And we begin anew . . .

Ever since I got back from Montana, I’ve been really bugging on my stockdog situation. Despite my best efforts for the past year or so, I still haven’t figured out how to get my own livestock. We are looking at a house sometime that’s $800 more in rent and probably not worth it, but there’s a potential to have sheep training there so my husband was supportive of a possible move while we wait for the house buying situation to shape up.

But here’s the thing. If I’m paying $800 in rent, that’s just rent. That’s not the added cost of having sheep there, and I’m not someone who should be giving lessons so it’s not like I’m making any money back. Almost $1000 a month, and then having to hire a sheep caregiver when I am away . . . and I’m supposed to be saving money for a house and just to be a responsible adult. And we’re starting to think seriously about kids and what happens when I do that?

So basically, I really want sheep and I know I probably shouldn’t get them yet because none of the situations presented themselves that worked right. I feel like I should either give up altogether until much later or DO this. I’ve got a dog that can and I hate that she’s not.

So back a year ago, at Kathy’s recommendation, when I thought I was getting sheep, I wrote to Stephanie to see if she had any, which she didn’t. Kathy had told me it was a good idea to rent Stephanie’s sheep, but if you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that when I’ve gone to other places, it hasn’t gone well and I’m stressing on hurting their livestock. Plus, in the middle of this back and forth with Stephanie, she didn’t reply to an email and my stupid ego kicked in.

Not in the way you think, I bet. I’m super insecure when I really want something and don’t have something equally exciting to offer someone. In this case, I really wanted access to sheep and Stephanie had them, and if she thought I was a joker, she didn’t need to take my money. Instead of having confidence that I wasn’t a joker and she didn’t think so, I just assumed that was the case and dropped that option altogether. I knew a lot of people went to Stephanie, and liked her, but I’m THAT insecure.

I talked to Pat Lambeth about local options and she told me she talked to Stephanie and that I should try her again. And I don’t remember why I didn’t. Maybe work. Maybe I was just shy, I dunno.

But yesterday I decided that I wasn’t a loser and I should trust Pat that she likely didn’t think so and I contacted her again. Her not knowing me from Adam was like, “Where are you. I don’t let dogs harass my sheep.” And me being me . . . I’m like, “Well, she’s a border collie person and I’ve been warned I handle a bit harshly for some. WHAT IF SHE THINKS MY DOGS HARRASS HER SHEEP?!” I mean, by very nature, putting beginner dogs on sheep is kind of harassing them. There’s a spectrum. So I sent her a link to this blog with the last time I’d worked Rips at Trish’s, but not before she came back and invited me to her house today.

I didn’t need to send the video, but it turns out Trish works at Stephanie’s, too. That’s a good thing in my book.

Anyway, so I show up with my big bean pole with a bottle on the end (thanks Donna for that) and my new W Lazy J stock stick and tell her I’m nervous because I don’t want Rippa to chomp her sheep and I want to be sure she’s comfortable with everything.

I decide we should start in the round pen since it’s been over a year since she’s been on sheep and I am sure we have some foundation to put back in after the cows (she wasn’t taking “out” much).  I go in there with my long stick and tell Stephanie that I have to do this “z” obedience call off thing to warm Rippa up to taking commands and being easy and as she’s watching it, she’s like, “You should get her off that soon. Also, she’s going to be fine. You can send her.”

And I am like, “No she isn’t.”

So we go back and forth in our little exercise where I lay her down and then walk off like I’m doing a slingshot send but am just calling her to me and slowly approaching the sheep going back and forth to keep her focused on me and not the sheep.

And then I send her, and it goes well, but she goes at it a little hard. I’m out there with my 8 foot pole pointing at her shoulder and waiting out her excitement where I can give her the sheep as she runs hard around them. Eventually she does and balances them up but comes in hard as I point the stick at her.

Stephanie says put the stick down, but I don’t know what she means so we stop the action and she gets the stock stick out and shows me how you can use it to put some pressure on the dog with body language and sweeping it at them, but that I really need to take the pressure off Rippa with the stick – it’s what’s keeping her keyed up.

She says it’s like horses, too. A little pressure, but ease off as fast as you can and trust your dog. I’ve heard the “trust Rippa” with Kathy before, but this time I kind of  “got it.” Maybe because of my recent experience with the cattle where I could see really clearly that Rippa got grippy and got kicked when I had pressure on her.  I also see it with Fury – how she works nice off me but when she comes into contact with me on the other side of the sheep, she keys up. It’s me. My pressure is too much. My anger and my position and my not trusting the dogs and myself to handle right.

So I start up again with the short stick and when she doesn’t give, I run into her like Kathy has me do to push her out. Stephanie stops me again. “No. That’s what’s making her get upset. Pressure OFF. If she bites the sheep, it has a lot of wool, it will be fine. Pressure OFF.”

She bit the sheep. It did,  indeed, have a lot of wool. She had me lay Rippa down and calm down. We tried it again, but I felt lost so she came out to handle but Rippa started shutting down because someone else was telling her what to do. I really appreciated that instead of thinking Rippa was stubborn, she could see that she was just feeling too much pressure. “It’s okay,” Stephanie said, “She’ll desensitize if I work with her more over time.” But since she wouldn’t work and Stephanie couldn’t show me, I  told her this was a lot of information and I was having to learn too much quickly, so could I go back to the big stick for a little comfort while I tried what she was saying. Yes.

So now that I had the big stick and experience with how to handle it, I tried the pressure off thing. I sent Rippa without the “z” because she was being easy, and she got around nicely and balanced up. When she got tight, instead of going into her with the stick, I eased off and focused on me walking back and letting her bring them and Rippa calmed down.

As I write this, I think about how Kathy handles and while it felt like all new information, that’s what she wanted me to do, too . . . but I just didn’t get all the pieces until now.

When we had her fetching and balancing, I figured that was a good place to quit and we took a break, with Stephanie working her dogs and showing me how she starts a drive (quite different, but we’ll get to that in a different session).

Next session, I started out with the big stick, but sent her on a flank command with no “z” and just trusted her not to eat them, and she didn’t. Whenever she sped up, I thought about where I was and got out of the flight zone and she’d clam down. I even got her to lie down with the sheep balanced on me and start up walking from there as I backed up (which used to be too much pressure for her to handle without biting).  Since it all went so well and so easily, I switched back to the short stock stick and handled the way I was now beginning to understand. We did circles and such around the round pen, had her stand balanced up, had her walk up from there on them, worked on flank commands and “there.”

The biggest take home for me today was this:
Your dog is intense for two reasons: because it is intense (maybe not used to the stock or working, a new location, being young, or because it just is) and because you are intense. If it’s because the dog is intense, then absolutely I would think that following with the stick until the dog calms down and gives, and pushing out with the stick and being heavy handed can work. But, at that point you need to learn when YOU are being intense. What are YOU doing that’s causing the dog to get nervous. Whatever that is, do the opposite and relax if a dog makes a mistake. When you stop being intense, so will the dog after it gets over the causes of its internal intensity. 

I think I get this so much that I really want to try Fury with Stephanie and see what I can get out of her. At 10.5, Fury has not slowed down at all, and she has all that training on her that if I can fix MY intensity with her and handle better, I wonder if she can’t get some solid training in as well. (I could be pie in the sky on that one – but that’s how much I feel I “get” this now.)

Anyway, as I made turns with Rippa in the round pen, I felt like no time had gone by at all, or, more accurately, like time had gone by and someone else had been working with her in the meantime. Maybe it’s that she had time to mature. Maybe it was the cows. Maybe it’s me putting things together, but I feel like I had a major break through with handling and a couple more lessons (in the arena this time), and  I should be ready to start a drive, she was so nice.

Stephanie remarked as I was finishing up some fetching in the round pen that she was a nice dog and I was going to get a lot out of her. It shouldn’t matter what other people think, but I’m glad to hear it from her: here I was afraid of Stephanie and that she wouldn’t like my pushy, bity Aussie because of stuff I put in my own head.

Part of that is something else entirely. You hear BC people talk about pushy Aussies that can’t do a thing or you hear about BC people who say this. You hear Aussie people tell you that a BC trainer can’t do anything for Aussie people. And sometimes these things are true. But they weren’t true this time in the least. Stephanie impressed me with her understanding of dog behavior and her insights. I liked something she said about the difference with Aussies and BCs. BCs you don’t have to teach to get out or get an outrun with. With Aussies, you do, and she calls it mechanics (which is funny because Kathy doesn’t like “Mechanical training” either, but what she does to start a dog with the stick and pushing the dog out is what Stephanie calls mechanics). She said, “With Aussies, when you start them, you absolutely have to apply mechanics to them to get that behavior solid, but as soon as you do, you can stop and train naturally again.” (Naturally meaning let the dog learn to rate and move its stock on its own). In context, she’s not wrong. I just never thought of the stick and push method as mechanics, but that’s exactly how I perceive how Kathy starts dogs – show them what you want, and when they get it, it’s time for miles added just fetching and letting the dog learn how to do it without your commanding all the time.

I feel like I’ve got a new dog friend, and I’m finally going to go somewhere with this after so much time off – she’ll let me rent sheep outside of lessons so I can go up there a couple times a week and just get some mileage and then go back to have someone else’s eyes on me and fix what bad habits I pick up or continue. And it’s not going to cost me $800 a month.

Moreover, I’m really appreciating this going to other places now. Getting a solid foundation on dog behavior, stock behavior, and the principles of training a working dog from Kathy as a consistent mentor was so valuable, but what’s making it the most valuable is hearing other people say what she did and it clicking more because I’m out of my element and it sounds all new from someone else. I feel like I’m about to grow as a handler and trainer, and that when I feel like I am not getting something, it’ll be time to attend a clinic or go somewhere new, at least for a bit.

I guess I feel a little more grown up. That I can do this after all. I know Kathy said I was ready, but I didn’t feel ready. Now I do.  I hope this feeling continues.

Starting a Dog on Cattle

So, as I have been writing, I’m attending a clinic that includes running your dogs on cattle. And, as the cycle simply is, pretty much everyone in camp right now has a young dog with limited or no exposure to cattle, so seeing everyone do their thing is really interesting to me.

How Kathy starts the dogs on them  -

First, it’s important that the cattle are as used to dogs as possible. They’ll group nicer, stay calm, and be less frightened of people (ie, smaller flight zone). These cattle are off the hill and then used for a trial the preceding weekend. There’s a reason that the advanced dogs go first in trials – to teach the cattle to mind dogs so by the time the started dogs get there, they’re less panicky.

Second, wide open spaces. It’s really a good idea to get your cattle out in a big space like an arena. Kathy uses a combination of a stick with a flag on it and her dogs to keep the cattle off the back fence (where home and safety are) so your dogs don’t get mashed up and smushed, and also to give them a chance to pick them up. The stick with a flag up also seems to freak the dogs out sometimes (it’s a bigger visual than the plain stick is), but it has a purpose. Anyway, like point number one, this is a safety thing.

With that said, man, watching young dogs start on cattle freaks me out. Some people intentionally won’t put their dogs on cattle because they worry about safety. I feel like I have cattle dogs so there is no reason to consider it an unnecessary risk, so I don’t get too freaked when they get into dangerous situations – but other dogs, I totally am on edge watching.

Anyway, the general approach to putting a new dog on cattle is this – set your cattle out in the middle of the arena and let the handler and dog follow them until the dog turns on. Then figure it out from there.

Most dogs, after a period of intimidation which involves running up to the cow and then running back to the handler, will slowly gain the confidence it takes to figure out they can move them. But I wouldn’t say “moving them” is a confidence shower in and of itself.

Most of the dogs, when they got confident moving them, started to yahoo a lot  -  heeling, then running to head and barking/feinting them to turn them around. But there was a lot of running and barking and unnecessary shots. Rippa was equally guilty of this, but still didn’t really have the confidence to head them. Some dogs never do. I think I covered headers and heelers earlier, so search that if you want to know why.

I was talking to Marilee about dogs bred for cattle and dogs not and I made the following observation about this, which I have pretty much considered truth after experiencing it in my own dogs. Very strong cattle dogs, when given the choice to fight or flight will pick fight. They will go in and do what it takes with a charging steer, but this also means that off stock, they are more likely to nip or be confrontational under pressure when other dogs would submit or avoid.

I actually got Rippa into trouble for that today. She and I were working in the pens and someone wanted to come through with her dog and watch. So there we are along the back panel, pretty close quarters – she and her dog, me, Rippa, and Kathy’s dog Denny. For the record, Rips has always been a little worried about other dogs – with time and socialization she’s mostly friendly, but if a dog runs up to her and intimidates her, she has no problem letting it know. Anyway, Denny is up in Rippa’s business so I make the mistake of trying to re-place her by laying her down between the two dogs, and Denny puts more pressure, Rippa looks at the gal’s dog, and he makes eye contact and leans toward her and it was just too much pressure for her so she lashed out at him for a second. I should have just read the situation and put her back by the front of the gate instead with us, but I was being dumb and novice. Now she is quite sure my dog wants to eat her dog when it was just a situation where my dog felt too much pressure and I wasn’t letting her get out of it by telling her to stay. My bad.

Anyway, it’s an interesting thing. Watching all these new dogs go from being intimidated and standing with their owners to charging the cattle, sometimes taking a hit, and going right back for more. But I also watched Kathy handle Teal on them – an experienced cattle dog who has to be about . . . 8 now? Anyway, confidence looks like Teal – she stands up right, no face, no lip and just looks at the cattle getting in her face. If she needs to, she’ll do something. And then when she’s fetching them in, she’ll sometimes take a cheap shot once in a while, but keep her balance and read her stock and you can tell she just thinks it’s fun. These biting dogs . . . they’re just as scared as the non-cattle dogs not making contact.

And then I wonder if anyone starts a young dog and they aren’t intimidated at first. Kathy used to bring out a trained dog to keep the cattle moving and give confidence to the younger dog (it’s in a lot of training books, including my favorite by Scott Lithgow),  but she’s since learned it can get the dogs hurt so she avoids it now.

And that was a divergence. Once the dog is going to head and moving the cattle, it’s time to ask for a fetch by pushing the dog back once it heads. And that is how you start a dog on cattle.

Miles to Go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So here’s the deal:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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