The Perpetual Motion Machine

Despite being out of the training gig for a while, this past weekend opened up a lot of interesting opportunities.  While most of Seattle shrinks at the sight of the alien orb; i love the heat.  My pasty white Irish doesn’t, but that has never stopped me before.  With the heat in the Puget Sound, Fido’s was sparse.  I’ve really missed the zen moments in handling.  At my level of handling, you really can’t just phone it in when you’re having a bad day.  So everything that has been bothering me the last few weeks had to stay in the car, leaving all my focus on the work at hand.  Not only a relief, but good practice for me in general.  I carry things too long.

My hope was that Molly’s break would be just long enough that she’s feeling more together and short enough that she’s not forgotten things. There’s something to be said for latent learning, but if you extend the interval too long you can end up with a forgetful pup.  Since we have trial coming up, i wanted to focus on trial-ish sorts of things; rating and walking along the fencline and not going to head. The trial sheep will be a touch lighter than we’re used to, so the rating and not crowding was a big deal.  I had also hoped to do some pen work.  I’ve not spent a lot of time teaching her a take pen, and truth be told i’ve not looked at the trial premium to see if i need it.  However, she needs the work even if it’s not going to be at this trial.

Friday’s work was all about arena work and rateing; slowing it down, fine tuning stops and arcs.  The we were supposed to do last month and life got in the way.  We did simple fenceline walk-abouts first.  My sheep weren’t especially fetchy.  They felt her coming half way across the arena and didn’t find me appealing enough to stay close to.  Which lead me from doing pure started course fencline walking to transitioning into very short drives.  Again, not letting her go to head, but letting her arc out as needed to catch the eye and stop them from taking off.  When we were just doing fetchy walk about and she started to snuggleup a little too much i shook my stick at her over the sheep backs. No command, no grr needed thankfully as i didn’t want to introduce another command. She saw that stick come out and backed off nicely. After doing that 3 or 4 times i didn’t have to remind her much for the rest of the day.

I did start to focus on multiple points of precision.  Places where she has the skills in a different context, but is having a hard time moving those skills to other places. For instance when i ask for an Away arc, i expect her to pivot so she’s heading directly to the Away side, not taking a few steps forward and then turning.  However, when she does Away to Me for her outrun, i was letting her take steps in (lots of them) and then pitching out.  No more.  Especially since her outruns aren’t very far. Her downs are spot on as long as she’s not on an outrun.  She gets into outrun mode and tunes everything out, including me.  Not so much.  I’d also been getting lazy about letting her go drink when ever she wanted to.  I can’t let that become a habit.  She has a drink command and i need to use it more constantly and regularly so she’s not taking off away from her stock on her own. Driving has started to morph from the psudeo-driving where she’s just pushed them past me and wore from behind me, to her almost walking past me and still controlling the heads.   We’ve been working at home on what specific speed “walk” is, so now that it’s more clear it’s easier for her to ‘walk up’ and not push them into a trot. Nothing that is totally huge, but enough little things that can kill that calm relaxed motion i’m looking for.  Overflanking or not taking a down at the right time can make the stock miss an obstacle or repen and then you’re forced to set it up again. A waste of energy and in a larger picture, constant pressure could cause a loss of weight in the livestock.

i also put Simon in to the Puppy Pen with some fetchy sheep.  Even though Si is retired, I do like to put him in on occasion to see where I am as a handler.  He’s a tough dog, but he wants to do the right thing. Working him is all about me managing both my anxiety and my mouth.  He did blow it up one time, but no damage done to the sheep.  I ended up with bark down my pants, but what’s a few woodchips between roommates? grr.  At first, I couldn’t get him pushed out  on his flanks.  He wasn’t feeling the pressure from the stick so the theory of pointing it at his shoulder wasn’t working.  Sticking in into his shoulder was a worthless gesture.  I got a dirty look and a faster dog.  When he came to balance and then was about to dive in, i said “NO!” and was going to waive the stick in front of his nose.  Instead i sort of knocked him on the top of his muzzle… oops. He didn’t act hurt, just backed off and didn’t try to dive in again. I tried hard to be specific where he was right as well.  Though Si is charged to a clicker, I used the verbal cue Yes! more often than anything else.  i’m really inexperienced in shaping, but i could see where he was looking for a little reinforcement and it seemed to really help his confidence as well.

The rest of the work was uneventful until I used him to push the sheep off the gate so i could get it open and put them away.  The sheep were disinterested in leaving me or the gate, so he pushed and he flagged and bless his heart he even woofed and they were there to stay.  The sheep finally moved when Si went in for the low heel on the lead sheep.  I don’t even think he had to connect.  He just went down, turned his head to go in for the heel, looked at me for a second and opened his mouth enough to breath on that hock and they were happy to leave the gate, thank you very much.  Even happier when he went out and fetched them up to put them away.