W Lazy J Cattle Camp: Lectures by Betty Williams

One night I’m out, walking the dogs and taking photos of the sunset, when all the cattle pop out of a hole in the fence, and, one by one, with real purpose, saunter over to the alfalfa field. I would have stopped them, but they moved like they had pressure on them so I wasn’t sure if it was okay or not until it was over. It made a neat shot, though. Everybody had to deal with that problem that night and the next day, but . . . it got handled.

So some highlights from Betty’s talks at camp (I don’t do stenography, so this is paraphrased, I apologize if I get anything wrong):

Day 1:

• Smart dogs don’t go to cattle and act like an alligator – it will take them a while to figure stuff out. Be patient: don’t give up on them. A lot of people want to see alligator to start. Some of the best dogs, including Spur, took some time.
• Dogs are wearing because they’re trying to catch the cattle’s eye out of her blind spots. They can see really far behind them, but the dog is in her blindspot if she stays up straight on the drive. The wear is a good thing. Trainers will teach a walk up for trialing, but it doesn’t work in real life work
• If cattle are worried about a dog, they’ll turn to look for it.
• They have really bad depth perception -
• Fast and tight heading is scary for cows because they can’t see what’s coming up and feel it’s a threat
• Cattle putting their head down isn’t necessarily a challenge – they’re trying to see what’s in front of them, not initially fight
• This is why shadows really freak cows out – they can’t see what they are and it looks like a cliff.
• The stock stick is there to protect the handler. Use it like that.
• Heeling
• The cow the dog is heeling isn’t necessarily the one that kicks a dog – it’s the neighboring cow seeing the heel and kicking at the dog
• Dogs generally start heeling high and then drop lower (and how, Rippa tried a stomach shot first time out, but after a smack, she didn’t do it again)
• Smart dogs heel rear cows and don’t heel just to heel (but this comes with experience)
• When you start pups, you do it on 5-10 head of cattle and increase size of the herd as soon as possible.
• 35 is great for some dogs
• Less cattle is less threatening to pups who aren’t used to cattle, but the dogs work better on big herds
• Dog and handling break your cattle way prior to starting your pups – use chutes, too
• Send dogs softly so you don’t scare the cattle.
• At trials, think about whether your stock is heavy or light. If you’re first up, look at how they’re handling back in the pens for a clue.
• Cattle are handled by steering the head and point of shoulder. (You’ve seen me write about this in the past so no elaboration here)

Lecture 2:

• Separation from the handler in every day life is a good thing – dogs get really dependent on their owners for security and it shows in stock work. If they’re babied a lot, they won’t have confidence without you.

Lecture 3: 

• If you’re having a hard time out there, think back to your foundation. Something isn’t solid so take it back to the round pen and make it solid.
• The Round Pen is where we start
• You stay for a short period, or not, until your dog can square up, get back, dog rates the sheep – start with the bamboo pole but end with the ability to handle with just your fingers.
• Then, start in the round pen and move to an intermediate space (for me, I call it the duck pen because that’s what it was at Kathy’s)
• Work on side commands (only when easy working), steady, square shoulders (the dog turns back squarely, as we’ve talked about in other blog entries), out
• Look for the side the dog favors and work the other one a lot
• Once you’re out of the round pen, start and end with a fetch every time. It’s easy to get a drive and work on that all the time, but you’ll lose the fetch if you only work on driving.
• When you’re teaching square shoulders, the dog should give more than 90 degrees to you so that when you can’t enforce it and the dog cheats, it’s cheating at 90 degrees
• Teaching the drive
• For the drive, do an off-set balance exercise with 10-15 sheep.
• Basically, you get the dog on the outside, you in the center,  with the sheep on the other side of you. You’ll want to keep them pretty much in the same place and send the dog around. Betty moves with the dog as this happens, though when I did it with Kathy, and have explained it before here, we stayed put.  The dog should then be told “there” for it to turn in and face the sheep, but Betty says between dog and sheep.
• You should be able to do this 360 degrees around the sheep and your dog should stay out enough to not affect the sheep bunched in the middle of the imaginary circle you and the dog are walking around and stopping randomly.
• This is the time to teach short flanks by saying “way” and “by” softly. (As opposed to AWAY and GO BY – which should help tell the dog to get way out).
• When the dog is able to get all the way around, you can stop ding the arc exercise.
• This should be done for 5 minutes max at a time as it fries dogs’ brains
• When you’re done, have the dog fetch, then put everybody up.
• Next step in the drive:
• Now the dog should go into a fetch with the owner stopping them and telling her “there” – “walk up” – “good there.” The dog should be able to handle this for a tiny amount of time before it feels like its losing the head. Don’t expect more than 6-10 feet of driving for a while.
• Call the dog back after the short drive and then set up an outrun, fetch, and you can set it up again.
• After being patient and not asking for too much in a session, after 2-3 day a dog should be able to drive about half an arena if all the foundation is laid..
• If training isn’t working, stop and think. Go back to basics or find another way to try things.
• Different lines learn differently. Not every approach will work with every line – try different things.
• Dogs are task oriented – give them good jobs that put all this schooling in context (ie chutes, penning, loading trailers, etc)
• Starting a puppy:
• 4 months do a little with the rake – just play with it off stock to teach them to respect it
• 6 months – do some slightly more seious lessons on sheep – should be short, maybe 15 min max. Make it fun.
• BE CAREFUL OF FEAR PERIODS, which can occur:
• 8 weeks
• 4 months
• 8 months
• 12-15 months
• 18 months
• Know thyself: do you get pushy? If so, wait until the pup is emotionally mature enough to handle it.
• Make sure they go to trials before their first exhibition – so they’re used to how that all works and feels.
• You can train flank commands with toys on the end of sticks.