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. 

Day 2–On the Hill, First Cattle Run, and Sheep

I don’t really know how to start this blog except that today was pretty much one of the most perfect stockdog days I’ve ever had. I lately have felt a little burnt out from the whole thing – maybe because I have lots of other stuff going on, maybe because Fury was really easy to train so I achieved a lot of the goals I set, maybe I’m lazy, or maybe being on the ASCA Board just kind of burned me out. I have no idea. But today reminded me a lot about why I do this.

It also got even better when I sat down to review/edit the videos of Rippa from today and listened to the onlookers on the tape comment on her cattle run – people with a lot of experience, with a lot of knowledge, and even a well-respected stockdog judge comment on her positively. It made me sparkle because, well, I bred her. I didn’t just go out and buy her, I planned this.  Squeal.

Lots of firsts today so let’s get to it:

7:30 am, I arrive and help Marilee and Doug fix Marilee’s awning because the trailer washers are coming. Did you know there are professional trailer detailers? I didn’t. First number one.

We finish that up and go out back. I am lingering by the fence (mostly because I want to video tape this), but Marilee calls me up to her, down the road a bit and on the hill with the sheep. I leave the camera behind because it’s foggy and because I think asking her to tape while also making sure I don’t eff this up is probably asking too much.

She tells me to just hang out while she works on getting her dog to listen. Ally is kind of being feisty and wanting to do stuff her way and it’s pissing Marilee off. She tells me she wants to save her energy for cattle, so it will just be a little and then we’ll get them.

The fog is so heavy. Everything is so still. You can’t really see anything. So different from the day before’s super hot weather. It’s magical. It’s my turn.

“Make sure you point the heads uphill or away from the gate they came out of when you lay her down,” Marilee says, handing me the reins. If I don’t, they've been known to take off. Stockmanship 101.

So I down the puppy, get between her and the sheep and let ‘er rip. And she does amazing. Now, I have mostly only seen advanced dogs out here, or dogs learning to drive who lose their sheep, but I am pretty impressed with the Rippa bear. She keeps off them, balances up and rates when she needs to. It’s like floating across the fields. I have never felt so mellow in my life. Poor Fury had me on extreme edge all the time – I am so glad I bred Rippa to be a little more easy (her dad looks pretty easy in the video) and I’m glad Yishai chose her for that reason (I am quite certain two of her sisters have Fury’s spitfire).  I can do whatever I want. Even when she does her little dive in to test what happens, I push her out easily. It’s flipping amazing. I feel high.

And then it’s time to go back in.

Kathy is right there and asks how it went, and I give her a sheepish grin and say it was so different.

Well, she lists the reasons why:

• No fencelines may mean less intellectual control, but the space makes dogs feel less pressure and less claustrophobic.
• You’re making less turns which means you’re setting up less mistakes and bobbles and nags.
• The handler pays less intense attention to the dog because he/she is worried about where he/she is going.
• I had eight sheep. More sheep is nicer for these dogs, as I’ve said before.

All this comes down to the fact that working out back on “the hill” is more relaxing. And it was. For the dog and for me. She even downed instantly when I asked which I have a hard time getting her to do on stock, as you have seen in the videos. Marilee tells me I did a good job. I tell her I was glad it was her out there babysitting me.

We then regroup and figure out what’s next – and it’s that all of us want cattle. I spend a lot of time watching and taking some notes, adding to what I remember from Fury lessons and what Kathy says. I take photos of some of the dogs and then it’s my turn.

I think I’ll write a separate post about starting dogs on cattle, so hang tight. This post is all about me, Rippa, and the stock.

Anyway, so it’s our turn, we’re last, and we have nice cattle. I don’t know why but when you mix red and black cattle, things happen. I guess they’re racist. I warn Kathy that I know Yishai has taken her out with them but I’ve never seen it so I don’t know. I am sort of expecting a ballsout charge fest.

It’s actually quite the opposite. Rippa has shown me in accidental situations that she is quite measured around cattle, keeping her space, being calm, etc. And this was no different. She immediately started out by driving them at the heels, keeping them together, and just helping move them along. Peaceful like.

The thing is, she really did not get up the confidence to go to their heads and turn them. She tried a couple times and I have this awesome image of her burned in my mind of her giving the “I’m serious” snarly face to one of the bovines, but she pretty much stayed out of their way, kept out, and was happy at their heels. When she was at their heels. She did a lot of running back and checking with us and staying next to me. Which is HILARIOUS because I spend a LOT of time yelling at her to do just that when she sees cattle on the hill or in a field or something.  The video will show you this.

All in all, I’m not too worried about her not heading yet. She needs to turn on and get some confidence and she’ll be fine. I told you earlier I held off on lessons because she had some confidence issues and this is the same here. She’s kind of got a thing about new stuff – she needs some time to work it out. Once she does, she’s golden and it translates nicely to similar new stuff. I think she just needs time to understand what is going on. Kathy gave me some excuses about her being weirded out by her being there and that normally she would get Teal in to help rile them up and get Rippa some confidence (that’s what she did with Kite when it was Fury’s first time) but her Fred dog got injured so she’s wary of doing that with Rippa, who she can’t really control herself (Rippa works only for me). Marliee suggested working on the hill made her tired, but I doubt it. I think it’s just Rippa’s confidence is low. I know that about her.

And honestly, that’s kind of a bummer – I was happy to see a lot of things, but sad that she didn’t have the sheer drive and ballsyness that Fury has. I definitely wanted to tone that down in the next generation, but I also don’t want a dog that needs cajoling when things get rough. Rippa definitely checks out when she’s uncomfortable and that was always something I liked about Fury, that she didn’t. But, like I said, once Rippa gets it, she’s golden.

Anyway, here is the video for your pleasure – with Wagner as your backup music. Unfortunately, despite it rendering FOREVER, when it uploaded it was all cloudy and waiting for it is making me get behind in work so you get only cloudy Rippa. I’m sorry.

The interesting thing about going back and reviewing the video is that, as I said above, people had really interesting comments about what they were seeing.  No one ever actually talks to you about your dog, and no one said anything to me after the run, so it was funny to be like, “Oh, look they were talking about us.” Folks discussed her pedigree and me going back to linebreed on Slash V and such. They mentioned her super rich dark color, and then settled into discussing how Rippa is a better dog than Fury. Which is sort of nice and not, right? I mean, LOOOOOOOVE Fury, and as Kathy has always said, Fury was a nice dog that I started wrong. Rippa would have been a better learner dog for me, but definitely Rippa will get along quite nicely compared to her mother because she’s also benefitting from years of handling practice. But, as an objective viewer, yes, Rippa is better – conformationally, temperamentally, and she’s got nicer control over herself. If she would quit stealing everything and eating it, she would be universally better, but Fury’s at least honest.

Anyway, there are comments on her nice tendency to keep them together, sympathy with me that she’s not going to head, comments about how that might not be an issue . . . etc.

At the end of the video, when Rippa finally does go to head, the whole peanut gallery erupts in support, “Good girl! Yay! She has it in her!” Sparkle! Thanks campmates!

Lunch time and then back to work. I ended up going first because I tend to move fast so this works, which is also nice because I can go home and get back to work. I feel really, really guilty taking time off to do this so it’s nice to be able to actually get home and be productive, too. (Only after Rippa blogging, of course).

So it looks like Cathe failed at video taping my sheep run, but I’ll tell you that we’re so awesome it makes me sick. I can brag, right? Yeah, gonna brag.

First, Kathy had me go in and do take pen work with her. I guess apparently the way I was moving at first I was fetching instead of going around with Rippa and keeping her off. Rippa hates pressure so she tried to get out of the pen, and maybe once she nailed a sheep in the butt, but she was good otherwise. Practice makes perfect and wool is thick. I feel like that should be my new mantra.

So, we got them out of the take pen mostly nicely and out into the arena. I was able to send her around without having any more little dive-ins like she used to, and she stayed out. She takes her “outs” very nicely and I just ended up walking backward in a line. In fact, Kathy had me go through the panels, drop her, do some outruns, etc, and it was all so totally fabulous I’m thinking in my head that we just did our first title in started sheep like it was cake. I just really need to get her to LIE DOWN when I ask instead of coming in, but Kathy says she can see that will come if I am just nice and put pressure on my side. Rippa and I got to the panels (which we’ll talk about when training for trialing happens, or maybe just later) and she slowed right on down, let them get through, went around the panel and followed them through like it was baking a pie.

Toward the end, I was having a hard time getting Rippa to cover the right side of the sheep so Kathy started yelling at me about it – but it was windy so I could hear yelling and that was all. But, learning the lesson from yesterday (which is why this blog is awesome, I have to think and process stuff) about needing to just straighten out and get out of the sheep flightzone, I built my side up and held Rippa out and it fixed.

I felt proud as a peacock when I was done. I have come so far as a handler and Rips is such a nice dog. I’m excited for Bakersfield 2012, if not trialing before that.  It’s becoming a reality!

BTW, the UPS man just dropped off a package and Rippa is so dead to the world tired that she didn’t notice. Ha ha! Three more days, girl!

Take my pen, please.

So, yesterday I went to “Good Woman” Thursday and had one run with Rips in the round pen. More of the same of what you’ve been seeing. I really wish I could get her to down faster out there, but I really like her otherwise. She is great for me to learn on – I feel like I am really going to “get it” this time and maybe I’ll eventually have time to help Fury get to her potential before her little dog body breaks down (she’ll be nine this January).

The folks at the ranch yesterday and today were really cool, too. Saw some familiar faces and met some new people – I especially liked meeting a gal my age because you never see that.  

Anyway, so yesterday, Kathy’s like, “Let’s give the take pen a try next time, arm or no arm.”

So today, that is what we did.

We started with working on outruns and me getting back to paying attention to the sheep (I got heavy sheep today and my life is easier when I don’t have to worry about them). We worked on getting Rips to LIE down and to come to me instead of going for the sheepsies, and then it was round pen time at the end of the lesson (when she is good and tired).

So take pens – this is a different kind of work entirely from what we’ve been working on – which is getting the dog to work in an increasingly more open space in control. The take pen is much smaller than the round pen you start a dog in, and you really need to be able to keep them in control there. Dogs feel a lot of pressure in there so keeping them away from sheep and mitigating the pressure you put on them is important, too.

Kathy’s pen is set up so that you have a main gate into the arena that leads into a chute with different holding pens for different sheep (so she can select heavy, light, etc sheep for you). So Rippa’s job was to down in front of the gate while I open the gate and let the sheep into the round pen.

Of course, I guess the sheep weren’t too worried about Rippa because there she is, diligently lying down in front of the sheep with the open gate as I am tying it back so it doesn’t shut, and the damn sheep run right on past her to the take pen. Fury would NEVER have allowed that to happen. I guess that shows the kind of terror Rips gives these heavy sheep.

That doesn’t bother me too much, though. She’s got plenty of power when challenged and to move stock. I haven’t really seen her on cattle, but as I said, Yishai likes to “accidentally” let her get in contact with them sometimes and he always talks breathlessly about her performance, so we’ll see in the fall.

And then, once the sheep were in the take pen. We went in. Here is the video. No commentary necessary because you can hear us all talking.

 

So the idea is that you teach the dog to go in, not bugger (Kathy’s phrase, and it’s perfect) the sheep, and run right around the perimeter, stopping at the back corner (where you tell them to), and then using presence to push them into the arena.

We teach this by going in with them and having them run circles around the sheep and keep her wide to the fence. Then I am supposed to down her opposite the gate, Kathy opens the gate (because it’s a lot to ask an 18 month old puppy to hold her stay with that kind of pressure), and the sheep go out. Now, right here, Kathy says not to let her work the sheep, but use obedience, so I leave her in her down, go out to the arena gate, call her and down her. Eventually she will understand the plan and relax and just go to me while I close the gate and start working again when I say. This was a nuance I either forgot or didn’t remember from Fury. In fact, a lot of this stuff I forgot because it’s been aeons since Fury and I worked take pens. It was kind of funny.

Anyway, second take pen of the day was good, but Rippa was thinking maybe it would be better if she just got out into the arena if I wanted her out so bad. Oh well, Rips has her mother’s “If I am not doing it right, then why bother” trait. When she figures it out, it will be nice.

I am also having problems with stick location, and how it affects the dog, but we’ll worry about that next time and next time hopefully I won’t have the brace on.

Rippa says, “No worries, I luv mah sheep!”

People keep asking me how old she is for some reason. I answer, but I would feel weird going, “Why do you ask?” Maybe I should.

I also talked to Denise Creelman (who was up for lessons) about my silly aspiration to be a breeder judge with stockdogs. All the Junior handlers that I grew up with are getting their licenses to judge, but not me. She was like, “Yeah, she’s a nicely balanced little dog, maybe a little too long for my taste (true, me too), but the problem is she is so small.” Gets you every time! She is about 18” exactly, but in California that’s the kiss of death! :) Oh well. Next generation.

Good improvement and . . . the slingshot outrun.

 

Well, my camera is currently being held hostage, so no footage today. I am hoping to get it back tomorrow so I can shoot what we’re going to do, but we’ll see.

Wow. I have been bummed about not having time to take Rippa to lessons/not getting lessons, etc as I truly believe that you need real consistent work to improve, but she’s sort of proving me wrong. It’s going slower than I’d like, but it’s going.

Rippa’s an interesting dog. Not like her mother by much. Fury is very, “Okay, you want me to do something? This? No? This?” Very fast thinker, very fast behavior offerer. Rippa literally looks checked out, but the wheels are obviously turning because she seems to just “get it” whenever I start up a new lesson at teaching her. I have been taking her to the agility field to practice that and she is learning faster than Fury did because she’s not as urgent to please me RIGHT NOT. Which is interesting. I am thinking Rippa in the long run will be a nicer stockdog than Fury would have been if I did it right because she’s a bit more patient and think-it-through, which is what I wanted. Fury is a bomb little trick dog, though.

So anyway, after a week off, I took her up to Kathy’s and we went back to the duckpen for more miles. And I can see we are both improving a ton. Rips is staying off the sheep pretty naturally and I am making mostly the right handling calls. Not nearly as much circling and pushing, and a lot more backward walking, balancing, and rating. I am really proud of her and me. She gives me time to think so I can feel my handling improving. Fury just goes hard and then it makes me go hard. Here, I can chill a bit.

She also is downing nicely from far away – which was what I’ve been working on. Fury would always down too late and push the sheep past me, so we’re working on not having history repeat itself.

And then finally, Kathy was like, “Let’s see her recall.” So I left her in a down, facing the sheep, walked behind her and called her to my outside leg. No hesitation. She did it. No need to run at the sheep. Nope.

So, tomorrow, we try a bit of the “slingshot outrun” training which gets you that nice wide outrun.

You can see me do it here with Fury, a few years back:

The idea is that the dog swings wide around you and you act kind of as a . . . slingshot to send the dog. I LOVE teaching this. Fury loves it, too, she does it whenever we fetch. Rippa, however, doesn’t fetch, so we’ll see how that goes.

Well, Rippa fetches, but only if Fury’s not around, and not balls.

Miles to Go.

So, after about a month off, Rippa and I headed to lessons at Kathys. Today was only a one-off, and we won’t go back until next week. I have been thinking a lot lately about how my time is severely limited and I just really don’t know how I’ll manage to get Rippa out enough to progress her along.

We’ve been working out at a ranch a little north of town for events, and the owner suggested that his “cattlemaster” (oh man, do I LOVE that title) might be interested in meeting me. He has a herd of goats that he uses to train his (I think) McNabs on, and he probably would be cool with sharing them with me and maybe watching what I do because he just trains them to bring in cattle out of the hills. I thought this would be a cool opportunity to put miles on the Rippa dog. I have been looking into my own sheep, but it seems like I’d have to move out of town to make that work, and, well, I don’t wanna!

But, first I wanted to check with Kathy to see what she thought of the plan. She liked it. Said that it would be a good opportunity and that goats are pretty easy for people to learn on because they gentle up so fast, but, like geese, they can go sour if not managed well. She told me to go into this relationship seeing what his dogs do and just do that. Let everyone be comfortable with it. And if my dogs can’t do it, maybe he’d be willing to gentle some sheep for me to play with. I hope it works out. She said I could go out and do that at this stage and then come in for tune ups.

Because, well, the fact of the matter is – Rippa needs miles (just like Fury does), and paying $50 for forty minutes of lessons isn’t doing my wallet any favors. I also can’t take off enough time to do that. But this might be the solution.  I don’t think that it’s a good idea to put miles on a dog without any supervision (I did that, it didn’t work), and if you’re a novice, I think it’s much better to take “handling” lessons before you every try to manage your own training, but I’m glad to think she’s okay with me doing that at this stage.

So today we just put miles on. Kathy noted that Rippa was working better for me than she has and she was a lot easier on the down. Funny thing on that – Rippa is better at downing because she LOVES running Fury down when Fury is fetching and I hate it, so I started making her lie down and wait until Fury gets the ball and then she can go. So Rippa knows she’ll get to play if she lays down first.

Kathy also stopped me, midlesson, to explain how my stick use was affecting the sheep. I have been working for many years now, not really reading my sheep or thinking about my effect on their flight zone and I guess it’s time to fix that.

So here’s the deal:

With Rippa, I found that if I hold the stick flat out like this:

She is more likely to move out and stay out, instead of me pointing the stick at her. Kathy says that’s fine, but eventually I need to point the stick at her. My theory is Rips is fairly intense and she needs HUGE signals for her to not lock onto the mission and hear what I want.

But the thing is, the sheep are below the stick, so while I think I’m holding back my heavy sheep that want to stick close to me and are not afraid of me, I’m going way over their field of vision, and the stick should be here:

So now I have to remember the difference and stop fixating on handling Rippa and remember I am handling both her and the sheep.

Another interesting thing . . . Rippa sometimes lets the fence move the sheep so I have to help her get all the way around them to work them off me. So, what I do is tap the sheep in the direction I want them to stop going and go the other way. And it wasn’t working. Kathy was like, “WALK AWAY FROM THE TAP!” And I am thinking, I AM!

So she stops me and she makes me lie down and be a sheep and here’s what she shows me:

The grey is sheep and the brown is the dog. What I’m basically doing is pushing the sheep away because they see the stick and are like, “EEP, must not walk into the stick” while I am, indeed, backing up from the tap and then there’s Rippa who sees the stick that I’m holding out for too long and she’s also staying back because I am telling her to. Oops.

That stick position is SUPER important. It’s not a magic want you can just wave all over the place.

Boy howdy, do I look like a righteous bitch in these photos or what?

Rippa gets handled and you get a mini Kathy Warren clinic.

So the video is fuzzy because my computer wanted to take FOUR HOURS to render this 9 min video and I was not having that. It’s not as pretty to look at, but you get the idea.

Circles and Circles and Circles

I haven’t had time to digest the video yet, but I know some people are waiting on Rippa Puppy updates. This past weekend we did three solid days of training.

We worked on Rippa’s outrun (she’s quit splitting them for the most part, and quit doing that “change direction thing” that I talked about earlier that was hard for me to figure out how to manage), on her obedience (she still doesn’t stop before pushing the sheep past me), on her outs, and on my ability to hold the sheep.

First thought is: why do *I* run more than everyone else at lessons? I forgot to ask Kathy about this, but I think it’s partly that I can (when other folks are retirees or injured or just not in shape) and partly that I have more high-powered dogs than some. You gotta MOVE to keep ahead of them. Kathy’s pretty nimble herself and she gets out there, but I think timing has a lot to do with it, too. I need to hustle to get where she was two seconds ago.

Second is, MAN, am I tired of saying “Out.” The thing that you have to understand is that our dogs were not developed to work 3-5 sheep. They were bred to work a huge flock. That pressure is really important because when you have a huge flock, the front animals don’t feel the dog’s pressure, but they certainly feel the pressure of their compatriots urgently pushing on them. So, at this stage in the game, you’re trying to teach the dog to stay out so you don’t end up with a mess. Rippa listens for the most part, but there’s only so much she can take. She’ll get up, control herself and then . . . munch! Those lamb hocks are just too tempting that close up! MOVE, sheepies! Rippa is very pressure sensitive, both with stock and people. I think this makes her a nice cattle dog, but we’ve yet to see. She does not like a lot of pressure up front.

I’ve been dutifully chucking dog food at Rippa at feeding time after she lies down at a distance and Kathy says she sees improvement, but she needs to learn that lying down is a good thing. She just doesn’t want to. She looks really guilty when I ask her to down and go to her. Funny little dog.

The outrun issue, for the most part, have been fixed. She will take direction indications (ie, my body and stick placement), but she still runs pretty fast and flat at them. I have to run to keep her out around them, but I can feel her getting more control of it as time goes on.

Overall, good improvement over the three days. I started not being able to figure out what to do and Kathy stepped in to get Rippa right for me. The difference is night and day. She balances up (walks straight along with the sheep) with Kathy handling her, and with me she wears back and forth (what it sounds like, checks the outside eye of one sheep, runs back, checks the other, repeat). Why? I have a hard time holding my sheep – which is also how I broke Fury so badly. The sheep get past me because apparently when I run out to her to push her out, I run into the sheep’s flight zone and Kathy manages to stay out of it, so the sheep stay pointed toward her instead of going wide around me. We’ll see in the videos soon and hopefully get a clue as to how to fix this.  

Happy sheepsies in the mean time!

Why didn’t Rippa’s mom get a WTCh?

I was recently asked this question in light of the fact that here I am, telling you theories of stockdog training, when the only stockdog titles my own dog has is a STDc (started, cattle) and I’ve put a duck leg on a dog, a started sheep title on a dog, and a ranch trial title on a dog. That’s it. Kind of weird, right?

Let me tell you that writing this was kind of painful. Not because I’m embarrassed about it, nor because I realized something I hadn’t, but because I had to watch that damned video that’s linked here of what I did to Fury for two solid years.

But, well, there are things to be learned here.

When I first got into this, I heard the old adage, “You will ruin your first stockdog” and I was like, “Nah! How could I?”

Well, I did.

See, my training philosophy is very independent. I don’t belong to clubs, I don’t take classes. I train, and then I go trial. I’m a pretty good trainer, if I may, because I have been doing it for a long time, and I used to go to seminars all the time.  So when it came to livestock working, I though I would approach it the same way.

So I went to Kathy when Fury was about . . . oh, a year.

And, as you can see from this photo of her first time out, she had some go juice. You can see Kathy smiling pretty big there, too, because she liked how she was starting out, too. So I kept going to classes, but sporadically.

Look at her all balanced up and happy. Yeah, not so much these days.

Anyway, so I am in grad school and paying for this venture with student loans. Stockdog lessons aren’t cheap, but at least I am not driving upwards of six hours like some of the folks that come up  do, so I try to be consistent ,  but I’m broke.

And then, a few months in, I was given the opportunity to train and handle about seven Australian shepherds about eight miles up from me, every day, on sheep, agility, obedience, and we even tried conformation but the dogs weren’t socialized enough.  And get paid for it. This also afforded me time to use the stock on my own dog. And the hubris was incredibly. I was such a good trainer, this guy was paying me! I could not possibly not figure this out.

But here is what I did: Long story short, the sheep were terrorized by his dogs always getting loose, getting in the pens and having their way with them. Fury and her go juice allowed her to chase the crap out of these extremely light sheep and  fetch them out of the hills when they got loose, or move them from pen to pen, but even trying to start her in the round pen was work. She can work really large groups of sheep, but when they got small, they’d ping off the walls. And that’s where the problem went.

See, the dogs he had weren’t super strong on talent and instinct and it was mostly my job to bond with them and encourage them. They were very soft dogs. They moved slow and maybe didn’t listen so well, but I could get them to work the sheep enough to trial them because they were so soft and not so talented. They would follow the sheep just fine because they weren’t really reading them or trying to do anything. A few sits here and there and we could get through a course with me leading the way.

Here’s Fury with the darling father-son duo on trial weekend. The red dog, Bucky, got his RTDs that weekend with me handling, and Kodi (the black tri) got his sheep and duck legs. They were not high drive dogs, but they were sweet. Bucky died a few years back and unfortunately, Kodi’s owner died and the girl that placed the dogs wouldn’t communicate with me so I have no idea what happened to him.

Anyway, Fury, though, was all stockdog and she is still one of the more instinct-driven dogs I know. By this, I mean that she really doesn’t process so well. She just goes for things. It’s fun to train her, but if you hold a piece of food in your hand and ask her to do something, she stops thinking and just starts offering behaviors. She cannot help herself from heeling my vacuum, even though she knows it’s bad, and she has very little bite inhibition when people put pressure on her. (This was something I worried about with breeding her, but I do think I simply didn’t understand how to manage it, and I do think that this go round, we did fine with the same potential in Rippa. You gotta teach a dog that flight is much better than fight with people and not force them into things, Fury got forced.) PURE INSTINCT. And not always the good kind.

So Fury would get on those animals and try to turn them but they were so light they would bounce off the walls. Meanwhile, I don’t know how to handle at all, so I am not helping her out in any way. By the time I realized I really needed to start going to lessons again, Fury had learned that the way she should work livestock is like a bat out of hell, lest they take off.

Here’s a video of us in the roundpen:

2005

So I tried to annotate this video and it made me want to cry so I had to stop watching it. If you know what a good stockdog looks like in this situation, you can see that she is literally doing NOTHING wrong except I’m yelling at her.  And I did it five days a week for two years.

Uh, yeah. That’s how you break your dog. And the amazing thing is that Fury still loves the crap out of me and will always work whenever I ask and NEVER shuts down. She keeps trying and trying but I just never taught her want to do.

We’d actually work in an agility arena, too, so it was kind of fun. I had Fury send them over jumps and stuff, but it did NOT help her manage the sheep one iota. I could obedience her through drives and such, and I drilled her real well, but I couldn’t simply walk and have her keep the sheep with me.  She would blow them right by me because she never learned that I was there to  hold them, too (and mostly because it took me years to get that I was supposed to).

So, at some point I quit working for Doug when I knew I couldn’t do anymore with his dogs than I was and I went back to Kathy’s and was at lessons pretty much every day I could. And things got better.

2006

2007

So then I started trialing her, mostly because I knew I wanted to breed and I wanted to see what was out there, not because she was totally ready.  Proof of that? I never had the guts to trial her on home turf where people I saw regularly could judge my wonderful dog poorly.

My first weekend, Trish Alexander and I went to Idaho. Fury and I took home Most Promising Started Aussie and a sheep and cattle leg.  The sheep were unlike anything we’d ever seen, so heavy they would walk with me. It frustrated Fury because no matter what she did, they just stuck by me.

But obviously we did okay. The second trial was in Washington and not so good. And then we went for MVA in 2007 and Fury and I qualified in agility and on cattle, so we qualified on the whole shebang, while also finishing the started cattle title.

Everyone who watched that qualifying cattle run was impressed. The judge said she was like a little hornet on the cattle. Which is true.

On sheep, not so good – and it became clear we had a major handling issue. Away from  me she worked fine, but as soon as she got close to me, it was dunzo. I would be too nervous and Fury would be too nervous and it would be a big, fat wreck. Ducks usually went pretty well, but I was bad at handling them so she never Q’d.

(I bought the photo, so don’t be mad. I just don’t have it scanned.)

And I felt awesome about that MVA award- it had been a life long goal of mine. I was going to keep at it and she wasn’t broken after all.

But, in the end, I began to realize that the lessons weren’t really letting us progress. I was learning a ton more from watching others and keeping at it, but Fury just could not balance the sheep when they came into contact with me.

2009

This is the last video I have of us working together. The fact was, it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Kathy continued through all this to remind me that she was, in essence, a good little dog, and that it was I that had made some major mistakes. That’s why I also decided that breeding her was okay. Fury has been a wonderful pet, the smartest and most biddable dog I’ve ever known, and she has a lot to contribute to the gene pool, even if she’s small and has no titles.

As I said when I ran an ad in the Aussie Times  for the litter I planned but didn’t work out, it’s not the titles; it’s the talent.

 

I tried giving her to Yishai to handle, but she's too far gone and he doesn't know enough about how to handle, nor does he love it. If I had really wanted him to, he would have kept it up, but really, it's not worth it. And now I think that if I had sheep of my own to work on every day, I know just enough to maybe fix her, but with Rippa around at $50 a day, I can’t afford to fund Fury, so for now she is retired. I am trying to figure out a way to make this work as I love working with Fury and she definitely misses it.

But that, my friends, is why I am able to write about training dogs but have no real titles to prove I know what I’m doing. Because I learned all this stuff the hard way – as most of us do.

If you are not a stockman, this blog may help, but you need someone to keep you from breaking your dog.  Take it from me.

Introduction

Hello, world, my name is Kristin and I like dogs. Maybe kinda a lot. And not just for petting and cuddling with, but to train with and really work with them. I've competed with my dogs in everything from conformation (show dog pretty stuff) to obedience to agility to herding. This blog will follow the newest acquisition to the family, Tara's Lil Rippa, who is a breeding from my first litter after about 17 years in the breed and a long apprenticeship under many of the breed's respected breeders and mentors. My goal with Rippa was to produce a beautiful, sound little dog with a nice temperament that would be capable of being my boyfriend's best friend and a bang up cowdog. No, we don't have cows, but the point here is potential. I actually live in a small town in a rented house and am an English professor, small climbing gym owner, and event manager. No livestock around for miles and miles. This is mainly a hobby for me, but at the same time, there are those who exist to preserve something we like for those who do need it, and trust me, there are plenty.

So, how do I train? Off stock, mostly positive. I have a couple things I have picked up from various sources, books, seminars, others . . . but I don't do clicker training - and I don't usually use food. The dogs I have are motivated by play-training, which is largely what I do. It makes competing ultra fun because we're both having fun in whatever ring we're in. Heeling is AWESOME because it's a game. This sort of works for most dogs, but the particular dogs I have are high drive, super biddable, and eager to learn so that's all I need and it's why I have what I have.

Everyone has a mentor, and I'm fortunate that mine happens to be one of the best stockdog trainers (especially for Aussies) in the world - Kathy Warren of Windsong Aussies and the Flying E ranch.  And more fortunate that I'm a 35 minute drive from her. If only I had endless financial and time resources, I'd be able to take better advantage of it, but that's part of what I am doing this for - to get down what I'm learning somewhere so that when I don't have that resource because she retires or I move or something, I have a foundation to work off of. I've been training the Fury on her (Rippa's mom) for about six years, but prior to that I worked her by myself on a ranch I was employed by to handle dogs. My own inventions just didn't work and it ruined my otherwise talented dog and at this point we'd have to start from scratch and then some and it just isn't worth the resources to me when we can start fresh with the Rippa bear.

I am doing this mostly to serve as a log of my training from ground zero to whereever we end up. The blog should contain some training theory, musings, and maybe some rantings, I don't know. Hopefully it's fun if you choose to read it. :)