Bored to nap…
Today was another day of Hitting for the Cycle. To review: Hitting for the Cycle is how we’re teaching Molly the aspiring sheepdog to make small flank movements instead of big (fast) sweeping gestures all the time to move sheep. So if I and the sheep are in the middle of the circle and sooner or later, Molly should be stopping on each of the points.
Someday.
Today was not a note of perfection, but we made a lot of progress. I decided to try to break this down into smaller, less frustrating pieces in hopes that i don’t end up standing with the sheep in the middle of a wildly circling Molly. That is was abject failure would look like. 
Last week, we started in the corner and moved out to the center of the fenceline. Which was very successful, if I do say so myself. This week was staring on the center of the fenceline and perfecting both sides and a center stop.
We were rockstars on the fenceline. I didn’t realize that as I was stepping away from the sheep to push Molly out further, that the very polite sheep were staying right behind me. Or maybe i registered that the sheep were with me, but not that we were away from the fence? Either way, before i realized what was going on we were 35 paces away from the nearest fenceline and rockin’ right along with our exercise. We really were doing the diagram for the most part. Occasionally my timing was off and she’d going from i end to the other (so say from North to South or 1st Base directly to 3rd), but no big deal. The only ugh would have been a full circle. No circles. No cheap shots.
i’m not really sure how to describe what happened. I thought i had broken Chris’ sheep.
For this session, we changed up the rhythm of the work. I think I was rushing a bit when i was working her last weekend in the corner. This time around when she got to the right place I didn’t just stop her, down and then restart. We stopped. i drank some tea, then set my cup down and sent her. Then downed her and watched some of the Karen Child clinic on the field across the way – the view of the big field is great from the arena next to the Barnyard. Then sent her again, and downed her. Watched more of the clinic… and paced off how far the sheep were from the nearest fence. At one point a sheep lied down. Which to be honest, freaked me out a little. I thought that somehow having a sheep lay down while the dog is around might be a sign that I’d soured them! So then I started using it as my marker to see if Molly was disturbing the rest of the sheep when i sent her. And then another one went down… and i downed Molly and walked around the group looking for signs they were physically ill. Since they all looked ok, I just kept to the schedule. Poor sheep. Bored to um, tears?
We finished off by moving our group in a little babydrive all the way across the field with only one instance of Molly trying to get around to the heads. Why is it a babydrive? Because the sheep walk in front of me, and she wears behind me. Her wear is really starting to come together. I’d like to take a moment to congratulate myself for not totally screwing that up and letting her just do, despite my habit of trying to control her every move. Click/brownie to the handler. She’s catching the sheeps’ eye nicely and adjusting her wear for different sized groups, finally. She’s done this on large groups, on a set of three last week and a set of four or five this week. I also noticed that she is in fact directing the lead sheep. I was watching the sheep instead of fretting about Molly, and when the group was starting to bear right I let them go whereever while i kept moving forward. Molly turned he lead sheep back to my line. Eee!
In other news: the bombing off is getting better. I sent her off to drink twice in the sessions, but i’m finding that sending her off to drink when things are calm seems to cut down on her bombing off on her own randomly. We tried shorter session times, which allowed her to take a break. However, when i bumped up the session times the stress behaviors were back. The new stratedy is to cut down her session time by just sending her off to drink for about 30 seconds and bring her right back. Last week we had to do 4 of these. This week, only 2. So far I think i’m on the right track for her.
gosh that’s a lot.
[...] as promised there is video. The below video is the general explainer to go with the posts Yogurt, Bored to Nap and Hitting for the Cycle. We are now at the point where we are almost consistently off the [...]