nice of them to do that, but it’s a drain on the resources. Nathan says he’s decided we have to figure out a way to keep a couple separate, so if he does, that should make life easier on everyone.

At the end of the lesson, I let a much calmer Fury walk the sheep back over the ridge to their friends. She was VERY excited about this job, so I figure it felt like she was doing something, even if all we were doing was walking behind them with her on a leash. You gotta get your kicks somewhere.

It gets real.

Bringing in the sheep, and guardian dog. You can see Fury looking out the other way. They go nutzo for cattle in the car, but sheep, not so much.

So today, they were a little behind because I guess the sheep had wandered a mile away, but with the help of four ranch hands, we were able to get the sheep into the arena and the dog out. I really need to brush up on my Spanish. It’s really annoying because I am semi-fluent but I second guess myself so while my accent is nice and I likely “know” the word, it doesn’t come easily. It’s a nice excuse to work on it, though. I love languages.

Here’s a photo of the crest of the hill I drop into to get to the sheep.

Anyway, so more of the same. I have totally sprained my ankle from last week and have been babying it, except when working sheep. This is stupid because while it’s not so bad when I do stuff, it’s currently throbbing as I type this. Oooops.

My big take away from that I need to get a longer line. I’m starting to understand why a lot of people start and recommend line work – they don’t have cushy sheep like Kathy has trained. Both dogs are pretty good if I am having them just move them around the perimeter.

Basically,what I did was take a group of ewes and lambs and just down the dogs there for a while while I worked on their fear of me. Rippa got pretty calm and bored.

In a couple seconds after I took this (and my camera died), one of the lambs went right up to Rippa and I stopped it before she was tempted to do anything. But yeah.

I started trying to do half moons but I think the sheer amount of sheep I had in there (with lambs) was too much so I kicked all but six sheep out (and a couple lambs remained, but it’s really, really hard to sort mamas and babies) and went back to just calming exercises as the sheep got weird because the herd had thinned.

I did a lot of walking up on the sheep and “there’s” while trying to teach Rippa her flanking commands (“way to” and “go by”) and reinforcing what “out” means (out from the stock). The problem I’m seeing with this is right now I think Rippa kind of thinks “out” means “get back” – which is when you turn away from the sheep and go in the other direction – because I can’t get her “out” to the fenceline without physically pushing her.

I took Rips off lead and did some half moon work, but one of the sheep invariably spazzes and it all goes to heck quickly. Though, felicitations – I have a good down on her again!

So, back on leash and I figured out I could pretty much do half moons and keep everything in control by keeping her on leash – so that when she was tempted to dive in, she’d just hit the end of the leash and get a solid correction.

The other nice thing about this process is Rippa doesn’t resent it. I have figured out that basically, unlike her mother who is just game to try stuff, Rippa is cautious. If she doesn’t get it, she is mad. But when she understands what she’s doing, she’s a lot happier. I think she understands that I want her to balance up and what not, and when I tell her she is good, she is pretty excited about it.

We had this one ewe with a young lamb who would not stay with the herd. She was a follower sheep so invariably she’d get in the dogs’ radar as I walked them around the arena. Any pressure and she’d turn and face them. A couple times I let the dogs give her a correction, but I also know that she’s basically trying to protect her lamb and that if the dog just stood its ground or gave space, she’d move sometimes, so we had to balance correction when she didn’t move with moving. This blew my poor dogs’ brains because they were very happy to accept the challenge. This, however, kind of undid the “calm collected walk up” stuff I was working on for a bit and stressed the sheep out.

Anyway, Fury is just overly stoked, while Rippa, having not developed terribly bad habits, is settling down nicely. She’s comfortable just standing and watching the sheep when they get on the fence and stay there,  but she is definitely stoked when they break away. I really wish I could get her between the fence and the sheep and we could start  trying to fetch, but the sheep do not get to come to me, and Rippa will get overly excited and undo “sheep” trust, so just gotta take time at this. I just hope that my half moons and leash training exercises aren’t crutching her in some way.

Was out there for a  good hour and a half, downing dogs and throwing stones out of the ring when Nathan came to show me the slaughtering.

When I showed up, he was like, “We’re killing cows today!” Now, you may not know this, but it’s not really legal to kill your own livestock. You usually have to ship them to a slaughterhouse, so I think he’s joking. “Nope, we have our own mobile unit!”

So, being an animal science major in another life, this I gotta see. He takes off for a while, and I figure I will hear the cattle lowing and screaming, but I don’t.
Now that I am done with the dogs, we head up the hill a bit and I come to your standard cattle sorting pen, only there’s this truck and a woman in a government vehicle hanging out.

I park the car and come see, and there are two guys, one taking off what looks like fireman turnouts, the other with a big plastic apron with various implements sticking out of the pockets. These guys are kind of funny, with a  rapport like the Mythbuster guys, only butchers. “Wait’ll you see our reality show next month! Which one of you wants to meet the baby cow Jesus?” When your business is killing, I imagine you have to find some humor in it.

There are two yearlings in the pen, and three dead cows in the truck. Basically, they get them in the squeeze chute, slit their throats, and then haul them into the truck to eviscerate and start butchering them. They’ve got a hose and a hole in the truck that goes into a drain in the ground.

Thoughts:

1 – this is awesome. I have never seen such low stress killing. The cows aren’t stressed at all from moment to moment.

2.  - Holy crap, cows’ stomachs look bigger than they are when they are out of the cow.

3.  - Nathan points out that the muscle is still twitching on one of the cow’s haunches even though it is more “slab of beef” at this point than cow.

Once they slaughter it, Elaine the USDA inspector, does her thing (and tells me how much better this is than working on the line at Harris Ranch), and they push it into a freeze at the front of the truck. It’s pretty fricking amazing. Ya’ll should totally patronize this ranch. Talk about the right way to raise beef. The same thing will happen with my sheep, as well.

And then it was time to go. But first, the dogs took a dip in the lake.

Day Two at Adeliada

It’s 5:45 and I am just home from five days in the wilderness on the top of a rock. I’m burrowing through my dresser in the dark because even though Bandy is interested in going, I am quite sure he’s not getting up. Tape up my sprained ankle and the pets and I are out the door. Gotta get up early in 100+ heat to do anything.

The drive is awesome so I took a ton of photos to show you.

I loved the pink cast on the hills as the sun rose.

These oak arches are awesome, too.

And so we arrive. You go up and up and up this super steep, forested road, and it opens up to a hillside full of vines, and you roll on down to this field. Nathan has all the sheep in the pen at once because we talked about how to make them used to stuff and I said he ought to just put them all in there and I'll teach them to sort themselves out. So there’s my set up. I tied the dogs to the fence along the back of the pen there to do the sorting.

Just one problem:

Hi, Mia. Mia is their livestock guardian and she doesn’t mind me so much as the dogs tied to the fence and I wonder how that’s going to go. She’s timid with me and also sheep colored, so trying to sort her out was pretty rough. Happily, Nathan came by and all was well because he helped get her out for the rest of the sorting. He stayed with me the whole time, which was actually nice feeling because I didn’t have to worry about how he was feeling about what I was doing. He settled up next to Fury, who sat in his lap and played with the puppy they’d acquired. When she wasn’t squeaking incessantly.

“She’s pretty little!” he comments. Which reminds me about how Shannon had come over last time and just kept exclaiming how small she was. I guess I forget how small she is until she surprises someone. We joke that she’s a “micro” but the shock they both had was funny.

And then we got to business. I had about ten sheep in there with lambs, brought Rippa in and just had her lay down until she and the sheep relaxed. Then I put her on leash and let her walk up on them, and when there was too much pressure, told her “out,” which she did. Then I walked the sheep around the pen . . . which worked pretty well. They stopped spazzing and took the direction, with Rippa covering pretty well, but not stoked about getting on the fenceline.

One ewe kept turning back and charging her, which kept her attention pretty well as she feinted and barked at her. This happened with I let Rippa put too much pressure on her, but it was really neat to watch her kind of understand that and (in contrast to Fury, below) see her bark and snarl but back up to give the sheep space to turn back.

I was pretty happy about how she balanced herself in their flight zone and I could see that this method was teaching her to get out when the pressure was on, so it seems to be a good exercise for now.

Then, when everyone seemed pretty settled, I did some “out” half moons with her, but one of the sheep spazzed and made a break for it, and Rippa lost control, meaning I lost control and there was some yelling and chasing but when I got it together to lay her down, she took it, and Nathan remarked (after I’d fallen over in the ruckus) that maybe we should astroturf the arena. And then he was like, “The videos I watched all look like that. Guess that’s the dues you have to pay.” So I was feeling better about not having perfect dogs in the ring.

So, more leash work and we try the “out” half moon again, and this time she’s good and out so I lay her down and pet her and Nathan likes that. One more time, then more walking around and downing, and it’s Fury’s turn.

I figured that I might as well use Fury like this, too. She is SO into the sheep from being off them for so long, it’s like having a year old dog again. She remembers her commands nicely, but when she feels pressure from the sheep, she’ll gleefully shoot straight at them instead of giving them room. Because of this, I did the exact same thing with her as I did with Rippa. I wanted both dogs because then the sheep would learn more general “dog” rather than get used to Rippa and freak when they put their BC cross on them. Plus, Fury is way scarier in posture and power than Rippa is.

There’s Fury being polite and waiting for me to allow her to move the sheep, with Shannon and Nathan discussing life in the background.

I even shot a little video  of Fury when I knew I wouldn’t be in real trouble and need that hand.

So, you can see that Fury’s not being pretty here, but you get what I’m doing, I think. By the end she was wearing a little and getting them into the middle and no bum-rushing. So, this exercise might be good for here, too. I knew, at the end of the video there, that I shouldn’t have said “out” that last time, but we all make mistakes.

Unfortunately, a few moments later, the ornery sheep turned around and got her good on the head so I let her punish her, but then Fury was kind of over it all after that – I mean, she’s on leash, I’m not letting her do what she thinks she needs to be doing, and sheep are ramming her head. I made her do a couple more laps but she was more than ready for a “that’ll do.” No harm, no foul, but maybe she’ll start learning that rushing the sheep when she gets in their flight zone has consequences, and it coming from the sheep’s not a bad idea.

Back on Thursday. Gotta put the work in to get these sheep ready for the puppy and my dogs mellow enough to be working them right.

The ranch workers herd the flock past the car as I’m ready to head home.