My first NCA trial–and not my last

I don’t really like trials very much of any sort, or pretty much any day that involves sitting around waiting for my chance to go or do something. I go to them because it’s time and because I need to look for dogs I like. Otherwise, I’d be doing something else. I like to be busy.

This weekend’s trial definitely kept me busy. When I got invited to go by the Woods, I of course leapt at it. I imagined I’d probably pay my dues, potty their dogs, wrangle their delightful boy, and learn some things. Instead, they asked me if I wanted to time and I said sure.

Well, in a time trial, that makes me the judge. Woah! In ASCA, you have to go through a fair amount to qualify to be  one. Put championships on your working dogs, have a solid background in livestock management, etc. Then you go through a review and training period and then you’re able to judge. Of course, the judges also are looking for something other than points and time: they’re looking for how the dog gets it done. In these trials, it doesn’t matter. It’s just points, with ties broken by time.

A couple things about NCA (National Cattledog Association) Trials: they’re horseback, you have to have western gear (I guess I better get a new hat, my straw one has seen better days), and the divisions are interesting.

Open – this is the pro category: if you give lessons or train dogs for money, you go in here. You’d think it would be the most competitive category, but I didn’t think it was in the end. Just because you’re a pro doesn’t mean you have the best dog or handling ability.

Intermediate – I think this is if you’ve won too many Rancher classes and have to be somewhere. I’ll eventually get here. And, since people like me get here, it gets competitive. I was shocked to see how well these dog and handler pairs did after watching Open. But, you have a broader pool to pull from.

Nursery – for dogs under 3. Again, you’d think this would be a beginner class, but it really wasn’t. Some dogs were in one of the other two classes and ALSO in this one. Some of the best dogs out there were under 18 months! I couldn’t believe it. Aussies seem to mature slowly compared to the BCs, because these dogs had confident swagger that I’ve never seen in an Aussie at that age to date.

Rancher – it’s kind of a misnomer. This is where I’ll start. It’s the beginner class, but again, not really. The ranchers were mostly actual ranchers and their dogs were awesome.

Bottom line – this is a whole other thing and I love it.

I LOVED their attitude of, “Hey, we give you this job, you seem capable, do it.” I feel like that has never been the MO of the Australian Shepherd world. I wasn’t just doing the timing/scoring with the help of new friends, I was doing the announcing (yay for Toastmasters and being an Emcee at events when needed) and people went out of their way to tell me how much they appreciated my efforts. I loved how they had cards signed in thank you to the people who put the trial on and the sponsors that gave the prizes. Cowboy chivalry is alive and well, friends. Heck, had the environment been the same when I was back in school in the ag program, I might have stayed. I feel like I came out of the weekend with many new, sincere friends. And that I’m now a part of something really organic and cool. In school, I was in the ag dorm in an ag program and I never wanted to look the part. I didn’t want to be a part of it to begin with. I only recently bought a pair of boots to work and ride in. Here, I didn’t care if I didn’t look the part and neither did they. It was just people giving mutual respect and appreciation of people. A really rare thing for any gathering you go to. Beautiful.

So, anyway . . . I put a lot of thoughts together watching these dogs this weekend that I think are fairly interesting if they’re not already obvious:

• I’ve been thinking this for a while, but this weekend proved it: if your dog has mostly all the tools in its head, stockdog training is really about mileage. That’s it. If you work a lot on sheep, your dog will confidently handle sheep. If you work a lot on ducks, same. And same with cattle. People have been telling me for years that Aussies at National Finals just don’t have grip and power. I think they probably don’t because most of the finals dogs aren’t regularly working cattle – and new cattle. Aussies have a reputation for being barky and bouncy and out of control and from what I saw this weekend, it looks a lot more like the dog just is intimidated by the cattle and doesn’t know what to do. Rippa was like that and she’s settling now. Miles on cattle can make a cowdog.

• Miles make the dog make sense. Rippa tends to freak out and go for a body shot. I always worry about that because it’s pointless and stupid, but I was sitting with a  lifelong cowboy who has produced some very nice dogs, and he said, “Ehh, that’ll go away when the confidence comes.” I agree, because see above.
• Cowdogs need bite and lots of it. Terry Martin is always saying that the ASCA stockdog program is weakening cattle dogs because of the sheep/duck requirements to championship. This is because dogs can’t bite those stock, and since it’s 2/3 of the whole point, you end up with dogs who don’t grip cattle first. It’s been really frustrating to me with Fury and now Rippa that they both are a lot more chompy than most dogs I see and it makes trialing harder. It says a LOT that Fury got her started cattle title and doesn’t have ducks and sheep. I saw a LOT of gripping (and took a LOT of photos of it) over the weekend. These dogs had it in spades and even when it got a little wild, everyone was fine with it.  I had a chance to talk to a cowboy helping me out in the box and we got to talking about it. I said I’d seen all these videos of dogs ganging cattle and it seemed like a mess. He agreed. So I said, why all the bite? I mean, people cross breed border collies with pitbulls. He pulls back a bit and says, “You need to.” And he basically says that all these dogs out here need that kind of tenacity or they won’t last in a cattle operation. Day in and day out getting beat up, they need to have the edge to keep doing it for years. That’s why people do the pitbull breedings. Of course, he says, you never know what you’ll get, maybe you’ll lose some things when you do that, too. This, combined with what I saw, made me sad that I was not in a better position to do what I do now with The Fury. She would have been awesome. I specifically bred Rippa to take the edge off a bit, and she is a lot more thoughtful, but she’s missing the balls-out bit that would make her last years in and years out working hard stock.  At least, theoretically.
• Buying and selling dogs. My friend told me that he used to train crossbreds and sell them at auction but then he figured that purebred dogs with papers made more money, so that’s what he’s doing now. I figured the market would bear whatever the best dog was. Au contraire. Lines matter even in the working cattle dog world.
• Puppies in ranch homes. He also said that if you had a rancher that had never had a dog before, you’d better place a finished dog with him or make sure you give him some lessons. Otherwise, he’s not going to know how to use the dog and he’ll tell his friends your dog is a piece of crap and that’s how your reputation goes badly. But, once a rancher has a finished dog, he’ll know how to use the next one and start it as a pup. This is a good reason why a lot of Aussies aren’t in working ranches anymore: people don’t start and sell started/finished Aussies. I know Norm Andrews wanted to do that, but too bad he isn’t here to talk to anymore.

Shannon asked me after it was all over if I felt ready for the next one. I told her not yet – my dog doesn’t mind well enough and she’s got to get some more confidence before we go in. There’s a trial Easter Weekend I might be ready for if I get enough mileage in. There’s a lot riding on me representing Aussies well if I’m going to do this – I’m conscious of the prejudice and, honestly, if the Aussie has no place on the ranch any more, there’s definitely no point in breeding working ones with reserved attitude, bite, etc when there’s plenty of lovely family pets and trial dogs for people to pick from. There’s also plenty of people trying to get me to switch to BCs next time (and at this point I know what I’d get if I did), but I’m more than ever encouraged to go as far as I can with Rippa and start with a new generation to see where it takes me. Keep learning, keep looking, the world just keeps getting richer and richer.

Stockhandling: I should know better

I keep this blog mostly for myself to track what I’m doing and  thinking and to just get it down. It’s public because I figure some people can get some good out of it here and there, and also so many people have helped me when I had issues after I posted here.

This is one of those posts that’s definitely a mix of both.

First, The Fury ruptured her CCL (ACL in humans) and we decided to go ahead and get the TPLO surgery on her so she can get back in action. I had a feeling it would happen. She’s an athlete that does not really think much about what’s happening with her body because her head is in the game. The older she gets the more I worried about it, but I’m of the school of let them enjoy it if they do. She blew it cornering on sheep, but she could have easily done the same thing playing fetch.

She’s an intense little dog for a 12 year old and I have a feeling that unless something horrible happens, she’s still got a lot of time with me left and I’m not going to let it be hurty and depressing for her. So, she’s got hurty and depressing for a few months instead. 

They say they have a 50% chance of blowing the other side and “the vets don’t know why that is,” but as an athelete with some decent sports medicien knowledge . . . it’s pretty obvious. If there’s a weakness, it will get exacerbated. A dog limping on a limb for months and compensating and then going right back to hard work without therapy and probably some ongoing work is totally going to compromise the weaker side. I’m feeling pretty good about things on that end, but again, she blew the first one in the first place and the plan is not to restrict her fun when she’s ready.

I set her up in a pen in the office and she is sooooo sad and it’s only day one.  We’ll get through it. So much for trialing her in January! Oh well!

When we dropped her off for surgery, we then headed over to the Woods to work some calves. I am sure I’ve mentioned this before, but the Woods are always switching out their livestock to keep things fresh which I love. I’m so used to people keeping a set flock of sheep and just replacing older ones, but this new stock all the time does a lot for me and the dogs on the handling things. There’s no getting used to patterns. It’s different in some ways and similar in others.

What do I mean? Well, the animals are different so a dog and a person can’t settle into, “Oh, well, that’s how I work THAT animal” mentality. It’s the same in that the stock handling principles become really apparent.

I work my chickens pretty regularly with the dogs, too. When the Spring comes, grasses stop being dormant and start popping up everywhere. In my old house, I’d just let them loose to mow the lawn and let the Fury hold them from going into the street or bushes, but in the house, the grasses pop up in the mulch and fake riverbed in front, so I pulse graze them with an ex-pen.

The neighbors love it. Seriously.

I generally use Rippa for this because the mileage has paid off and she is really good at moving them faster than me alone while also team working it with me.

Anyway, the point I’m making is that a day after Thanksgiving, one of the neighbors came over with me herding them into the pen and asked how it was I was able to herd them at all and I told them about this hobby of mine, and it’s true. There are basic tenets of stockmanship, that, once you understand it, apply to pretty much everything. Watching the eye, understanding pressure and the direction things will flow in avoidance . . . Chickens aren’t hard to work at all if you know what you’re doing and they’re not tame enough to blow you off. In fact, last year a bird flew into the house at night and could NOT figure it and it took me settling and realizing it was heading toward light sources, so we just turned off the lights, opened the door and had the porch light on. Fixed.

Anyway . . . we’ve got Rippa entered in a trial in a month and my main focus right now is getting her to mind me more responsively (aka, “Down” when I say down, not after five or me yelling) and take pens, because I don’t practice that a lot, no real good opportunity.

Both of these hinge on my ability to chill out. I get pretty yelly instead of being consistent and it’s not good. And I also put a lot of pressure on the dog in the take pen. Looking at photos of me, I can see that I probably just need to get out of there.

So, we went to the Woods and Dustin worked with me on getting Rippa to just be easy. Reality is – she gets uncomfortable when she’s faced up close to a cow and I get why. Her instinct is less to run than it is to fight (which is good), so she will take pressure to a point until she needs to break loose and hit something and run to relax. It’s fine with me, that’s something we can work with, but it’s a fact. Our session consisted mainly in having Rippa learn that chilling while facing stopped cattle can be okay, both in the pen and outside.

We have a free-standing pen and Dustin and his dog would work one side and Rippa and I would work another to repen them when she pushed them out and again. After an hour of this, we were getting really great teamwork together and Rippa was starting to get that it’s okay not to bust stuff up when something moves.

I, on the other hand, got a solid reminded to think more.

Dustin asked me with regard to the pen, where I should send the dog. At Kathy’s, the way the pen was set up, it was ALWAYS on a go by and lay down at the back end. It was the lowest pressure way to get them out of the gate and into the arena. So, I never thought much. That’s pretty much how all of the take pens I work are set up, so I told him.

“No,” he said, “Look at your cows.” The heads were facing counter clockwise outward. If I opened a pen wide and sent her on a way to, they would pop right out. If I sent her clockwise, they would have to turn around and probably cause a little dog fight in a tight space before coming out.

OH NO! I KNOW BETTER THAN THAT! Once he realized I wasn’t thinking like that, he started asking me before we sent her in to take them out. It was a great lesson.

During the team work, I also learned something important on my end. I was using Rippa to hold one side and me to hold another while helping her get repositioned, but twice when a cow made a break for it, I would run laterally in that direction and it would spook and overreact, and then Rippa would.

“You did that,” he says. “Next time, don’t move laterally, think about moving  out and back and then laterally.” (AKA, don’t cut my corners, but square off when I take the pressure, like we want our dog to do.)

Again, I SHOULD KNOW BETTER. Shannon says it’s a lot of me worrying about the dog and my handling will get better when the dog gets right, but it was a leap forward in sensibilities for the both of us this time.

Dustin sent me home with toy stock to set up some stuff and practice my strategies. next post, I’ll probably share that with you.

Or, maybe it will be observations from this weekend’s horseback trial. We’ll see!

Me backing up to take pressure off, Rippa minding herself, too.

Trial Entered, goals to work on.

Last time I considered entering a trial, the thought of it made me a little sick, to be honest. This time, I’m reasonably sure I’ll qualify, and I might actually do well. January 4th – so long as I get in. Sheep, ducks, and cattle. And, I’m even entering the Fury. That latter idea might be a bad one, but she’s pretty good – Rippa is better, and why not? Nobody’s going to kill stock, and I can come out of it with more experience and some titles for both dogs.

So now I have have to work on some things that I haven’t: take pens. The course is basically – collect your stock from a pen on one side of the arena, collect the stock wherever they end up once they do that, walk the dogs through panels on opposite corners, and put them back.

I can totally do this with both dogs. But not well, not 100%.

We don’t have taken pens to practice with except with ducks. With ducks, I have it dialed. I went to look at Stephanie’s set ups today while both dogs waited and I basically have a choice of an 8 x 8 panel free standing pen, that weird collection pen with a corner in it, or some big pens that are not “take pens.” I decided to go with the 8 x8 pen, so today was about center pens for both dogs and then taking them out.

Normally, I just have them go on the opposite side of the pen and it goes nicely. But with take pens, the dog is supposed to go in there. That is a very tight space for dogs, me, and sheep.

Kathy trains take pens by having the dog go in on a long line and learning to circle and stop opposite the gate on your command. It’s too small for a long line and I debate using a leash with Fury because she is just so amped that she is good and then if the sheep look at her, she starts heeling and not thinking.

I tried a couple things like having her circle outside the pen to work off the stress, but really, I think I just need the Fury to work on impulse control a bit. I had her grazing chickens the other day and she was whiny and vibrating the whole time with desire to do more than sit there – Rippa, however, has been working a lot more and more often and she’s getting more patient about stuff.

That’s the other goal- work on both of their impulse control and command taking.

I’ve stopped working on Rippa’s drive since the duck quitting and we’re just going back to basic fetches, fixing outruns, and working on finite handling understandings. It’s really fun to watch her work stuff out without me saying much – though she still gets excited and starts getting pushy and I have to correct her.

When I trial, I have to think of it as more a training session than anything else or I have the potential to go backward from what I have got. Rippa made her practice run quite nicely, but she would get excited and push too hard and had to clean things up. Fury is always excited and pushing hard but my strategy with her is to just down her way off her stock because she’s so intense, her control is from very far away. The closer she gets to me, the more intense she gets. That’s bad for the take pen. But we’ll get it sorted.

I’m also working on introducing whistles. Right now it’s just “down.” I whistle, then yell down. Both are getting it, but I think they believe it means more “HEY PAY ATTENTION!” right now.

But that works. It’s sparkly.

And finally, just as I was finishing up the last outrun with the Fury, she comes up lame and won’t walk on her left rear leg. Noooooooooooo.

I’m super sensitive to the fact that she’s almost 12 and that knee injuries can be kind of common and lay a dog up so I have been very careful with how she plays with Rippa and does other stuff to watch this. She was coming in too hard to stop a runaway sheep and the ground at Stephanie’s is pretty rocky, so she probably came down wrong. I’m hoping she just tweaked it, but she’s hopping around right now and I’m worried. I’ll give it a day or two and if there’s no improvement, to the vet I go. I keep poking on it and looking for pain reaction but she’s not giving me much so I’m hoping it’s just a tweak – we all tend to do that. And now she’s banished to the down palace in our bedroom. Tough dog life.

Ducks back on!

Today I went back out to my ducks after a month-long break. To be honest, I was a little worried about it. I really didn’t want Rippa to be over ducks forever, but I was resigned to it being a possibility.

I tied her up and used Fury to get them out. We’re down to seven now as apparently Jennifer found one of the drakes dead the other day, no explanation. Ducks! I’m hoping the learn to brood some of the eggs the ladies are dropping or I’ll have to buy more in the spring just to balance out the ratios there. I read somewhere that it’s good to have all drakes, but Jennifer and I agree it’s good to have eggs, too.

 

Fury was a good little animal. I worked on her commands off them and she took them nicely, working the little guys much less stressfully that I would expect for her having to take over the job of moving them out of their pen and into the center. She’s learning to control her instinct a LOT better.

Then I put her up and got Rippa out. I went into it feeling soft, not asking for much, just that she doesn’t bowl them and I got that. She took advantage of me being soft at first and wasn’t honest with them at all, but once I gave her some correction, she started thinking again. I started her wrong. Must remember that.

The ducks, for their time off, are more subtle and take more thoughtful handling as they’re less inclined to move toward me, which is what I wanted anyway. It was really fun! I didn’t say a lot to Rippa and she worked out the problems as she needed to. I could see the obstacle work with Shannon really paid off here. I put her up quickly while she was happy and eager and brought Fury down one more time.

By then, the ducks had had it, so I just put them back up. I do need a bigger flock if I want to keep working. I could have divided them into two small groups, but I figured it was better to turn both dogs on with a bigger one that would be more forgiving.

Anyway, it was pretty great. I couldn’t be more happy with the dogs right now.

And then we went riding with V through a ranch adjacent to the ducks!

Space to think and not just feel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now to figure out how to do that, exactly.

It’s Time to Trial (well, kinda of)

I only say this because I could trial tomorrow, but it’s not looking like I’ll actually MAKE a trial until after the new year. So, don’t get excited.

I last left you pretty frustrated but trying to make the most of it with Rippa. I keep saying it’s not linear but we so want it to be! Rippa refusing to work ducks and turning off on Stephanie’s sheep made me take a step back and re evaluate my goals, my dog, and, most importantly, my beliefs.

You don’t get into dog training unless you’re a control freak in one way or another, and that can make it really hard to believe in something because EVERYONE believes in something and if you’re not lock-step behind them, you’re going to have some trouble with it.

As I get older and get better at being me (aka, living in my own skin), I’m doing a lot better on the realizing this earlier and making calls. Same with Rippa. After talking to Joey Judd about what his dogs were/are like, I have to remember that it was never my goal to have perfect trial dogs. There are plenty of those. I don’t need perfect family dogs. There are scads of those. What I need is a dog that I can say to a rancher – this dog will take minimal training and help you. These things can include the others, but they don’t have to.

And so, I backed off all the fine tuning stuff, no circling around the stock and me to set up drives, no hard flank work, none of it. Just fetching and setting up chores. And, taking advantage of the fact that I have all the time in the world, not letting the dogs actually work.

Rippa hasn’t been on ducks for a while now, but she’s got to watch Fury do it and it’s driving her nuts. Good. Be bummed about missing out. We’re taking a break because I’m deep in my work season right now anyway, but when I go out again, it will be to torture Rippa by working Fury again. Muahahaha.

I realized I had some holes in Rippa’s training and have started taking Stephanie’s sheep out to a big alley way to work on driving, control, etc in tight spaces. She is learning that she can drive easy and still control (rather than chase because they’re running away) and she can’t get out wide enough to go to their heads at a full run, but she’s able to do it in the narrow chute if she approaches slowly and easily. I’m keeping sessions short and positive and Rippa is happy.

Sooooo happy. She’s tired.

We’ve been working on obstacle stuff with Shannon’s help, too. She’s learning that non-takepen/holding pen obstacles don’t mean she has to lose her stock and she’s figuring out to make that happen, as well as negotiate obstacles in general (aka, in her way). Shannon and Dustin’s setup is a lot tighter than Stephanie’s because their training goals are different. I really like the balance because we can work on distance and outruns at Stephanie’s and work on all the nitty gritty stuff at the Woods and come up with  a balance.

Rippa’s mom Fury is coming along, too. Today I actually had a thought that I might be able to finish her WTCh in her old age if I pick my cattle well. (I don’t need her getting hurt to do it.) We’ve been working short sessions with her on sheep and she’s learning to balance and that I hold my end now.  The difference between when she started with Stephanie's sheep to today is night and day. I’m definitely going to finish her started sheep title (she needs a leg) and ducks when I’m ready to go out there. It’ll take more mellow control on her part to get to open, but I’m feeling like its possible. Stephanie thinks it’s much to do with her getting older, and that might be it, but I like to not think like that. Fury isn’t much different at almost 12 as she was at 4 in temperament or physical ability – I’ve noticed it’s harder for her to climb stuff, but she still does it – what’s changing is MY attitude and MY handling more than her aging.

One of the things I’ve started doing before working is taking my time with that. I lay the dog down outside the gate and give flanks until they stop thinking STOCK STOCK and start listening to my commands. When they ease up and take them, I go to the gate, drop them, and walk in, leaving them. I might move the stock around a bit until the dog eases up and lets it be my job before I let the dog in. This is working brilliantly to get soft, easy starts at the first go.

So, no, it’s not linear. I went back to basics with Fury and Rippa, but it’s going well and I’m getting more out of them both. Fun fact: I was a college professor for almost a decade and occasionally I would substitute for junior high and high school. What I taught at the college level was the SAME thing being taught in lower levels.

It’s not linear. We learn, we use, we stop using, we forget. One must always go back and work on the basics to get advanced work, even if it’s just a tune up. ESPECIALLY if you don’t use it very often or consistently.

The Naked Fury

A Little Update and an Interlude

So . . . almost accidentally, we bought a house by the sea and moved in. It is a fixer upper, and being people who don’t rest on our laurels, that’s pretty much all we’ve been doing with it since we took possession of it. The very first day I put plants in the ground because the previous owner never did. Then there was scraping and painting and reinstalling. We’re still working on the inside and will be for a few months, I think. And then there’s the backyard.

Oh, and my husband and I decided to open up a second location for our non profit climbing gym, in the midst of the busiest season for our for-profit event business.

What I’m trying to say is I haven’t been working dogs that much.

Aww, but she’s a time suck. I never expected that to be the case because I’ve been taking care of rentals like they’re my own forever. But now I can’t blame the landlord for it looking bad. It’s a compulsion. It must be fixed up. Much more to come in the front yard, but this is it for now.

Anyhow, that’s not to say I haven’t been working. I’ve gotten out a handful of times since then. And probably for good, too.

Remember my problem with Rippa and the ducks? Still no good. She won’t even do chores now. She’ll give it one half-hearted go and it’s over. The ducks still move off her so I can grab her and move them but she will just come over, suck up, and ask to do anything but that. Unless I let her go crazy on them. So, Rippa is on duck-time-out.

She was showing hints of doing this with sheep, too, at Stephanie’s place. But not at the Woods’.

I was so upset about it that I ended up deciding to go on a heritage search and contact anyone I knew that had her bloodlines too and figure it out. Tracey, of C-Me, reminded me that Fury’s mother (Rippa’s grandmother) didn’t like ducks, either. I started talking to more people about dogs just plain not interested in working ducks and sometimes sheep and wanting to give up, and it seemed to be coming from Spike. But then, someone didn’t have Spike, but they had Judd’s Chickasaw Dan.

And, lo and behold, I suddenly am on the phone with Joey Judd – which was pretty exciting. He talked to me for a solid hour about people, about dogs, about all of it. What I realized from that conversation is that Rippa is working exactly how you’d expect for me linebreeding on Dan. She’s got serious power with the cattle, and she’s getting frustrated on sheep and ducks as Joey mentioned his dogs were wont to do.

So, check it out, what happened? It’s probably that I’ve been working way more interesting stock at the Woods: goats and cattle, and she’s like, “Eff this other stuff.” She does work sheep fine at the Woods, so I’m wondering if there’s something about Stephanie’s sheep or the stuff I do there because it’s so much bigger of a space. I guess we’ll see!

And should I get upset about the fact that Rippa’s not amped on the little beasties? No. I wanted to breed cattle dogs. I got a cattle dog. If I keep wanting to breed for cattle dogs, she’s awesome. She’ll still work my chickens happily, too, but she’s getting a massive break from the ducks.

Actually, last time I was out there, she got to do nothing but cry as the Fury did her thing, and another guest was out working, too. I met this guy Roland and his red border collie at Stephanie’s. He trials ASCA and needed ducks to warm up on, and I said sure. Well, he comes out and his dog is great. He’s all apologetic about how she’s too hard on them, but man, my dogs are way harder (of course, they’re at the started level and his bitch is trying to finish a WTCh). It’s all about perspective.

I was supposed to trial with the Woods this fall but we’ve not put enough time in (and now I have no time with work and house), so they are off killing it on the cattle circuits in California and Oregon right now.

I posted to the California ASCA trial and show list about upcoming trials and so now it’s time to sort through them and pick one or two and just suck it up and go. I’m terrified we’ll do badly, but I guess I have to get over it. We’ll be fine. Let my dog work and me just concentration on the job and get ‘er done.

When I know my dates, I’ll post them here so there’s no backing out (unless I don’t get in).

Until next time . . .