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This, will probably be long.  Consider yourself forewarned.

My work Molly these last two months has been intermittent, but she has really done everything i asked her to.

So here is a map of the setup:

When i got to the farm one weekend… my fields were empty. Meaning that my yearling sheep were still napping in the barn. We had to go get them for ourselves. The mud is a little deep.  Molly was a pretty good little dog. We had 1 crash, but after a lot of thought… i know what i did wrong.

I know it doesn’t make a ton of sense… i’m doing it from memory.  The red line is that of the sheep. So they’re in the barn yard (the center box), see molly and start trucking into the barn where it’s safe. The interior of the barn is U shaped for hay storage in the center. we had to continue carefully along through the barn, into the small sorting area, through the footbath line and into a small (8×8) holding pen. Sounds a little hard. Now imagine this: she’s never worked with me not in the same pen. But i knew that I needed to be able to close the gate between the small pen and the footbath line. 

I was watching my feet and noticed a worm living in the mud, but didn’t get a chance to get a photo .

After doing that a few times the sheep were down with the program. So i took my 5, merged them with their buddies in the field and started working our outruns. Specifically not cutting in and coming in nicely at the top. We did a little large group driving, but nothing very far.  Just seems to be the only way she can drive successfull.  I’m sure this is a handler issue. However, she worked a solid 2 hours so i was just pleased she kept her head together.

The next week I took Molly out and we fussed around with the AKC obstacles (which BTW, i love) and she was really great. We spent about 20 minutes talking about what Down meant and completing a Come Bye flank toward a corner. Once we got a bit of a rhythm she was really tuned in and we both learned.

But here’s the neat part:  She remembered all her manners. It was so nice to work her and not sweat some of the little things. I took her lead off before we went in the arena and she tuned into the sheep from across the field, but sat immediately upon request. I hitched her up to the centerpen so i could go look at the set up of the obstacles and moved a cone to use for outrun work and she didn’t flip out. Just stayed there.

Truth be told, she could have gotten loose at any moment. Not like i *tied* her. She broke 1 stay while we were working out outruns. I didn’t freak out. Just said “oh hell Peanut” and she pushed out and got around instead of busting them up.  I think the yoga is working… things started to fall apart and i remembered to breath.

Crowning glory: There is a small sorting pen that also serves as an easy access between 3 pens; the one 1 was in, the field the lambs live in and small training pen. The lambs were put into the sorting pen while 4 or 5 lambs were in each field. Which means to get out of our field, we’d have to go *through* the 20ish lambs in a smallish pen without causing chaos. She had been so good that i kept her short leash off and had her ‘follow’ through the pen. She looked a few times at the sheep, which is fine. She never caught an eye or went rigid. Very polite. I was SO proud.

Reactive Rover isn’t stock stuff, but it’s Simon and when he is sucessful i like to give him the credit he deserves.  There are a lot of Reactive Rover type classes.  They are for the dogs that can’t seem to be near other dogs on leash.  Lots of pulling on leash and whining and throwing a general

fit.  Some times they are lungy, but the dogs in this particular class don’t have a history of true aggression.  This class is taught by my friend Christine Hibbard of Companion Animal Solutions.  Anyone who has taught a class in anything will tell you that having some extra help is always welcome.

We have been intermittently using Simon and Molly as Stimulus Dogs.  Anyone who has met Simon, especially on leash, knows that self control isn’t his forte.  Using him as a teaching dog to elicit a response out of the class dogs has put me in the unique position of practicing alot of the techniques i’m out of practice in.  He’s really doing beautifully and i’m able to take time in between class dogs to practice heel patters and loose leash walking in the middle of downtown Seattle.  Which is a huge plus.

He’s such a good lap dog.  She tries so hard.

It seems that in all the stockdog books and videos, people walk out into the field with the intention of accomplishing a goal a particular way and then do it. There are always issues, but the way that they’ve decided to accomplish something always seems to work. Which is why i’ll never be able to write a book about stockdog things. I come up with a plan of how to train a skill and after much arguing and fussing about, end up teaching it a totally different way. I cannot seem to conform to save my life.

For the last few sessions we’ve been fussing with ‘the crossdrive’ which is nothing more than driving the sheep along the fence like you do between Obstacles 1 & 2 in the ASCA A & B courses. So the dog learns to drive and cover the head by coming off the fence and tucking them back in. In many circles this is the precursor to learning The Drive in an open field.

But apparently not in the circle that Molly and I are in. Because that would be too easy.

Every time we started to do the crossdrive as indicated below, the sheep took 6 steps and then landed happily at my feet.   I’m in gold, the sheep are red and Molly is purple.  I can’t get far enough away from them to give her room to cover along the fence and she was really hesitating to walk into the group with me next to them instead of ahead of them. So in the process of trying to make this work, i got to see exactly what Molly’s stress behaviors look like. The ears back, the tunnel vision (i’m going to ignore you b/c you are stupid) and backing off to relieve pressure… and finally coming to me and sitting inbetween my feet. Even if it means walking through the sheep.

Poor Molly.

After suffering this for about 10 minutes i just couldn’t quite get it going.  She was frustrated, i was finally getting frustrated and it just wasn’t coming together. I’m not big on torture.

I decided to try doing something similar to line work. We had a big enough group that they were staying together nicely and regrouped nicely. So if she crashed something spectacular it wouldn’t be too hard to get things back under control. I clipped her little 12″ leash to her collar to make myself feel better and downed her a good distance away. I walked toward the sheep they started to move a little and i gently indicated she should walk to me. So for a few feet we walked the sheep along. Then she started to walk ahead a little. Then a little more. Then she started to lean like she was going to try to get around them and i downed her (which i now know was stupid and paranoid, but we’ll get to that). At this point she’s about 10′ ahead of me and when she goes down and i’m still walking, the sheep stop anyway. They are moving off of her and not me.

After about 10′ we were out of open space and almost in a corner. I downed her an helped her negotiate a slow, quiet uturn and she was off again… about 10′ or 15′ ahead of me and cruising right along.  When she started to get a little pushy and sheeps gate was starting to change, i’d down her.  She learned that trick fast and started giving them more space.  I did have to help her learn to change position to keep the sheep straight. The sheep would try to turn and we need to keep some semblance of a line. I’d gut up next to her and use her left and right to help her see that she could change her position to effect their direction.  After few times i’d just take a step to the other side of her while still 10′ back and she knew what to do.  We’re still working on this as a think that before when i thought she was going to bolt and bring them around, i should have waited just another second and let her catch the eye before downing her. meh.

I’m late, i know.  I got distracted with garden cleanup and my birthday.  Important stuff first.

Molly is doing well. I’ve worked her a few times since the last post and she seems to be getting the hang of the cross drive. I’m getting farther (like feet, not yards) away from the sheep and she’s controlling the heads more from the appropriate location. The little things in life.

Simon is oddly busy, but i don’t think he realizes it. I’ve been steathfuly working on obedience commands as part of the FB 2010-Year of the CD Challenge. A CD title is the first most basic title in ASCA obedience trials.   His long sits are becoming more consistent and his heel-work is better. He still gets distracted by grass he’s not peed on, though he’s up to every 3rd blade instead of every single blade. We need to start adding distractions soon.  He’s also starting to work ducks on line.  He seems confused that they don’t flock like sheep. For instance when he’s coming up the middle of the arena and pushes on the sweetspot a little too hard they fan out.  He *thinks* about diving in out of frustration, but then looks back at me like i’m doing it as part of an elaborate joke.  So far, no squishing though.  Think good thoughts for us.

On other stuff… i’m currently teaching myself MySQL & PHP – which has been interesting/frustrating.  My goal is to eventually redo the ASC of WA events page so that each event can have one or more people assigned to make changes to their own events.  So as an example for the April Showers event, I could have edit privileges as could Bob  – the Course Director and Michelle – our paperwork Goddess.  More importantly, this would allow people to add and edit their own events, when and how they’d like them to appear.  Lisa could log in, add her event and would never have added a line about cattle – oops -  and update the judges for Lakebay (that i will add tonight, but see where i’m going with this since i’ve not done it yet?).

Don’t get too excited. In a perfect world this *might* be ready for the 2011 schedule.  However it’s an exciting project and would be the beta project for redoing NWDog.

There is a largish arena at Fido’s that is called the Cattle Arena. Cleverly enough, when there are trials at Fido’s it’s where the cattle are trialed and have appropriately sized sorting pens for cows. It’s the largest size arena ASCA allows and every time i’m at an ASCA trial there someone inevitably says “that’s the biggest arena i’ve ever seen! is it standard?” “yes…”. Typically though 3 yearling sheep live in the Cattle Arena. Currently it’s set to an AKC course; the one with all the fun obstacles that look different to my myopic self.

The Cattle Arena has been the previous site of a number of disasters. It’s not especially different than the other arena we work, it’s just enough different to be er, different apparently. The sheep in the other arena we work are yearlings. The other arena is of similar size, just slightly shorter (by a few yards, i’d guess) than the cattle arena or vice versa. For instance the disaster that led to this was in Cattle Arena.

-insert babble about association and anxiety here -  :p

Today Molly and I actually started in Big Arena where we normally are. Instead of taking a few steps back in preparation to move forward… i just asked her to dive into something a little new. In a previous post i talked about The Game as learned from Dana Mackenzie. Today i stripped away the training wheels of using the corner and had Molly working wide flowing arcs from an long obstructed fenceline. At one point she was working about 20 or so ft of her stock and true to Molly form… she was still effecting her sheep. She is the high queen control freak. So we did a few sides of that, walk to the next fenceline (as each has it’s own draw or deflection…) work a little more, pull them off the fence, put them back, do it again.

After happily fussing with that for about 45 minutes she really started to get the groove of staying wider off her stock and i was feeling pretty confident and calm. I was giving her usable information in a way that didn’t raise her stress level and she reciprocated by not acting like a prima-donna. love it. Feeling all that, we took a break and then headed over to the dreaded Cattle Arena.

Even though they’re also yearlings, the sheep in the Cattle Arena seem lighter than the sheep in Big Arena. Though once they realized that i control the little demon, i left the field later smelling like sheepie. They didn’t stay too close though. I had a good time toying with Molly’s commands to accomplish the Z-chute and the little 3 sided holding pen. Previously she’s only been asked to use her commands to shift sheep from field to field. While in many ways obstacles in this stage of the game are all fetches, they still require a level of precision that i’m not used to having and she’s not entirely used to giving. I did find though that once she did as I asked, if i was ready with the next command making a behavior string instead of 1 and a 2 and a 3 that i got much better results. A little more fast paced than i’m used to, but the sheep weren’t stressed as she wasn’t fussing around trying to keep her brain busy while i figured out what i was doing. So, the command string to work the Z chute was Come By, Down, Walk up, she felt the pressure and stopped without getting the 3rd sheep in and Walk up. She brain farted and started to zip around to the head of the 1st sheep. So stopped that right quick, rinse and repeat but didn’t let her take the pause. She was doing fine, but not keeping them close enough together. So 1 sheep was just thinking about going in while 1 was almost out = OMG they’re getting away!! I started to move backwards along the Z to give Molly a more appropriate place to walk to and move the sheep through the obstacle. Remembering a random discussion with an AKC judge about this obstacle and knowing that Molly has a much better handle on what she needs to control there sheep, i let her choose whether to walk inside the obstacle or be outside.

Didn’t name her The Perpetual Motion Machine for nothing. whew. Busy busy day and no pics as the cell phone was at home, but i’m feeling really good about where we’ve been today.

From the Blog “Repurposed” http://repurposed.wordpress.com/

**

Instead of filling it up…. empty it out.

Instead of accumulating… destash

Instead of panicking… pray

Instead of talking… listen

Instead of leading… follow

Instead of “Me” choose “You”

Instead of “too busy” choose “I’ll make room for you”

When you find yourself saying “I need it”, ask “who could use it more?”

When you find yourself saying “I’m important”, remember to live as though there are no levels…

Instead of “won’t” choose “should I?”

Instead of doing it the same old way, ask “is there something better?”

Instead of …….?

What can you fill in for an “Instead of……” for your life in 2010?

*****

A safe a happy 2010 to you and yours.

Simon with the ducks was *highly* entertaining. For the first half of the lesson I moved the ducks around the duck arena and happened to have a 65lbs dog on a lead. I, by the way was a great duck dog. I got all the obstacles in the AKC arena and put my group back together a few times.

The hard part about Simon is that he knows what an arena is and there are fun things in there.

I think he was a little disappointed to find there was nothing in there except ducks, which he’s not been allowed to interact with in the past. So he spent a lot of time sniffing around the fence, attempting to mark and even ate a piece of poop. He was generally confused. After watching that for about 10 minutes Chris decided to put him in the Take Pen with the ducks to develop interest. Same rules as any other time you’re in a small pen, you are center and keep the dog to the edges and change direction occasionally.

After that, he was pretty well on. I had to summon my inner Ron as he instilled most of Si’s commands. it was really hard to balance between keeping him interested in the ducks and continually instilling in him that he needs to pace and keep his distance using his liedown.

sometimes i left a little too much room, but where he had enough line he’d regroup the ducks which was neat.

All in all we spent about an hour messing around with 2 different sets of ducks. Taking a break to make multiple sessions of course. Poor ducks.He did a great job. There were a few small squishes, but not as many as i was expecting.

Molly had a decent working day.  I’m finding that when I don’t work her every week consistently i end up with ‘forgetful dog’.

“down”

“down?”
“yes, down Molly”

“ohhhhhhhh down here?”

“no, down back there where i said ‘down’.  I’m not out here talking to myself.”

and yet, often times when I first start to work I do talk too much on the field.  i think the process is technically called Extinction, but i just call it nerves and leave it at that.  i’m working hard to be more mindful of what I say.  Her recall whistle has gotten messy and ‘^*#&^ Molly Get’ has replaced ‘out’.  More often than not i think she’s just watching my hands.  I tend to point a lot. Apparently now i need to work my dog with duct tape over my mouth and my hands tied behind my back.  No Cameras or Cell Phones Allowed.

Have a very Merry Christmas.

There was going to be a v cute holiday picture here, but Molly and Simon got the antlers out of the closet while i was at work and played tug with them. /sigh