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. 

Broken Ducks, Rattlers, Goats, and Cattle–oh my!

This week was nothing if not exciting. In order of least to most, I’d go with this for stockdog land:

• My attorney met with us to discuss corporate structure and tells us – get this – that it would be a smart investment, based off of what we’re up to, to buy a farm. HE IS THE BEST ATTORNEY EVER.
• Rippa got to work cattle again after time off of them to work on fundamentals. She did good.
• The ducks, myself, and Rippa almost stepped on a baby rattle snake when practicing our center pen. Jennifer, the gal that takes care of my ducks for me when I am not out there (which is not often), saves the day by beheading it.
• When putting the ducks away, one of them gets  her foot caught in a gopher or snake hole and breaks her leg. This isn’t that exciting. The fact that I somehow got convinced to leave her with the Wildlife Center to get four pins installed to fix it is. We named her Lucky Duck.

Let’s start with the most, because I know you’re dying. I’m not a bleeding heart – I’m not. I literally was like, “Well, there is a 4th of July BBQ coming up, but it would be a shame.” So I called my husband who didn’t know what to do. So he had me call my friend who is a surgeon to see if she could set its leg. She couldn’t, so she called our friend who works with wildlife rehab and brought her down. It’s broken really bad, confirms the vet there, but we should get x-rays. That’s where it starts. She’s currently in the wildlife center recovering from surgery from yesterday. You can judge me, but it was probably going to be a dog or me if not a duck so if making a donation and getting a duck surgery makes me feel better about the whole thing, then there we go. A lesson learned and I feel good enough about it to share, right?

Here’s the X-Ray.

Bruce Nelson made me a poem, even:

You fucked up raking,
And and came close to a duck baking
The vet said ah shuck
Thats one fucked up duck.
But for a few bucks, we can unfuck ducks.
No need to baste a duck, down on his luck
With a pin, a stitch and a nyunk nyunk nyunk ,
We will have the duck unfucked with just some luck.
So be kind to a duck, it brings you good luck,
And as Rickles would say, carry on you hockey puck.
Glad his quack up can be fixed.

So there is that.

I’ve been kind of down in the self-esteem department with the dogs lately. We’ve been working by ourselves for two weeks because both the Woods and Stephanie were out of town last week, so it’s just been ducks. Which has been plenty of time for the dogs to realize that they can cheat me by coming in too close to the ducks for me to stop them without smashing a quacker and grabbing them. Again, they grab them pretty light, but they’ll do some jerky stuff to them now because they’re used to it. I really wish I was a better handler and they never get chances to do it, but I’m not. So basically it’s a pattern of the dog starting off nice because they are cautious, losing the inhibitions, and then getting ratcheted back to nice – or so I think it goes. I’m in the inhibition stage so that’s what I worked on this week and then a duck broke its leg and I felt like a bad animal keeper/handler to have let it happen.

You have to understand that I have a LOT going in my life. I’m not a simple person remotely. You can’t expect a lot of attention to detail and perfection out of me because I’m always in about three places at once. The stockdog stuff is pretty much the only time I’m focused on just that. That or climbing are the only things that make that work, aside from meditation.

So, now I’m going to spend tomorrow in the 100+ degree heat raking out the duck pen and finishing the fences by pounding t-stakes in and just DOING IT RIGHT instead of cheating and calling 80% good enough. I don’t regret this attitude, it makes me extremely productive, but stuff like this can happen.

So . . . anyway. I was feeling a little like, well, what am I doing here, really, when I drove to the Woods’ tonight.

Shannon and Dustin are incredibly supportive and mellow. I really appreciate their entire vibe. We’re holding babies, their kitten is hopping up and down on my thigh, there’s a bunch of dogs tied to a fence, but it’s all good. We’re close in age and from the same area and stuff so it’s really different from my usual stockdog land where I don’t have a whole lot in common with dog people. Common friends outside of dogs, we both used to work on the same ranch, etc, etc. It puts me a lot more at ease so I knew I’d be okay. I also told Shannon how I was feeling as soon as I got there and she, in her usual way, was just patient and good natured about it all and reminded me what to work on and away we went.

We’re back to using the big stick again – fundamentals. Two steps forward, one back. But getting a lot out of it. I don’t think Rippa is taking her outs great but I’ve been working more on my handling than worrying about hers, because, well, BIG SECRET – YOUR HANDLING MATTERS MOST.

I’ve also tried whistle training a bit now that I can do it well enough. Fury was like like, “That’s cool – where’ s my treat? This must mean “down.”

Rippa was sure that stuff in my mouth and weird noises meant the apocalypse was coming, but she would try a little and get her treat but . . . let’s just keep our distance and see what happens for a bit, shall we? That’s Rippa. Not stubborn, just wary until she understands. I was talking to Fury’s breeder, Tracey, about it and she reframed it in a cool way: “Self-preservation instinct.” Fury is like, “What is it, let’s do it!” She’s missing a lot of teeth from being a little too easy to commit to stuff, too. Rippa hangs back, generally gives the side-eye to new things, and then as she gets it, then it’s fun. Doing weaves in agility used to make her cringe and now she lets little barks out while she guns it for the poles.

So, anyway, the sheep/goat runs weren’t superb in the scheme of things, but we’ve only been working ducks, but good enough for Shannon to say “BRING IN THE COWS!” again after many weeks off of them.

And, well, Rippa has some learning to do about how to manage them more efficiently because there’s a lot of wasted power and bark right now, but it’s also a lot of me not handling right. Dustin tells me as I go in, “Now remember your rules are still in effect. Expect on them what you expect on the goats.” And these cattle are SUPER gentle so once I got comfortable enough to go through them to get to her – it went from a little too much yahoo, to one good reinforcement and Rippa settling down and keeping them in good control.

She still is a real strong header, which makes me happy – as I remind you again, she started out not willing to go to head. This means she’s probably just as strong heeling if she needs it since that was her first instinct during first exposures. I think, like her mother, Rippa’s going to shine most on cattle.

One thing I don’t like about cattle that I’ve seen with her is that her hits aren’t great – she aims too high. I talked to Shannon about this. She’s probably seen cattle now as many times as Fury has in their lifetimes, which is not much – probably 10 days worth of exposure total – and big spaces in between. Would she settle out and not hit as badly? Shannon: “Maybe” though she sounded more “yes” than maybe. We’ll see. It’s not fancy heeling I need to see, but “self-preservation” heeling would be nice. Especially since her Slash V lineage is pretty well known for good positioning hits, it’s got to be in there. In time we shall see. At least she hits, right?

And, well, I feel pretty good. Rippa settled out tonight really nicely when I got my stuff together, the duck is on the mend, I’m committing to put the work in to make my duck arena nice, and we’re moving forward.

Oh, and I buried this one a little intentionally because I know the anti-AKC people won’t be thrilled at this bit of news, but I have to try . . . I found out Fury’s full sister is somehow AKC registered and apparently there’s this “open AKC” registry where you send in a certified pedigree and photos of your dog and for $20, you get a registration back.

We shall see. It’s way too easy, if you ask me. No DNA (she’s parentage verified, fwiw – not that I was worried), no microchip, nothing. But hey. If it opens up options for me down the road for selling dogs or just a new place to trial (because why SHOULDN’T good stockdogs represent at USASA Nationals?), it cost me a total of $30.

The videos are taking forever to upload so I’ll post one or two here when they’re done.

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!

Some Stockdoggy Terms

I thought since I will be dropping a specialized vocabulary like stink bombs, I should first start out with some basic terminology  . . .

First, the great herding vs working debate. The PC and proper cowboy way of saying your dog is herding sheep is to say your dog is "working" sheep. You are "working your dog" on sheep or cows or pigs or whatever. (Yes, you can work dogs on pigs - ASCA even had a title for it once.) So while the URL of this blog is "RippaHerds" I only did that because it would be easy to remember. These are stockdogs, not herding dogs. That's just the parlance where I come from.

Some terms:

Head - meaning a single animal, but also, well, the head of the animal. Heading dogs work livestock by watching their heads, and very often their eyes. That's why they are called "heading dogs." Heading dogs run circles around livestock because they are always chasing the head, which is always turning away from them.

Heel - Just like heading dogs, there are "heeling dogs" that work the heels of the livestock. Dogs like this are typically things like your Corgi, which is built low to the ground to work heels in stockyards (they fit under the bars of the pens in chutes and keep the cattle moving). The tend to follow stock, rather than run circles around it. Dogs of all breeds can do both heading and heeling, but one comes more naturally usually.

Fetch - This is what your heading dog will learn first to do - because that's what comes naturally to it. They will go out, seek out livestock, bunch it, and then bring it to their handler in a . . . you guessed it, fetch.

Drive - This is what your heeling dog learns first - follow the stock and keep them moving. Our Aussies learn this after they master the fetch.

Flight zone - This is the space around the handler and the dog that the sheep avoid staying in for any length of time. Imagine a Hula Hoop around you and your dog. The sheep are usually calm or not moving at all until the Hula Hoop touches them (their personal space bubble). If it touches them lightly and calmly, they move lightly and calmly. If it touches them fast and heavy, they move . . . you guessed it, fast and heavy. Flight zone is rough to learn for people - we are used to working with just our dogs, and not with another sentient being in the mix. You may work your dog's flight zone, but you fail on working your own. That's how I broke my first stockdog, Rippa's mom.

That should get you started, I think.