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.

W Lazy J Cattle Camp: Lectures by Betty Williams

One night I’m out, walking the dogs and taking photos of the sunset, when all the cattle pop out of a hole in the fence, and, one by one, with real purpose, saunter over to the alfalfa field. I would have stopped them, but they moved like they had pressure on them so I wasn’t sure if it was okay or not until it was over. It made a neat shot, though. Everybody had to deal with that problem that night and the next day, but . . . it got handled.

So some highlights from Betty’s talks at camp (I don’t do stenography, so this is paraphrased, I apologize if I get anything wrong):

Day 1:

• Smart dogs don’t go to cattle and act like an alligator – it will take them a while to figure stuff out. Be patient: don’t give up on them. A lot of people want to see alligator to start. Some of the best dogs, including Spur, took some time.
• Dogs are wearing because they’re trying to catch the cattle’s eye out of her blind spots. They can see really far behind them, but the dog is in her blindspot if she stays up straight on the drive. The wear is a good thing. Trainers will teach a walk up for trialing, but it doesn’t work in real life work
• If cattle are worried about a dog, they’ll turn to look for it.
• They have really bad depth perception -
• Fast and tight heading is scary for cows because they can’t see what’s coming up and feel it’s a threat
• Cattle putting their head down isn’t necessarily a challenge – they’re trying to see what’s in front of them, not initially fight
• This is why shadows really freak cows out – they can’t see what they are and it looks like a cliff.
• The stock stick is there to protect the handler. Use it like that.
• Heeling
• The cow the dog is heeling isn’t necessarily the one that kicks a dog – it’s the neighboring cow seeing the heel and kicking at the dog
• Dogs generally start heeling high and then drop lower (and how, Rippa tried a stomach shot first time out, but after a smack, she didn’t do it again)
• Smart dogs heel rear cows and don’t heel just to heel (but this comes with experience)
• When you start pups, you do it on 5-10 head of cattle and increase size of the herd as soon as possible.
• 35 is great for some dogs
• Less cattle is less threatening to pups who aren’t used to cattle, but the dogs work better on big herds
• Dog and handling break your cattle way prior to starting your pups – use chutes, too
• Send dogs softly so you don’t scare the cattle.
• At trials, think about whether your stock is heavy or light. If you’re first up, look at how they’re handling back in the pens for a clue.
• Cattle are handled by steering the head and point of shoulder. (You’ve seen me write about this in the past so no elaboration here)

Lecture 2:

• Separation from the handler in every day life is a good thing – dogs get really dependent on their owners for security and it shows in stock work. If they’re babied a lot, they won’t have confidence without you.

Lecture 3: 

• If you’re having a hard time out there, think back to your foundation. Something isn’t solid so take it back to the round pen and make it solid.
• The Round Pen is where we start
• You stay for a short period, or not, until your dog can square up, get back, dog rates the sheep – start with the bamboo pole but end with the ability to handle with just your fingers.
• Then, start in the round pen and move to an intermediate space (for me, I call it the duck pen because that’s what it was at Kathy’s)
• Work on side commands (only when easy working), steady, square shoulders (the dog turns back squarely, as we’ve talked about in other blog entries), out
• Look for the side the dog favors and work the other one a lot
• Once you’re out of the round pen, start and end with a fetch every time. It’s easy to get a drive and work on that all the time, but you’ll lose the fetch if you only work on driving.
• When you’re teaching square shoulders, the dog should give more than 90 degrees to you so that when you can’t enforce it and the dog cheats, it’s cheating at 90 degrees
• Teaching the drive
• For the drive, do an off-set balance exercise with 10-15 sheep.
• Basically, you get the dog on the outside, you in the center,  with the sheep on the other side of you. You’ll want to keep them pretty much in the same place and send the dog around. Betty moves with the dog as this happens, though when I did it with Kathy, and have explained it before here, we stayed put.  The dog should then be told “there” for it to turn in and face the sheep, but Betty says between dog and sheep.
• You should be able to do this 360 degrees around the sheep and your dog should stay out enough to not affect the sheep bunched in the middle of the imaginary circle you and the dog are walking around and stopping randomly.
• This is the time to teach short flanks by saying “way” and “by” softly. (As opposed to AWAY and GO BY – which should help tell the dog to get way out).
• When the dog is able to get all the way around, you can stop ding the arc exercise.
• This should be done for 5 minutes max at a time as it fries dogs’ brains
• When you’re done, have the dog fetch, then put everybody up.
• Next step in the drive:
• Now the dog should go into a fetch with the owner stopping them and telling her “there” – “walk up” – “good there.” The dog should be able to handle this for a tiny amount of time before it feels like its losing the head. Don’t expect more than 6-10 feet of driving for a while.
• Call the dog back after the short drive and then set up an outrun, fetch, and you can set it up again.
• After being patient and not asking for too much in a session, after 2-3 day a dog should be able to drive about half an arena if all the foundation is laid..
• If training isn’t working, stop and think. Go back to basics or find another way to try things.
• Different lines learn differently. Not every approach will work with every line – try different things.
• Dogs are task oriented – give them good jobs that put all this schooling in context (ie chutes, penning, loading trailers, etc)
• Starting a puppy:
• 4 months do a little with the rake – just play with it off stock to teach them to respect it
• 6 months – do some slightly more seious lessons on sheep – should be short, maybe 15 min max. Make it fun.
• BE CAREFUL OF FEAR PERIODS, which can occur:
• 8 weeks
• 4 months
• 8 months
• 12-15 months
• 18 months
• Know thyself: do you get pushy? If so, wait until the pup is emotionally mature enough to handle it.
• Make sure they go to trials before their first exhibition – so they’re used to how that all works and feels.
• You can train flank commands with toys on the end of sticks.

“So why don’t you train like me?”

Strangely, I’ve had two separate off-the-blog conversations with people from different areas and different experiences who are asking me some poignant questions about my training style (which, as stated before, is purely the Kathy Warren method at this point).

Mostly this has to do with why the heck I am letting Rippa run back and forth at full speed instead of turning her back and forcing her to move straight or using a line to teach her to walk.

So, here’s my stab at an answer to this:

It seems like, in my limited experience of “other methods,” that there are a number of good short cuts to the end product,  including things like forcing a dog back and using a line. I actually tried a couple of others’ advice when I was working with Fury by myself on super light sheep. But these methods are ‘training the dog.’

And I think what Kathy’s trying to do is “train the handler.” The dog will, if using these methods, slow down and balance up (yes, by God, she WILL walk) because she will finally figure out that it’s better than running back and forth. What we’re doing with all this back and forth with sticks business is working with the dog’s instinct to circle and letting her essentially teach herself what works.

How?

We start out by not asking much except for the dog to not eat the sheep. Then we ask for them to stay out from the sheep. Then we ask for wearing by using the stick to block the circling, and, if the dog has good instincts for this, when we ask for it, that will seem natural. Once the novelty of this back and forth wears out, the dog usually starts to think more and use less instinct, and you’ll see it in some of these videos I post – the dog will settle down and start just reading the sheep and doing the minimal work to keep them going how they should be. You can do this all with out “training the dog” and without commands if you are good. You don’t even need the stick (but that is a LOT of running around). Essentially, you’re not telling the dog what to do, you’re just telling the dog what not to do.

You can actually see this really easily in the first video I have of Rippa working:

She gets faster as time goes by because she’s more and more confident and she’s working lighter sheep. You put Rippa on some heavy woolies right now and I promise you she will slow plenty down and pretty much check out. We need her to keep learning and stay interested, so we don’t let that happen.

It is then, when the dog understands how to balance herself and read her sheep, that we start to teach what to do. That way, when you mess up whether you’re trialling or working your cattle on the ranch, the dog will think for herself and be a good stockman without you telling her how.

Having worked Fury with very little commands on a large head of sheep, I find this “working with instinct” very valuable. My favorite story is of having to move sheep from one pasture to another with this road and wide open space to go between. Once, the sheep banked left and got out and it became a full afternoon’s operation to get them back in. After that, Fury always banked left to protect the hole and the sheep went from pasture to pasture without incident. That’s thinking without me telling her to.

As I know from training extensively in other venues, a dog that’s taught to look for you for direction will default to that and I’d simply rather not be the driver of my dog but let my dog make the decision. A good ranch dog knows the drill once you’ve shown them what you want, and so does a trial dog. It’s not like a seasoned dog is going to go, “My God, you want me to put them THROUGH THOSE PANELS? GASP.” They know what they’re for. And my favorite dogs, which may not always win, are the ones that show it with minimal help from the handler.

As Kathy says, the ideal fully trained dog is one that will bring in the sheep and pen them, and all you have to do is sit in your lawn chair sipping your Mai Tai (with umbrella, this is key). Same with an ideal ranch hand. And that’s why we do it this way.

Good improvement and . . . the slingshot outrun.

 

Well, my camera is currently being held hostage, so no footage today. I am hoping to get it back tomorrow so I can shoot what we’re going to do, but we’ll see.

Wow. I have been bummed about not having time to take Rippa to lessons/not getting lessons, etc as I truly believe that you need real consistent work to improve, but she’s sort of proving me wrong. It’s going slower than I’d like, but it’s going.

Rippa’s an interesting dog. Not like her mother by much. Fury is very, “Okay, you want me to do something? This? No? This?” Very fast thinker, very fast behavior offerer. Rippa literally looks checked out, but the wheels are obviously turning because she seems to just “get it” whenever I start up a new lesson at teaching her. I have been taking her to the agility field to practice that and she is learning faster than Fury did because she’s not as urgent to please me RIGHT NOT. Which is interesting. I am thinking Rippa in the long run will be a nicer stockdog than Fury would have been if I did it right because she’s a bit more patient and think-it-through, which is what I wanted. Fury is a bomb little trick dog, though.

So anyway, after a week off, I took her up to Kathy’s and we went back to the duckpen for more miles. And I can see we are both improving a ton. Rips is staying off the sheep pretty naturally and I am making mostly the right handling calls. Not nearly as much circling and pushing, and a lot more backward walking, balancing, and rating. I am really proud of her and me. She gives me time to think so I can feel my handling improving. Fury just goes hard and then it makes me go hard. Here, I can chill a bit.

She also is downing nicely from far away – which was what I’ve been working on. Fury would always down too late and push the sheep past me, so we’re working on not having history repeat itself.

And then finally, Kathy was like, “Let’s see her recall.” So I left her in a down, facing the sheep, walked behind her and called her to my outside leg. No hesitation. She did it. No need to run at the sheep. Nope.

So, tomorrow, we try a bit of the “slingshot outrun” training which gets you that nice wide outrun.

You can see me do it here with Fury, a few years back:

The idea is that the dog swings wide around you and you act kind of as a . . . slingshot to send the dog. I LOVE teaching this. Fury loves it, too, she does it whenever we fetch. Rippa, however, doesn’t fetch, so we’ll see how that goes.

Well, Rippa fetches, but only if Fury’s not around, and not balls.

Rippa gets handled and you get a mini Kathy Warren clinic.

So the video is fuzzy because my computer wanted to take FOUR HOURS to render this 9 min video and I was not having that. It’s not as pretty to look at, but you get the idea.

Circles and Circles and Circles

I haven’t had time to digest the video yet, but I know some people are waiting on Rippa Puppy updates. This past weekend we did three solid days of training.

We worked on Rippa’s outrun (she’s quit splitting them for the most part, and quit doing that “change direction thing” that I talked about earlier that was hard for me to figure out how to manage), on her obedience (she still doesn’t stop before pushing the sheep past me), on her outs, and on my ability to hold the sheep.

First thought is: why do *I* run more than everyone else at lessons? I forgot to ask Kathy about this, but I think it’s partly that I can (when other folks are retirees or injured or just not in shape) and partly that I have more high-powered dogs than some. You gotta MOVE to keep ahead of them. Kathy’s pretty nimble herself and she gets out there, but I think timing has a lot to do with it, too. I need to hustle to get where she was two seconds ago.

Second is, MAN, am I tired of saying “Out.” The thing that you have to understand is that our dogs were not developed to work 3-5 sheep. They were bred to work a huge flock. That pressure is really important because when you have a huge flock, the front animals don’t feel the dog’s pressure, but they certainly feel the pressure of their compatriots urgently pushing on them. So, at this stage in the game, you’re trying to teach the dog to stay out so you don’t end up with a mess. Rippa listens for the most part, but there’s only so much she can take. She’ll get up, control herself and then . . . munch! Those lamb hocks are just too tempting that close up! MOVE, sheepies! Rippa is very pressure sensitive, both with stock and people. I think this makes her a nice cattle dog, but we’ve yet to see. She does not like a lot of pressure up front.

I’ve been dutifully chucking dog food at Rippa at feeding time after she lies down at a distance and Kathy says she sees improvement, but she needs to learn that lying down is a good thing. She just doesn’t want to. She looks really guilty when I ask her to down and go to her. Funny little dog.

The outrun issue, for the most part, have been fixed. She will take direction indications (ie, my body and stick placement), but she still runs pretty fast and flat at them. I have to run to keep her out around them, but I can feel her getting more control of it as time goes on.

Overall, good improvement over the three days. I started not being able to figure out what to do and Kathy stepped in to get Rippa right for me. The difference is night and day. She balances up (walks straight along with the sheep) with Kathy handling her, and with me she wears back and forth (what it sounds like, checks the outside eye of one sheep, runs back, checks the other, repeat). Why? I have a hard time holding my sheep – which is also how I broke Fury so badly. The sheep get past me because apparently when I run out to her to push her out, I run into the sheep’s flight zone and Kathy manages to stay out of it, so the sheep stay pointed toward her instead of going wide around me. We’ll see in the videos soon and hopefully get a clue as to how to fix this.  

Happy sheepsies in the mean time!