Space to think and not just feel

I gave a speech yesterday at my Toastmasters club about how the way to achieve more is to learn how to manage the stress that achievement brings with it.  In the middle of the speech (I speak mostly off the cuff), I connected something I’d seen recently with dogs to the point I was making.

This video was posted a while back on someone’s page, asking for what we thought of it.

Shelter Behavior Training - Aggression Toward People from Bound Angels on Vimeo.

People heavily into positive and clicker training obedience thought what the guy was doing here was wrong, and cruel. However, I think what he’s doing here is right. The dog has all these intense emotions and is operating on instinct. He can’t learn like that. He can only learn by finding an alternate way to deal with those feelings. That means making him strongly pay attention to other stimulus and see that flight is an option, not just fight. And . . . it worked. The dog started thinking instead of just feeling.

This is totally a stockdog thing, though I don’t think I’ve heard it articulated anywhere before. I always explain to people that my dogs are more edgy than usual dogs because when a cow says, “No,” they’ve been bred to instinctively react in fight mode to that. People, me included, don’t always come prepared for that and can really mess up how a dog interacts with the world if you don’t fully understand that.

But you’re going to get horrible messes if all they do is react with fight mode and instinct. You’ve got to have that space to think and react, too.  Training your dog (and you) needs to include this part of it, too. When a puppy and new handler first start, it’s usually the handler all thinking and the puppy all feeling and the magic happens when there’s a balance.

That’s what I’ve been working on with Rippa. She is getting to a point where it’s not just “wahoo!” whenever she’s on stock, but she’s thinking and applying the lessons we’ve used (like going around obstacles rather that going in tight, taking square flanks, and just balancing herself to me and the stock) more and more. She’s better on goats and sheep because she’s had more time on them. She understand them, and there’s no threat to her.

With cattle, though, she starts out pretty excited unless I put the screws to her in the beginning. I’m doing flank commands off stock and “outs” as well as plain obedience, then I go in, move the stock with her on a down stay and show her they’re mine, and then we go to work and things are nice. I saw a lot of thinking out there today and a lot of really good decisions when she had space to make them.

But, if she has to break into a run, you can see her brain start panicking and she goes for dumb moves – coming in too close to them, taking high bite shots (and getting kicked), etc. Experience is what she needs (and what I need) in this department. We’re both finding a balance between tightening the screws on her and just letting her work. Shannon wants me to be able to get more sharp responses because a foot or two can make a difference, but I also have to balance it with Rippa’s need to work independently of me, too.

I’m reading Bob Vest’s book right now to see what he has to say and one of the things I’ve got so far out of it is this thing about 55 gallon drums. You can have a dog with 55 gallons of confidence, but if you undermine the dog with bad handling and training, you lose a little in ever session (I feel like I did this with Fury). You can have a dog with 25 gallons and you can use that dog, but you might never get 55 unless you work on it – I feel like that with Rippa. And then anything less, you’re going to be working hard, but you have to do it. I don’t think a lot about building confidence in dogs when training, but the agility people have this part down. I think that’s why Rippa isn’t trialing well when I take her to agility trials – I’ve not built her confidence up because I assumed she was a 55 gallon dog like Fury and didn’t need to.

Now to figure out how to do that, exactly.

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!

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.

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. :)