The Perpetual Motion Machine

Posted By Amyinseattle on September 15, 2011

Was a funny thing… i was talking to a person who was new to stock trials, but had taken lessons and she said (no joke) “I could never handle stock back there!  I don’t have enough experience…”.

Like that has ever stopped anyone.   But i felt bad because i laughed out loud and maybe a bit too loud.  In my defense i was covered in dirt and just pleased that nothing was bleeding except my finger.  Everything was funny.

It dawned on me that i’ve been doing this blog for a long time and there might be a misconception that i know what i’m doing.  Ok, that’s not fair. There might be a misconception that i was raised around animals and this is all a very natural progression.  If the curve of my life lead me to work cows with dogs, then the next logical step will be my becoming a physicist.  It is that far off the natural course.

When i was an infant we had an Irish Setter. I had a cat when i was in elementary school – who hated everyone. I also walked my neighbors setter for a few months.  I grew up in an apartment complex and later in a condo, both in-town.  I did go to horse camp every year during Jr. High into high school. Which i know sounds very dressage, but we learned good trail skills, bareback riding and those ‘user skills’ that a person around a horse should know: how to smell bad hay, clean tack, curry… those things.  That is the end of my animal experience up until high school when i worked in a vet hospital.

When i got Simon he started fetching horses.  To learn to harness his power I started working him on sheep at Diane’s.  i met Ron.  That following April, a group of us went to go check out the ASCA April trial and i was volun-told to cattle. No joke the conversation went like this:

Bob (course director) : we need someone in cows

Ron: We can teach Amy can do that.

Bob: Ok

Amy: Wait, what cows?  *in* cows?

I learned about moving cattle from Ron and Bob in the mud.  And the rain.  I fell in the previously mentioned mud, was soaked to the bone, wore inappropriate foot wear which lead to an unplanned foot treatment and loved every second.  They entertained my questions – including the always popular “none of the cows have horns… are they all female?”.

Yes, i was that wet behind the ears.

After awhile i started working in the pens with other people and now i usually work alone in cows at April for part of the day.   It’s a meditation i enjoy.  It requires all my focus and the other things just melt away.  Sometimes i work other trials. I enjoy the people and the challenge of the different setups.  I like watching teams I know be successful and see the handling style of people new to me.  It is the best view in the house.

The point of all this is that i’m not a ‘tough’ or especially confidant personality – i’m rather squishy.  I’m not big.  I had no real experience.  You don’t get experience unless you get in and do.  Work with someone who has some experience and they’ll help you find a job that works for you.

 

If i can do it – anyone can.

Category: AmyThings | No Comments »
Tags: ASCA, Events, Handler Stress

Posted By Amyinseattle on September 6, 2011

Let’s get the hard part over with.  I drove to San Diego on whim once.  So driving to Spokane and back to Seattle randomly it just one of those things.  It happens.

I went out with the plan of teaching myself to sit and watch.  I realized not long ago that i’ve never gone to an ASCA trial and just watched.  Take it all in, and see the trial the way a competitor does.  It might help me present a better trial?

In a moment of Deja Vu, i went back to the handlers to say “hi” and the next thing i knew i was helping to sort sheep and asking if adding Molly to the mix would be too many dogs? This happens fairly often… i just can’t seem to sit and watch like a normal person.  Anyway.

The setup at Black Sheep is not one that i’ve ever seen anywhere else.  Stock are presorted into groups and then the alley way is partitioned as there are not enough holding pens for the number of stock.  As one group goes out, everyone is moved up one space.  The last two spaces before the take pen are metal sided boxes with sliders that separate.  They always remind me of something you’d use in calf roping or similar – though i’ve never seen the stock handling side of calf roping.  Each star in the diagram indicates where a dog/handler team were located along the way.  Up front was Ron and Tigr/Kiki, then me and Molly and finally Randy and Ben.

With everything being solid sided in those last two spaces before the Take Pen you have two options to move your stock: you can use your stockstick to encourage them or use a dog to create pressure.  While using your dog *sounds* easy enough the space is only about 4″ high.   After a lot of cajoling, including me on my hands and knees trying to get Molly to look underneath – which there are no pictures of.  Thank doG.  She did however, watch Tigr the Open Border Collie stick her little red nose under there and wanted to know why.  Little black nose went down, stock moved, dog was praised and the habit begins establishment.

The goal was always to have her do what she needed to do to move the stock. Not necessarily to get into the chute, but if that’s what she thinks she needs to do i’ll give her latitude.  After a little work, she started sliding under the divider and would stand into the middle and push them at. It was interesting watching her learn how to manage her power standing still.  Molly’s power is typically by movement, but it’s hard to move in a bitty box.  At first she went from zero to head – which isn’t the best solution.  Don’t be confused by us all being happy that the stock is stressed.  Molly has traditionally not been the ‘tough dog’.  You can bring that behavior down and shape it – but it’s hard to build in.  In time though she started to use move eye, more of the cow moving skills that we worked on at Summer Spectacular.  Holding her ground until the stock turns and then releasing pressure.  Being fair to everyone.

The last task after moving the groups in the chute up, was to take the newer group from the last holding pen and putting them into the chute.  Even though Molly has been doing take pen work, i was concerned about her moving light trial sheep and something not going well.  i do like to be careful with other people’s sets. What you may not see in the end of this video because of the additional fencing is that she is backing the sheep up into it’s group.  This was not unusual and allowed us to practice that slow methodical walk up and stay to hold.  As a side note, i did try to down her a few times, but realized about the third time that she didn’t take the command that if she did lie down and release any pressure those sheep would have run over her.  She stood quietly and never dove in.

We got a lot of nice compliments, which i loved.  A competitor came back to watch just in time for me to accidentally let a sheep (another brown sheep come to think of it!) down the alley instead of going into the chute.  Molly was hot on her tail, turned her before the end of the alley and stopped completely. Then walked her up slow and careful back to pen and finally her chute.  Thankfully the competitor missed the part where i was on my hands and knees trying to get Molly to nose under the chute… only realize that she was disinterested because the sheep had already left.  I’d like to imagine Molly’s thought bubble read “are you ok?” and not “are you blind?”.

Dog is wise…

Category: Events, Molly | 3 Comments »
Tags: ASCA, Australian Shepherd, Border Collie, Events, Pen Work, rateing, Sheep

Posted By Amyinseattle on September 4, 2011

I’m working on a larger post about our adventure at BSASC, but after watching the videos a few times it’s obvious to me that a diagram is required to give context.

Since i’m trying out the fancy blog app on the new smart phone… I can really draw now.  Later today maybe, tomorrow for sure.

I did want to post what a great tome we had.  John and randy and hope and Ron and everyone were so understanding and gracious letting us help.  Even though I drove back from Spokane that night – I was totally jazzed at the great work Molly did.

Was pretty awesome.  TY Black Sheep!

Category: Molly | 2 Comments »
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Posted By Amyinseattle on July 3, 2011

“The definition of insanity is to the same thing over and over, expecting different results” Unknown(really, look at the link!).

Molly and I have had a strange relationship with cows. At first, she was an epic fail. Flat flat flat – when she actually tried to interact. Which made me start to wonder if she’d every actually turn on to cows. Then on a whim i used her a little in larger pen spaces with calves at April and she started to maybe sparkle a little. She wasn’t “on” the way that you always hear about dogs turning on to cows:

She just ran right at them. It was amazing. I was so scared

Or something like that.

At April, Molly was a little timid and defensive, but not freaked out. Just not so interested that I thought she’d ever get real presence.

Mea Culpa, Molly Moo. We tried things a different way and got different results. Everyone act surprised so i can feel better please.

First, the disclaimer – If I had been in the cattle pens alone i would have never done this as i’ve not started a dog on cows by myself. I had an experienced and well respected trainer/handler/friend in the cow pens and i didn’t intend to use her in the trial pens. More importantly, those were ‘his’ pens and would have not hesitated to kick me out if there was anything inappropriate going on that might skew the runs or similar.

We found in the cattle pens when we were running low on ‘fresh’ cows we needed a little dog pressure just outside the pen to get that last set to walk in without a lot of work (this is why we use dogs on stock remember, it is supposed to make less work). Since our dog choices were Abject Power and Molly, i told my handler-mate that the cows might not move off her but we’d give it a shot. All they needed though was a little pressure… and pressure off. Cake, right? Right.

With a little victory, and some breakfast I grabber her leash and started bringing her in with me to do my job. First not making it a big deal that she was there. Molly has a good Follow, which also means not to interact with the stock. We got cows out of the repen, moved them into the group of ‘used’ cows and then eventually when we needed a little dog pressure to move the last fresh set into the pen, we used her again inside the pen this time.

And we both had more confidence.

Then we upgraded to really using her (still on leash) and showing her what i wanted from her. The take pen work we’d been doing really shined. She took her flank and got to the back of the pen nicely. Still a little timid, but as the ‘used’ section grew, the cows started to try to stare her down. At this point i was out of my element. My first thought was to just let her go to head and be done with it. My handler-mate explained how to teach her to hold the gaze, win the stare down and release the pressure – essentially to be fair to the cow. Molly got good at this before my timing got better, but eventually she was staring down pretty consistently.

She did have one good tussle and rolled under a cow – no contact, but she was under and inbetween legs. You’d think that with that, little miss would have given up. However after that i started to drop her lead when moving the cows from the repen to the ‘used’ section and she had a real confidence about her. I started dropping the lead more, and she was really making herself quite useful.

She did a great job today and got porkribs for her hard work.   We’ll try again tomorrow and see how things move along!

Category: Events, Molly | 1 Comment »
Tags: Australian Shepherd, Cattle, Events, Pen Work