Cows and Ducks and Sheep–and a video of the stickwork practice.

Stephanie is on vacation the next few weeks so I’ve got just cattle and ducks to work and so that’s a little different than what I’m doing on the sheep.

Which, when I think of it, is pretty interesting. You don’t really work on the same things on the same stock. You work on sheep to get the fundamentals down with your dog and you, and then there’s this whole other ball of wax with the dogs on cattle and ducks.

The ducks make the dogs’ brains fry. They’re used to fetching and driving and having the animal move away faster the closer they get. Ducks don’t do that. They quit and ask the dogs to eat them. I can see value in having dogs learn to work ducks because it has to teach them that heavy pressure isn’t always best. Having watched a lot of stock runs, this is true on all stock – and usually if stock goes sour, it’s because heavy pressure flips them from flight to fight.  When I work the ducks right now – I generally am just looking for the dogs to get a feel of it and take my obedience commands, whether its driving a little or fetching. I can’t run into the dogs to reinforce “out” because the ducks won’t tolerate me, either, and that’s why you have to get those fundamentals down on sheep before you do serious work with ducks, or at least I think so. ESPECIALLY if your dog wants to chomp them. Since I have chickens at home and these are MY ducks, I’m more confident if I cause a little duck nip once in a while – the dogs aren’t very prey-drivey with them and seem to nip them a bit to see if they’ll do something rather than try to really do anything to them. I think they get they’re helpless and don’t need real toothing. Soft mouth for the win.

On the opposite-but-same spectrum, you’ve got the cattle. Cattle are “like ducks” in that you can’t do a lot of “get in there and correct.” The dog either takes what you want her to or not. The last video, as  Dustin said, I was wanting Rippa to just figure it out on her own, but what she was figuring out was that she could do whatever it took to get the cattle to come to me. (I want to say I’m happy about it – her first exposures to cattle she wouldn’t go to head – now she loves it, so hey). We don’t want that “Whatever it takes.” Plenty of cattle people do want that and I’m glad I’ve got dogs that will figure that out and do it, but we want more finite work. Dustin is always reinforcing the concept of “If you’re able to put a dog anywhere you want, you can get a lot done. Wild cattle or not.” So that’s what we’re doing there. That’s why I spent the last few visits with them working their goats and sheep. We need Rippa to understand what she needs to be doing fundamentally better before we put her back on the cows and can’t step into them because, well, they’re cows. They’re huge and can be dangerous when you get cavalier and too focused on the dog.

A commenter asked about my May 7 posting – could I show some video about the stickwork I described there.

Basically, I didn’t ever do ground work to teach the dog what the stick means – they are usually just picking it up during lessons, but the Woods suggested I do that to get some more performance on the dog when working. Their dogs see the stick and immediately turn their shoulder away and head in the other direction when you do what I do in the video.

First, I picked Fury because I haven’t really worked too much on her with that – her big issue was the stick in general so when I work her, I don’t use a stick at all, just my body. I show you Rippa because she does it really nice . . . but for whatever reason, probably me videoing, you don’t see the turn shoulder and leave in an arc. You could reinforce it by having the dog on a line – but normally they do what they’re supposed to – in both cases, the dogs just decided to leave the front yard after I did it. I wasn’t working with them, I’m talking to you, so they weren’t having it. Best I could do without help.

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.

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.

W Lazy J Cattle Camp

So, clearly the “get your own land” thing hasn’t worked out, though I’m still working on it. In the mean time, back in January I decided to give the famous Betty Williams’ clinics a go since I was saving so much money in not having any lessons. My huz was in full support and we decided to make it an adventurous road trip all over the Western US.

I wanted to go for a few reasons:

I’d heard a lot of good about Betty and her dogs and it seemed like a good way to find out about both, because despite my inactivity, my interest in learning is nowhere near dead.

I wanted to meet and see different people and dogs than I have met in the past – travelling is a sure way to get out of the usual.

Two years ago, Rippa was nice, but she just wasn’t powerful enough on Kathy’s cattle for me to feel good about having achieved my goal in creating good cattle dogs with her litter and I wanted to see what she did now that she’d grown into herself (I could have done this in California, but it provided the reason to do it in the first place).

I’ve been wondering if I really know how to start a dog on cattle, and learning from a different person would augment what I already knew. Now that Kathy’s retired, I’m more on my own and if this is a long term thing, I’ll need to work a little more on my own because I’m not the sort that enjoys devoting her life to traveling to stockdog clinics.

I’d say on all fronts this was a massive success. Huz and I packed up the F250 and headed North (then East), climbing and mountain biking along the way, until we landed at the W Lazy J ranch.

The clinic started out pretty much just like I was used to at Kathy’s, with much the same format: a lecture in the morning, then a run order that had the dogs go through twice and the day was over. Everybody ate dinner and lunch (and even breakfast) together.

I’ll talk about Betty’s methods as she taught them in a post following this one, including notes on her lectures, but I thought you’d appreciate more of an overview of how things went and what I learned.

Initial Impressions

Betty’s cattle were very different from Kathy’s lesson cattle. Maybe it was because they had been used to trial and do clinics on, but they were a lot heavier and more mellow about everything. Betty had to encourage me to get right up in there a number of times because I had been taught to be hyper aware of the cow’s flight zones and danger to myself and my dog.

She started most of the dogs in a smaller pen, about equivalent to Kathy’s “duck” pen with five cattle. Rippa went right to the cattle and enjoyed driving them around, but when she went to head, she wanted to keep doing it. Betty was trying to get me to hold Rippa back after she turned the heads in a drive and this was SO foreign to me that it took a while to figure out what Betty wanted of me. Eventually I got it:

This is a photo of me so close on the cows that I am running up to Rippa to push her back while trying to get out of the way of the cows at the same time. Toward the end, I was so good with the cows not being light that Betty had to tell me to watch getting kicked. I definitely got Rippa kicked in the beginning with all that pressure we were both putting on the cows, but after a while I figured out what Betty wanted and I don’t think the final two days we had any kicked dog action.

In other news, Rippa got the crap kicked out of her while I figured out this “turn the dog back and hold her there” thing. She generally went back to work, but thought a lot more about it and wasn’t quite as resilient as some dogs, but Rippa is a thinking dog and I was the one getting her kicked every time and she didn’t seem to hold that against me.

Another totally foreign concept was having the dog go between the cattle and the fence. I took this photo just for this blog:

This is Stef and Lena pulling the cattle off the fence. The handler grabs the dog by the collar to put pressure inside the fence and uses herself, the dog, and the stock stick to get them off, and then sends the dog through to the heads to get them off. This is not something I’d ever seen employed at Kathy’s and man, I failed miserably at it. The first time, I made such a big hole, it was definitely me pulling the cattle off so the second time, after watching other people do it, I didn’t make a big hole and still sent Rippa through. I should known better. Rippa got kicked because she felt too much pressure on the fence and bit a cow without anywhere for her or the cow to go. I didn’t make that mistake again, but I felt bad.

It really was a pretty effective method of getting the dog to take them off the fence. By the end, most of the hot-to-work dogs were figuring out how to peel them off themselves a bit (if not all the way) on their own without the collar handling, and it’s good to have that in your belt if you don’t have another way to do it (a second dog, or a person or something).

Betty mixed up this driving/fence work with fetching at what seemed at random or at the handler’s behest. I took her lead as I figured she was the one that was best equipped to tell me what to do with my dog. In the end, I think it was a little problematic to switch back and forth for Rippa. She would act very stubborn when you would work on one thing, go do something else, then go back to the new thing. She would really avoid doing what I asked (like get back with the rake or stick as a blocker), but having worked with her for a while now, I really think it’s more how she learns – Rippa gets resistant and cranky when you ask for too much and she doesn’t understand it. Once she does, she’s on it. I didn’t feel like Rippa got a good idea about driving OR fetching, because she was spending too much time trying to figure out what she was supposed to do and getting cranky about us pushing on her and changing the rules a lot. Maybe I’m being kennel blind and she’s just stubborn, but if I had a better idea of that and more of a relationship with Betty, I’d probably have advocated we just stick to one thing (fence work OR fetching) during the clinic so Rippa’d feel confident on it.

Rips had the same trouble she did two years ago on cattle during the fetch work – but I think for a different reason. Two years ago, Rippa didn’t really want to go to head, which was now no longer a problem:

Now she just had a hard time working away from me – so when she got on the other side of the cattle, and couldn’t get my help, she didn’t keep going to head and let them drift. Betty got out her Spur and had him work with her to give her the confidence she needed to get around and watch the heads and fetch them up.

This worked really well, but again, I was really worried about Rippa messing Spur up or running cattle over him. Kathy had always been careful about this when putting a green dog with her lessons assistant dog and usually had you shut up so you didn’t distract the dogs. These lessons, I definitely was not shutting up with all the “get back” and flank commands I was giving Rips to get her to fetch to head. Betty assured me Spur could handle it so eventually, I did to stop stressing, and sure enough, the cattle never ran him over. Again, I also think they are quite used to him, and us, and we’re as light and dangerous as Kathy’s cattle could be. 

Eventually, Rippa was fetching well on her own (and even pulled them off the fence into a fetch when they got there), but would lose it periodically because of that working away from me thing. When I asked Betty, she said she was guessing that since Rippa hadn’t been working in a long time, she just needed help working on fetching in general, much less on cattle. “You think they forget it?” “They can.” I guess I took the foundation for granted that Rips would pick it back up, but it does make sense that she needed some hand holding.

Conclusions

Overall, it was a good experience. Betty didn’t say a lot during lessons, which made me rely a lot more on my own knowledge – which at first was disconcerting since I was used to a constant flow of advice from Kathy. Once I stopped expecting Betty to tell me what I’d done wrong or right, I started feeling my own abilities to make those decisions (like in reference to the kicks I was causing) and I came away from it feeling like I could start a dog on cattle, light or heavy, based on my experience and that ten years of lessons on and off were not a huge waste on me. That was the goal.

I also am pretty happy with Rippa. She showed really good stockmanship, had enough power and presence to get the job done (and knowing her, if she really had figured it out, that power would ramp up a lot more), she responded pretty well to me except during those “stubborn” episodes, and I really liked what I saw. I have every confidence that she will be a nice cattle dog and is still a candidate for breeding since I want a good cattle dog line.

Betty’s was a really good place to start a dog on cattle, though I did feel like some people really didn’t respect that the cows would be different elsewhere and might have come away with an inflated sense of confidence of what their dogs could do on cattle in a trial. By the end I was quite sure I could get through a started course with Rippa and qualify (Betty had us do panels for the last lesson, I’m sure she’s used to people liking that experience) – but I’m not sure we could on the trial cattle I’ve been on in the past.

I also met some very different dogs than ones I’ve met previously, got some ideas about Aussies I hadn’t, met some lovely people, and got the snarly photo of Rippa I really wanted:

I also got a kick out of Rippa and Fury being correctly identified by one clinic attender as being Slash V based. She said they had that very clear Slash V look, even though Terry’s dogs are looking different these days. I got my type set, so success on that breeding goal as well. This photo below makes me think of Slash V’s landing page photo .  . . this is pre-stalk for Rippa, but yeah, I see similarities.

vs

Photos courtesy Stef Player and Yishai Horowitz

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?