Head bobbles and border collies

I posted yesterday about my getting stuck with Rippa quitting me and it being because I am running the cows off and wanting to try the border collies so I stop trying to “Train” Rippa and just work on my handling.

It worked.

Shannon gave me Cat to work – her finished trialing dog. Right away my expectations were different than I expected: I figured Cat would do a lot of the work herself and automatically just fetch them to me wherever I went, but nope.

1. Cat is loyal. She had a hard time taking commands from me until she decided I was cool (I mean, she likes me, but not like as a working partner). I figured that was a defining feature of BCs – they work for anybody.

2. Aussie people always say that BCs work for themselves, but Cat was really mechanical with me. She didn’t want to do anything I didn’t ask her to do and when she wasn’t sure, she’d find a spot to hold them and wait.

I just didn’t expect that.

She’s a slow working dog with a lot of eye, and while I was expecting to have to do more handling while she held her end of the deal, this was more than perfect for me. I saw right away where normally I’d walk a fenceline ahead of the dog, it wasn’t going to go with these cows, I’d need a parallel drive.

At one point, Catty was fetching them to me and this one cow on the left would pop out a bit, and Catty would look at it, and it would pop back in, but MY pressure would pop it back out. It was slow and super subtle but I GOT it.

So, once we did a few rounds of that, I put Rippa out there and sure enough, got way more out of her than I have in a while. We were doing fancy obstacles and penning like champions and I went from feeling like I had a long way to go to be ready to trial again to being like, “Nah, we got this.”

Why?

Shannon said that I started the lesson with more authority than usual (maybe the confidence of my end of the cattle was that) and that I might just have to be laying down the law more because Rippa responds to it and it will probably make her crsiper.

That and at no point did Rippa feel like she was losing control of the cattle. Her drive was really quiet and thinky as long as I held my end of it with a parallel drive and helped her out with some commands to let her know what I wanted. Shannon said that one way to help her would be to have her “lose them” in my direction if at all possible because then I’d have it covered. But that’s the key, I have to have it covered.

Lots of nice things today – she kept herself calm and worked her stock, she lost one and got it without overly fixating on trying to yahoo it, and she pulled her punches and stayed back, watching stragglers, instead of running to head to hit something.

It was kinda awesome. I care a little too much about all this stuff, I know, but when it goes, it goes and I am proud of the little brown dog today. And me. I’m going to keep handling other dogs to feel those cows and those dogs and it will help Rippy bear out.

A Little Update and an Interlude

So . . . almost accidentally, we bought a house by the sea and moved in. It is a fixer upper, and being people who don’t rest on our laurels, that’s pretty much all we’ve been doing with it since we took possession of it. The very first day I put plants in the ground because the previous owner never did. Then there was scraping and painting and reinstalling. We’re still working on the inside and will be for a few months, I think. And then there’s the backyard.

Oh, and my husband and I decided to open up a second location for our non profit climbing gym, in the midst of the busiest season for our for-profit event business.

What I’m trying to say is I haven’t been working dogs that much.

Aww, but she’s a time suck. I never expected that to be the case because I’ve been taking care of rentals like they’re my own forever. But now I can’t blame the landlord for it looking bad. It’s a compulsion. It must be fixed up. Much more to come in the front yard, but this is it for now.

Anyhow, that’s not to say I haven’t been working. I’ve gotten out a handful of times since then. And probably for good, too.

Remember my problem with Rippa and the ducks? Still no good. She won’t even do chores now. She’ll give it one half-hearted go and it’s over. The ducks still move off her so I can grab her and move them but she will just come over, suck up, and ask to do anything but that. Unless I let her go crazy on them. So, Rippa is on duck-time-out.

She was showing hints of doing this with sheep, too, at Stephanie’s place. But not at the Woods’.

I was so upset about it that I ended up deciding to go on a heritage search and contact anyone I knew that had her bloodlines too and figure it out. Tracey, of C-Me, reminded me that Fury’s mother (Rippa’s grandmother) didn’t like ducks, either. I started talking to more people about dogs just plain not interested in working ducks and sometimes sheep and wanting to give up, and it seemed to be coming from Spike. But then, someone didn’t have Spike, but they had Judd’s Chickasaw Dan.

And, lo and behold, I suddenly am on the phone with Joey Judd – which was pretty exciting. He talked to me for a solid hour about people, about dogs, about all of it. What I realized from that conversation is that Rippa is working exactly how you’d expect for me linebreeding on Dan. She’s got serious power with the cattle, and she’s getting frustrated on sheep and ducks as Joey mentioned his dogs were wont to do.

So, check it out, what happened? It’s probably that I’ve been working way more interesting stock at the Woods: goats and cattle, and she’s like, “Eff this other stuff.” She does work sheep fine at the Woods, so I’m wondering if there’s something about Stephanie’s sheep or the stuff I do there because it’s so much bigger of a space. I guess we’ll see!

And should I get upset about the fact that Rippa’s not amped on the little beasties? No. I wanted to breed cattle dogs. I got a cattle dog. If I keep wanting to breed for cattle dogs, she’s awesome. She’ll still work my chickens happily, too, but she’s getting a massive break from the ducks.

Actually, last time I was out there, she got to do nothing but cry as the Fury did her thing, and another guest was out working, too. I met this guy Roland and his red border collie at Stephanie’s. He trials ASCA and needed ducks to warm up on, and I said sure. Well, he comes out and his dog is great. He’s all apologetic about how she’s too hard on them, but man, my dogs are way harder (of course, they’re at the started level and his bitch is trying to finish a WTCh). It’s all about perspective.

I was supposed to trial with the Woods this fall but we’ve not put enough time in (and now I have no time with work and house), so they are off killing it on the cattle circuits in California and Oregon right now.

I posted to the California ASCA trial and show list about upcoming trials and so now it’s time to sort through them and pick one or two and just suck it up and go. I’m terrified we’ll do badly, but I guess I have to get over it. We’ll be fine. Let my dog work and me just concentration on the job and get ‘er done.

When I know my dates, I’ll post them here so there’s no backing out (unless I don’t get in).

Until next time . . .

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. 

Kathy Warren Clinic and the Impact It Had on Us

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

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

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

Here’s the basic gist, though:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPARKLE!

Getting to the fun training (at least for me)

Didn’t have cattle this week, which was okay, but slightly disappointing, because after watching the video, I want another go at it. And I will have it next week . . . so no whining, right? Opportunities abound.

It’s been a fun ag week for me. The husband and I went out to pick out our replacement hens – this year I just went for the prettiest ones because me going for good layers hasn’t worked out so well (one died, one went broody, and two quit laying).

Here are the little guys:

Today I took the girls out to Stephanie’s to work on stuff. I have my Kathy Warren clinic weekend next weekend (and I will bring both dogs since the huz is away working during that same time period) and there’s some goals I have before I show up: improve that outrun, and get Rippa ready to learn to drive with her. I haven’t gotten this far with Fury so I think having Kathy teach me to do it would be the best use of this clinic.

Here’s the things I think I need to be able to do for Kathy to do it:

1. Be able to pull your dog off the top and circle off-balance without affecting the sheep. Check (mostly – sometimes she’s a little tight and they drift, but nothing big).

2. Be able to down your dog at anywhere around that off-balance circle. Check (mostly – Rippa isn’t an instant downer, she’ll take a couple steps before she stops).

So this lesson was making sure I had that part down. We used a small flock (only 3 sheep) and worked on Rippa’s obedience in taking the down and getting out.

I’m sensitive that she gets pretty bored with this kind of training so we did some fetching, and then I worked on that outrun. She still obviously doesn’t “get” that she should stay out to gather them if I’m not there to help her – and taking people’s advice, I have started to obedience it a bit. It’s funny, because people generally when they tell me to do this say that I’m teaching the dog to think rather than use obedience, but I’d say using commands is obedience. Relative perspective?

I took a video of me doing this. You’ll notice two things: 1 – I don’t yell NEARLY like I used to. I love being calm and happy. Stockdogging is zen! 2 – Snuffly me – a combination of having a cold and having allergies made me the sick kid. Sorry for all that sniffle.

It was a nice, quiet stockdog day. Toward the end, to make things interesting, I worked on penning and Stephanie’s chute-panel. We need more work there. Rippa has no idea whether to follow them through the chute (which makes them panic and her lose control) or to stay on the outside and hold them. The answer is neither. We’ll figure it out.

We  got in her really tight sorting pen today to move sheep out for Fury and I was really impressed. She didn’t take any pot shots, hit legs gently to move them, and generally the sheep stayed super calm. Fun times.

And then it was Fury’s turn. As I said, I don’t expect a lot from her right now. She hasn’t worked in like five years. She takes her flanks and downs and it’s just time to teach her how to balance to me gently and kindly. I had to video this because the way these two dogs work are night and day.

Rippa is upright upright upright and tight working. Fury has more eye and wider working. You can guess which dog the border collie person likes. I think Rippa works more like her dad, but the more I do this, the more I appreciate Fury’s natural style, too. I hope it’s in Rippa somewhere because it would be nice to have a blend of the two in future generations.

There’s not much to the video, I’m sorry, but I was just really happy at how calm everything is, even with Fury bear. I’m again so blessed to be able to try training her again after everything else. So blessed for that foundation and blessed that my eleven year old dog has plenty of go-juice left.

The time honored dip-in-a-stock-tank tradition.

And then we headed out to visit the ducks at the Best Family Farm. Jennifer has been so cool about them – she takes them out to leg them up for me, I left her my stock flag, and they pop pretty easily out of their pen and into the field now without a lot of work. One of them has a messed up foot, but it’s easy to sort her/him out and leave it behind to work the others.

I decided that they could handle some short works with Rippa and so, I did. She did quite awesome – taking her commands to stay off them and drive them, fetching them thoughtfully . . .

But then when she gets too close she gets all kinda panicked about why they don’t move off her and starts kind of nipping on them trying to stop them. It’s okay. With time she’ll learn to take the pressure off. V, Jennifer’s daughter, wanted to see what their dog did (he’s half BC/half lab) so after a 20 minute ducky break in their posh duck waterfall:

I let Obi give it a go. He’s funny. His border collie sense is like, “Go to head and stop.” He’s fabulous at that. I worked at getting him unstuck but there’s not a lot clicking for him yet. I have a feeling in time, he’ll be kinda fun to work on the ducks, but definitely missing a couple instinctual pieces that I’ll need to help him with.

But yeah, le sigh, very good stockdoggy day.

Oh, and I finally figured out how to podcast today. I’ll be posting interviews from breed greats in the future, but for now, the first one’s mostly about me.

Second lesson on cattle at the Woods’

This afternoon, I loaded Rippa up and we paid Shannon and Dustin Wood’s little spread in Atascadero, pretty much on the same road I use to get to Stephanie’s sheep rentals, just the opposite direction. Highway 41 is the big win in stockdog land.

I’m still feeling out how to approach the Woods’ lessons. They’re pretty open to me just doing my thing, but also super psyched to help me out and I’m trying to learn when to do my thing and when to take their advice – my thought is generally to listen to what they have to say, give it a try a couple times and I or the dog aren’t getting it, to go to what we know and ponder it. I think it’s working.

For example, Dustin had just built a round pen on his property (a dang fine one, by the way – post-holes dug and strung tight) and he says since they put it up, they’ve been using it every day. They like to warm their dogs up on it with their goats before putting them on cattle, and work on fundamentals.

Rippa and I haven’t been in a round pen in forever because of how Stephanie’s set up is, so we gave it a go, trying some outrun training handling advice but not getting so far so I went back to what she and I know well.  Basically, again, is that the message is, is that I’ve been lazy.

With Fury, who naturally took her outruns pretty easy from what I remember, I never really had to worry about the finesse of starting them (for example, laying them down with their shoulder to the stock so they’re facing the way you want them to run), and so with Rippa, who I had had so much trouble starting in the first place, I have been letting just laydown facing them. No more. The Woods got on me about consistently asking for it and it would come. Good. Thing #1 to work on. Okay.

I should also note that working with them, with their dogs, I feel like the laziest trainer ever – their dogs take commands. Rippa takes the suggestion and I have to handle her harder. Partly, Rippa’s never been fast on the response during stock and I was happy to get what I got, and partly I am being lazy. There’s no reason I can’t get the same level of obedience out of her at this point, so I need to start working on my expectations of her trained behaviors. She’ll take ten feet to down, five feet to stop, and a while to “get back” or take her flanks. I need it now and I need to remember to make sure I get it now. It will help her outruns, too, if I an get her to stop and take her flanks. Thing #2 to work on.

Shannon talks to me about how I really need to train Rippa to respect the stick. She shows me with her own dog on a leash how if she points the stick at her dog (off stock), she’ll immediately turn her shoulder and try to get out of her space. I take the stick and poke at my dog, who looks inquisitively. We laugh. This is a really big point to me because when I worked both my dogs, I saw the stick as the enforcer and direction giver, and both Stephanie and the Woods see it as a little something more. I’m not sure I’ve seen Kathy Warren do the kind of stick ground work my BC people have suggested, but I may just not have been “seeing it” back when I was regularly taking lessons. Either way, thing #3 to work on.

We then moved into the cattle. They’d recently lost one of their Holstein heifers so picked up some replacement beef calves at the sale. Dustin said they hadn’t really been worked or dog broke yet so if we had to separate them out, he would. Well, no worries there. Rippa went right to them this time and got to work and they stayed just fine with the dairy cattle, with one red heifer seeming to always get herself out and chased back in – but I’d also say that she was also doing that because Rippa was too tight and pushing her out to start.

I started Rippa by just having her walk up their heels to keep her easy and cranked down (because Rippa is PSYCHED to actually WORK CATTLE) and once she started lifting them off the fence, we started the real training. The Woods’ have a lot of panels set up in their arena for finite obstacle work and to use to help teach the dogs to work in that kind of pressure, so I was able to use the panel to send Rippa out wider than I could without them. Once she figured that trick out, we had things pretty much dialed to lift them and fetch them to me. 

Despite me starting her at the heels, Shannon observed that I should send her to the heads, and so I did, pushing her back after they turned. The one time I didn’t was the one time the fetch didn’t work out, so I learned a really good lesson there for my dog – despite her early starts being more heel work, she’s got big head instinct and to let her use that to feel in control.

The other thing that the Woods taught me was something I definitely wouldn’t have thought about . . . what happens when your group divides? In the beginning and occasionally toward the end of the lessons, one or two of the cattle would break off. This blows Rippa’s mind because she has a really strong sense of group but she’s also a bit insecure about working without me at a distance on the cattle (and I mentioned this is an issue on bigger distances with  the sheep, too). She doesn’t know whether to come into me with the lots of cattle or to go get the ones she wants to. So Dustin told me, hey, if she has a group handled, you go to the other one. Doing that makes her feel secure and she’ll think better and just bring the cattle over, which she did. In the same vein, if I have a group handled and one lone cow, if I want her to bring that cow to the group, just walk up to the cow without saying anything to her and she’ll go pick it up and then I can walk back to the group. Generally you want to follow the “bring the many to the one” rule I like to live by, but if you have a relatively easy straggler, man, that works so well.

Well, it works so well if your dog has the instinct and power to do it, which, hey, sparkle, mine does.

When we finished up, Dustin was very effusive about her, “She did really, really, really, good. That was really nice. By the end there she was getting them out of the corner, biting them where she should be, and 100% better than the first time in there today and way better than last time you were here.”
That means a lot coming from them, as they’ve got some very, very fine dogs and their handling is beautiful, quiet, and confident.

Rippa’s improvement is pretty in keeping with how it’s been with her. Once she gets it (or I do), she gets it pretty thoroughly. Having done what we did in there with half unbroke calves and only our second time on cattle in almost a year . . . I can confidently say we’d get through an ASCA started course, no problem. Maybe not get the highest score out there yet, but like her mother, she’s definitely more a cow dog. All that power and grip she wants to use on the sheep and goats stops being quite as stress-gratuitous on cattle and she settles down really easy and reads her stock.

No problems walking up on their heads if the cattle we standing, lifting out of corners patiently, lifting off of fence panels. It was pretty dang awesome.

And it looks like I have a standing weekly date with them if we’re both available. Can’t wait to learn more. Better get started on that ground work.

Duckies coming and taking a step back to see the progress

Well, me taking a cue from everyone who’s been telling me I’m not handling my best definitely helped. Rippa is just killing it on stock these days. Every single lesson is a leap forward for us in one way or another.

I think I told you that CA Sharp sometimes comes with me to start her dog  in the round pen with Stephanie while I train mine in the field. Well, last time, Stephanie asked if I could handle sorting off the sheep CA needed and, well, duh.

Rippa is a most excellent pen work dog. Calm, controlled, takes her commands, totally gets what I need. Makes me think that Farm Trials should be our forte’.

Anyway, once we sort off the heavy sheep for Kira (CA’s dog), I think, you know, it’s not like the sheep are going to run for the hills, I bet I can use Rippa to take them from the arena to the round pen.

And you know what? I can. How we did it also kind of settles in my mind that Rippa is a strong driving dog. I haven’t trained her formally to drive, but she tends to do it in situations like this – we pushed them through the gate and Rippa got them bent the right way, away from the draw of the rest of the sheep, without my help and ahead of me, so I just followed and warned her to ease up periodically.

I think the job would have totally gone perfectly except 1: CA had her dog there, and had to open the gate and the sheep were like, “Noooooo!” and me, being a stupid handler. I pulled out my phone to get a video to show you how sexy our chore work was and me not paying attention to the dog situation ahead and help Rippa out made me lose the sheep. They ran into Stephanie’s barn and it was more than a little complicated to get them out. As I’ve said, the “flow” of her setup is less than ideal, but it also makes it pretty fun to try to figure out how to handle those situations.

I was proud of me for knowing how much pressure I could put on dog and sheep at the right times and it was pretty fun and rewarding.

Stuck with spazzy lambs, we had a hard time getting started but Rippa is getting it – her outrun is widening and she’s staying off them when she’s fetching. Thinking about past times I’ve felt like we might not be able to even work in the arena with the heavy sheep bouncing all around, I’m feeling really good about it all.

And then duckies come in the mail next week and we start that adventure! Even Fury will get to work them.

I am so confident in Rippa’s talent at this point that I think it’s time to invest in all her health clearances. I still don’t know if we’ll breed her, much less to who, but good to know at this stage if it’s even a thing. I don’t expect any issues to come back, her lines seem really healthy from my experience and conversations. Exactly what I want.

I definitely know a goal of my program is to capitalize on that calm, quiet control. I’ve seen Aussies at finals be heeling fools for no good reason and dogs rodeoing cattle for the fun of it (which, totally, Rippa does), but after having seen the red border collies at the Woods’ house absolutely kill it, my program has to absolutely be based on confident power rather than showy power.

Rippa started out a little tentative on cattle, but she’s grown into herself now and I don’t see any hesitation at all to do what she needs to do. Fury started out all fire and power but never added the calmness to it instinctually that I’ve seen Rippa demonstrate – with more experience, she should be a great dog. One I’ll be able to take to cattlemen in the area and show them what an Aussie can do.

I hope.  Could be kennel blindness, too, but we’ll see soon enough.

On another note, I’m taking the kids to an agility/obedience trial next weekend. The real point is to finish Fury’s CD. Rippa might do it, but not with a very high score. She can either be totally on or totally distracted. Today she was sure she didn’t know what “Stand” meant, much less that she should sit when heeling. Both dogs weren’t awesome at agility, either. Fury is a lot slower these days – not because she’s getting older, I think she just doesn’t care and my handling’s gotten bad with no practice (which she always gets mad at me for).  I think I might stop kidding myself that I’m into all the venues because I have no problem driving an hour round trip twice a week (I’d do more if I didn’t have to work) but can’t bring myself to spend 20 minutes training them.

Oh well, wish us luck anyway!

Goats and Cattle and Bar WD

Well, that didn’t take long. I’m a firm believer in the concept that things will come together when it’s time for them to come together (though I do let myself get disappointed when it’s not on my timeline), and this week has been an example of just that.

Once I decided to go for it, I talked to Jennifer, and ducks have been ordered. The huz and I are trucking out to Creston to build out the duck living area tomorrow, and in a few days the ducklings should arrive and be ready to raised by Jennifer’s teenage daughters.

In the same day, I asked my husband to ask his acquaintance about cattle, but it didn’t work out so he asked a mutual friend of ours that grew up on a cattle ranch here if he had any leads and . . . of course he did!

We went up the grade to north county today to do some agility warming up (the owner there, Eileen, is kind enough to let me work my dogs in her field without taking lessons  - we saw her there and she razzed me for my tendency to only train the weekend before a trial – this time it’s three weeks away so I’m doing good!)

And then, we headed a few minutes out to meet Shannon and Dustin Wood of Bar WD. I didn’t know much what to expect except that she was in a couple Facebook groups other dog people I knew were in . . . but let me just say that I was impressed.

The Woods run cattle out of Parkfield, an area more in the central valley, but they have a training setup in town. Sheep, goats, and cattle. Eileen said she’d heard they had puppies, so one of the first things I said was, “I hear you have puppies!” and was ushered in. Eeeeeeeeeee. I like puppies, what can I say?

The Woods were happy to just let me do my thing, encouraging me to try goats first, but I took a cue from Kathy on this and asked them to work their dogs first so I could see what they expected. This works really well because I get an idea of their expectations, where they are coming from with their dogs and handling, and whether I’m getting into trouble.  It also helps me figure out if they’re going to be cool with the power I’ve got on the dog with grip and such or just know if I’m in a situation I shouldn’t be. But nope, this was more than fine: it appears to be perfect.

The Woods dogs are NICE. A couple of them fetched a big purse at the Red Bluff stock sale auction ($5000 and another at $10000). And, they’re all red dogs. I laughed because Stephanie told me that the BC people who trial on sheep all think red dogs can’t work. He was like, “Show her a picture of my dogs!” I agree. Being biased and all . . .

Moreover the Woods “get it” from a stockhandling perspective. Low stress, efficient, replace the work of ten men with one dog doing good work. “I don’t need dogs that bark because my dogs will just bring them back to me – I don’t care where they were, but they got here, so what do I need barking for?” Dustin had me watch the cattle closely, and as he said, “Watch the beginning, not the end.” See the beginning of movement of both dog and cattle and I’d respond faster and be more effective. And I totally, totally get it. I’m also glad to be working with somebody that’s not just trialing as a hobby – I really want to make practical use out of my dogs (and recognize it if I can’t get that for any reason) so staying with people who do it will help me keep that perspective.

It came our turn to do it and Rippa has never worked goats in her life and she LOVED them. Way too amped to do much thinking and I tried to wait her out with half moons, but she was ready to MOVE THOSE GOATS by all her power. Eventually I called her off and we moved to the cattle. Shannon quips, “They work like cattle, right?” I didn’t really feel that – like light sheep/lambs, but I think Rippa did. The enthusiasm was sky high compared to the sheep.

They have a couple Holstein calves, which he said he likes because they are better for working – the meat cattle will just sit (I think is what he said). I know a lot of people who don’t like dairy cattle because they aren’t as gregarious (don’t group) because of how they’re raised, but I did like them when I trialed them in Idaho, so to each his own. I’d be more interested to learn about cattle breeds and stockdogs – it seems I know enough about sheep, and even ducks, but not cattle.

I started Rippa like I have been taught to do at Kathy’s, just seeing what she does and trying to keep it easy and keep myself out of it and Rippa definitely dropped any semblance of hesitation about cattle – heads, heels, it was all good to her. Dustin and Shannon called  me in and asked me to put some more control on it and push her back like I did at Betty’s and in no time she was driving them up and down the fence line and turning them quietly. I was very proud of her for taking her flanks and commands like a champ.

When we tried to lift them off the fence, however, she got less confident and started trying to do stuff on the inside flank.  She doesn’t do a real good job of staying back on the fetch, instead over flanking and coming to the cow’s head and getting it mucked up and scary for the cows – not releasing enough pressure. I’m not worried about it  - Rippa spends most of her life EXTREMELY EXCITED by the sight of cattle but unable to work them (we do a lot of off leash hikes and rides in the hills here) so her brain probably freaks when she’s finally allowed to do stuff and wants to just turn them in circles for the sheer adrenaline of it. I’m sure it will settle with time.

Dustin had me handle the cattle myself and start reading the cows rather than worrying about the dog. Simple stuff, stuff I know intellectually but not instinctually. I spend a lot more time worrying about the dog on cattle, and that’s what made me a bad handler on sheep – worrying about the dog on sheep – so it should make sense, right?

Then he showed me a couple ways to get Rippa to not slice the top on her outrun on cattle – setting her up and using the panels to kick her out and balance at  the top. She did this a few times really nicely, a few times not. I wasn’t intending to do real work with her today – just see where we were at but I figured it was a good sign they were pressing me to improve and work her, so I was really happy with what we got.

He observed she’s got a side, for sure, “she’s left handed” (meaning she takes the go-by –clockwise- command better and will choose it, given the option). Kind of interesting because in early training I felt like she was the opposite. I used to have to urge the go by (if you remember that from a few months ago) . . . anyway, you fix that by just working the weak flank a little more, so we will.

When Rippa wouldn’t go to the outside flank against the fence (when she had plenty of room), I employed Betty’s method of me manually getting the cattle off the fence and then sending the dog – doing it once fixed that pretty well, so . . . tools in the toolbox!

All of that went pretty well and by the end we had pretty good control of the calves, enough to direct where we needed to go. The sheep training definitely helped her solidify “the point” compared to when we were at Betty’s.

Then he suggested we go back to the goats because she’s been drained of all that initial energy. Shannon showed me some stuff with her dog about how to train Rips – off stock – to move off the stick (something I don’t do but have thought about) and suggested we do some obedience off-stock work before we work to take the edge off (I agree, you’ll remember I did do this in earlier training days . . . I think I just got so lazy on my own).  And then she had me do some half-moons with Rippa, but this time really paying attention to my “out” and reinforcing it as a real command. Again, I definitely got lazy.

By the end there, we were working goats pretty well.

The Woods definitely have put the time in and understand it. Shannon says they’ve been at this five years only, but they’re quite successful, and as I said – I’m very, very impressed. I feel like a relationship with them is going to skyrocket my stock handling skills and goals. They go to all kinds of associations to trial as they figure being well rounded will make them have the best dogs and I love that. I’d never even considered other venues because I’m such an ASCA person, but that door just got flung wide open as a possibility.

I’m super grateful that everything appears to be working out. The Beez worked for like two hours without quitting, on different livestock, and I was quite proud of her. I saw some really good dogs work, too. And some really talented and knowledgeable handlers.

Just so much good rolling down the road – I’m really getting an education and so grateful to all these people for being willing to provide it.  There is a Jewish teaching that you should not learn from only one great scholar, but from many. Maybe not at all once, but over the period of your lifetime. I’m definitely feeling that happening now – there is so much out there to learn and I’m ready for it.

My huz was with me, and he’s been a casual observer of all this stuff for a long while – he timed Finals in Bakersfield and comes along periodically to clinics and lessons. At one point I asked him to video some and he said, “But then I can’t see what’s going on.” That’s a first – he actually cared. On the way home, he was actually excited, talking about how we’re going to go out there and kill it in trials now with the help of these two, what good trainers they were, how well the explained things, how well they handled, how awesome their dogs were, about their trucks, their nice setup, and just . . . I think he finally got it.

Yeah, feeling quite blessed and excited.

When it’s time to let the dog just do the work . . .

So the last two sessions (if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m working twice a week at Stephanie’s) have gotten better and better. So much so that this session, I thought, “Well, I should get off the big stick crutch and use the little stick.”

But this is a bad idea. We get so ahead of ourselves we forget how much foundation we need to lay to change so many things. Rippa is just now starting to figure out how to work in a larger space without the fence for help – why would I add something else to that mix if she hasn’t got it dialed? And so, no, I stayed with my 8 foot stick.

But I have to say, this work today was pretty flawless in terms of my setting expectations.

We are now just sorting the sheep ourselves. Stephanie generally lets the sheep out and then sorts out the sheep she wants into a smaller squeeze chute off the arena, but I’ve been taught how to sort with just a gate so all I need to do is ask Rippa to walk up to the sheep, and she’ll easily go around the barn obstacle and bring them to me and the gate. They didn’t really want to do that today (instead wanting to circle), so it took a few goes, but once Rippa got what I wanted, she positioned herself in a balanced spot so that the sheep would stop in front of the gate.

It takes some work to pull the adult lesson sheep out of the lambs, but she would inch forward without my asking as I needed it and we got a good batch of four sheep today.

As soon as we got them out, they headed to the middle of the arena, so while I closed the gate, I let Rippa get them without giving her a command. She starts out slow to see if I want it to happen and if I say nothing, she starts heading toward them.

It’s not a beautiful outrun where she stays way outside their flight zone and then dips in at the top – it’s a pretty rough gather in that she just kind of tips in and banks them toward me, but she does it, and then when they come up to me at the gate, she stops herself. I’m good with that. That’s healthy, happy, functional work and we can work on the fancy later – the foundation for what’s expected (calm control of the livestock) is laid and she’s half-way out of the arena getting them so hey, I’m happy.

The sheep are nearly always spooked, but I have figured out that if I show them how Rippa controls them (unlike the eye-dog BCs she’s used to who work them very differently) by doing silent half-moons on the fence while Rippa balances up and reads her sheep, we can start going.

And so we did. We headed out all the way to the end of the arena and back – not straight, mind you, lots of zigging, but we did it.

At this point, I think I need to focus on handling my end of the sheep because they are light enough to just blow past me if I don’t sometimes block them and let Rippa figure out where she needs to be to stop running like crazy as she wears them back and forth  - she’s getting wider and wider and will go “out” if I remind her, but I don’t really want to have to keep “out”ing her, so I’m trying to keep it to a minimum – right now my goal is less command oriented and more just letting Rippa use her instinct and knowledge to work the sheep.

I have to say – it’s fun to watch. Now that she’s learned not to go flat on the top but that with sheep like this, you win by getting further out, it’s cool to watch her do it. She gets a massive workout because the sheep don’t easily settle  and she can’t just fall in behind them – she’s got to move to each side to check on the sheep and she’s got to poke them back in (but then they over correct and it’s back to the other side), but it looks good from where I sit.

Last lesson, we did some center pen work (FABULOUS) but I made the mistake of opening the gate to send her in and the whether with horns fully rammed her. Rippa didn’t blink – she just went back to work – not even made at the ram, but definitely watching him.

This work there was a ewe that kept breaking off (I mentioned this ewe in earlier lessons a couple months ago) and Rippa did a great job of not letting her get too far. She tends to drop the singleton if they get out too much and go, naturally, to the bigger group and bring them to her – I can hear Kathy yelling, “Bring the many to the one!” I’m impressed the dog is doing it. I’m not sure I want her to do that in trialing scenarios, but it shows me her stock sense and I’ll let her  have it.

And then, since she’d been working so hard, we got back to the gate, she balanced up, I opened the gate, and we put them away.

It was pretty great. Not all days will be that great, but it’s tangible progress and feels great after a few weeks ago when I was nervous that the arena was too big and the sheep too light.

The plan now is to keep putting miles on until Rippa manages them herself, then go to the short stick, and then we’ll start working on some issues (the less than beautiful outrun, she goes a little flat on the top instead of staying out) and refining our commands.

A Dogless Stockdog Day

I volunteered to help Stephanie in the pens during her field trial yesterday. I just really like moving animals and interacting with them, and moreover, by the end of the day, I felt like I’d done something good for the world, and not in the way you’d suspect.

This was my first border collie field trial – every single person had a black and white dog (sometimes they had copper, too) and it was hard for me to tell them apart when working: oh, this one is short haired, this one has low ears, and that was about it. Mostly that’s because in field trials, I’m completely away from the action and all I mostly saw were people who were helping me and their dogs.

I’ve only heard about these trials in the context of “Aussies can’t do them” so it was interesting to see why. Frankly, I think the right Aussies could definitely do them, but it doesn’t highlight their strength, so I get it.  It looked like a lot of finite training going into the dogs and not so much functional. In ASCA stockdog trials, the dog has to get the sheep itself in some of the courses, pen them, get them through chutes, etc. It was interesting watching these insane outruns where the dog didn’t see the sheep at all and needed the owner to tell them when to move (one dog came over to my pens, saw sheep, but heard the command to keep looking and took off across an entirely separate field and it took 20 min for him to come back when called). But it was all training. I never got to see the dogs read their sheep or really work them. It was all whistle commands and a lot of yelling up close (so ha, ha, BC people yell too!).  To be fair, the only part I could see was the dogs picking the sheep up. (I heard the yelling, though!)

The thing I like about the ASCA trials is that the dog, if it really understands, is going to do what has to be done to achieve the directive, and if it’s a good dog, it won’t need a ton of direction. These dogs were working untrained, terrified, small groups of range ewes and only a few really kept control of their stock, and I think it was because they were being handled so much, not because they didn’t know how.

I got the classic, “Oh, you have Aussies . . . well, they’re good for penning” comment, too. Yes, a trial like this would likely fry Aussie brains because they’re very much “think for yourself” dogs and this kind of work is mostly, “Do what I tell you” stuff. At least that was my impression, from watching and talking to the people setting the sheep out.

Also, lordy, that was  a big thing. The pens weren’t set up ideally but my thought was like, “Someone tried, let’s get this done.” There was SO much bitching about how they were set up, but you know what, I did get it done and the people bitching weren’t there all day with me. The setting the sheep thing seems crazy to me. I get them into the squeeze pens, then they’re released, and three people and two dogs have to settle the sheep, then move them out into the middle of a field for another dog to pick them up. This took up to a half hour to do with terrified sheep, flapping tarps, dogs EVERYWHERE, and shadows from a tree that everyone kept telling me was for shade but was set up on the south side of the tree and not a bit of shade ever reached us, except in the squeeze chute and right when they popped out, which made them crazy if there wasn’t cloud cover. One thing that also drove me nuts was that you had to be SUPER quiet and you couldn’t use a livestock flag in the pens because people said the BCs trialing were too sensitive to it and I would ruin the run. I kept thinking that if a border collie picking up sheep is going to get shut down by me talking at a regular volume waving a flag stick WAY away from them, something’s wrong with that – but whatever. I don’t know BCs very well or the pressure of trialing in this environment. But I damn well expect my trained Aussie doing an outrun to just . . . do the outrun, even if there is a bar fight going on in the pens next to it.

The sheep would get away from the people setting the sheep out and we’d have to fill our exhaust pen with perfectly workable sheep (and sheep leaping the fence to come back in to escape the dogs) to keep it moving, and everyone was really worried that there would not be enough sheep and the trial would be ruined.

My first helper was awesome, mostly because he said he didn’t know that  and was happy to learn from whatever advice was given. So I taught him about his own little “hula hoop” of pressure that he could apply to the sheep, but to read them when they were upset and sometimes putting pressure off and giving them time to be curious and take steps on their own was the best. We talked about how being tight in the pens was comforting to the sheep, not because they didn’t think they could escape, but because livestock like body pressure and it keeps them calm. We talked about why the tarps were there and how effective they were at hiding the sheep from the draws (not, the sheep were tall enough to look over), how shadows worked (livestock have crappy depth perception, so shadows look like cliffs) and how little things like a bit of twine can be scary. The morning, into the afternoon, went really well – he was really fun to work with and we were high-fiving eachother on difficult penning job successes and I look forward to running into him again.

Around 2 (after about eight hours of me doing this), there was a changing of the guard (and I was the only all-day worker) and suddenly it got crazy with people literally pulling sheep by the legs to get them into the chutes, trying to push them in with intimidation and smacking them with the stock sticks. They eventually dumped a dog in with the tight pens who basically only got trampled and caused the new people to cuss and snarl at the sheep who were just terrified.

I got really pissed about this because I wasn’t going to contribute to this. I don’t really want to come off like I was judging them because I know that most stockmanship looks like this, but I’ve been taught to think about the sheep before anything else (thanks Kathy, and others) and I knew how to keep them moving smoothly even scared and this was not helping. Why did I know? Stockmanship. Having horrified sheep doesn’t make for good trialing nor good meat. Or, you know, good Karma. I’ve read Temple Grandin’s books, websites on this stuff, been taught how to work pens and move sheep by Kathy, have a number of livestock management classes under my belt from college, and I do, after all, have an affinity to animals. These little guys saw dark holes, shadows that looked like cliffs, angry, cussing people, and they just quit. It was about a half hour of nothing after the setting people went through three pens of sheep before getting a trial dog on them and I didn’t have a sheep draw to help the loose sheep trust that they weren’t walking into hell.  I kept trying to tell people why it wasn’t working, but without a clear, designated leader, it fell to everyone just trying a new approach on their own. In situations like that, I generally back off and let people do their thing because my thing might not actually be the best thing and fighting other strong-willed people isn’t going to fix it.

When people started talking about rearranging the panels and stuff when I finally threw my hands up into the air and was like, “That’s it, I’ve been here for 8 hours and there’s nothing I can do here so I’m leaving,” which finally caused one woman to go, “Wait, yes, she’s been working here all day and they’ve been moving smoothly, we should listen to her.”

Sure enough, calming everyone down after ten minutes I slowly, slowly put pressure on my sheep with just my body (and took it off if it was too much) and we got four in the chute. The rest followed and it was a very enjoyable experience for everyone after that, I think (except the gal that got peed on – yuck!).

I felt good about myself in that I didn’t make the sheep upset and I could get it done in less than ideal conditions (even if that meant clambering into each pen and physically turning sheep around to go through to the next pen as we moved them up), and that for that day, those sheep were treated well. I also felt good about myself because prior to this, I haven’t really been given much opportunity to do work like this in the dog world. My friend Amy and I did sort ducks for ASCA finals last year, but that’s about all I’ve ever been asked to do for a trial in my world. It was nice to know that all the work I’ve done has paid off and I’m a quite good stockman that everyone was happy with.

People were calling me the “range ewe whisperer” and it felt great.

I also reaffirmed a lesson I’ve learned earlier: you can’t force leadership. Even if you know better, saying so won’t matter. You have to let other people recognize you and put you there. During the whole debacle I described above, I had no idea how to fix it, but I knew criticizing others’ approaches wouldn’t work, so finally deciding to let them to their own devices was the best idea I could come up with. And it did work in an unexpected way": people recognized I could be effective, stopped going in all directions and gave me time to do so, and we all were happy again. So yeah, there are greater life lessons in stockdogs for sure.