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…

Since it’s been a while since i really worked Nutty, i made a point to video as much as i could.  Also, i was really looking forward to working her.  I know it might sound odd, but i missed working her.  It’s a bit Zen-ish for me.  Anyway, we used some heavyish sheep and started putting together the pieces of a take pen.

Starting out

So in this first video, we can see that she’s a bit unsure about getting in the pen. It’s a confidence thing that will pass. Before anyone asks, no i’m not dragging her or choking her by her collar. I’m not even gripping it. Just slid a finger underneath it to help guide her. Now, what i *should* have been doing was having her stop on the 3rd pole (back left) instead of between the two poles. But whatever. For the first while i used her to put them out of the pen and then used her to put them away. The last few seconds are interesting as at first she can’t deal with the pressure, then after releasing the pressure comes back in towards the sheep and finds success in moving them. Which is a nice little win.

Here, i’m using my body to push her out on the outrun and bring the sheep back. More importantly, we’re not doing ring around the handler in the take pen as i’m backing up to the right place to get the idea of her sheep going into the pen correctly. And she’s not coming into the pen to do it.

We’re starting to put things together here. The sheep come out rather smoothly, and we start the process of moving along the fence.
And finally, sheep come out, move around and put them away.

you’ll notice there is a lot of me lieing her down and Liieee and all that. the last video where we had a discussion about not crowding the sheep didn’t record properly. But after that we were fine and repeated this a few different times changing direction and such.

Superfun!

Outtakes:

When Nutty just had to poop…

But they’re supposed to be in there! (the joys of a smart dog)

Really need to be smarter than the stock to do this….

I took some time this weekend to shake the dust off myself and The Machine.  It’s funny, we always talk about how to ease back into to work after a long break and such.  Where i know the information in my mind, i went to send her and immediately moved forward from where we’d left off.  This doesn’t happen every time, but more often than not and it’s part of what makes her fun.

This weekend was Day One of take pen training.  I had thought that doing the barbel work would have been super helpful, but I was finding that the information wasn’t transferring as i’d hoped.  My initial try was just standing at the pengate and walking her in on command.  Which wasn’t working for a variety of reasons.  The first being that she’s not done a take pen before so she’d run in the Away direction along the fenceline not in the pen…  The second being that the heavy Barba-deer we were working haven’t been worked in a good long while and they weren’t interested in starting today.  Molly has never dealt with sheep that do the Fight portion of fight or flight, so this was all new to her.

After a little try and failure, i set her up at the mouth of the pen and walked in with her by the collar. Not rough, but with two fingers helping move along the pen’s fence line toward the sheep at something that resembles the speed desired.  Then a sit at the hinge of the pen, which can later morph into a pause – like running contacts in agility. This all moved along nicely for a while. She’d push them out and then stop, i’d change positions from her left side to her right and then send her out on a Come Bye to fetch the sheep and bring them back to the pen and stop her before she entered the pen.  Her stop at the mouth of the pen after fetching became a bit dramatic after a while as a few times she stopped so fast she slid on her bum and then selfcorrected and scootched backwards so not *in* the pen.

On one little trip around the take pen, i went slower and with that tipped our hand in a way to the sheep.  Understand that alot of Molly’s power is in her speed and motion.  She’s still figuring out how to use her eye and her teeth.  We’ve skipped the idea of her using her voice. It just isn’t who she is.  When the sheep started to realize that she wasn’t as powerful when she slowed down and there wasn’t anything to fill that void they began to slow down.  By the next go around, the black sheep turned and went head down and hoof digging in the same way you’d see a bull in a rodeo – challenging the dog.   There are two ways to deal with this.  The first is to be the handler, reach out thunk it on the nose and keep on moving.  The other is to be the ‘assistant’ and encourage the dog to thunk it on the nose and keep moving.  I chose the second as Molly isn’t young or grippy, nor does she seem to desire take a sheep down by the nose. It’s good for her confidence.  The next quick thought was how to name this or to name this.  We use Take Hold in tug and i didn’t want to risk her exhibiting her tug behavior on a sheep.  So out of my mouth came “psppsppsppp get her, nutty” and she knew exactly what i wanted.  With a finger still on the collar she put her power in the back legs and her nose almost to the ground underneath the sheeps nose and snapped twice.  True to a heavy sheep, the black sheep just turned gave a flank and moved slowly out of the pen.  “that’ll do… walk up” and Molly was back with me and moving them out of the pen.  The last walk in i didn’t hold on to her at all.  Just had to step into her a little to remind her to stop before leaving the pen.

Overall she did great work.  I did take video, but then realized that it was centered on the wrong part of the pen.   However we’ll get another video soon. There is still alot of work to do.

It seems like the successes i enjoy the most are the ones that I don’t do on purpose. The thought process is like this: oh, well this location is sorta different… what can i try here? Oh, there she goes. Lets see what she does.

No joke. Now don’t think that she just takes off and causes messes. She downs and recalls nicely about 90% of the time, even at a dead run in large spaces and has good manners in small spaces. When I say ‘oh there she goes’, she’s taken about 4 steps and I’m noticing something new in her body language. Usually in relation to the sheep, but sometimes in relation to me. I like to capture those little moments of instinct and mess around with them.

We spent some time in our new favorite big field with Lisa and my other favorite red dog, Brynn. Brynn did beautiful drives… and we were struggling with inside flanks today and did some great small flank & circle work. Molly got to multitask, drinking in the stocktrough and holding the sheep at the same time – one of her favorite things. In finding not so much success with other skills, I watched her do this little multitasking stunt and decided to try asking her to walk up from this position. She was already paying attention to them without me anywhere in the sight-line. Also in standing next to Lisa and Brynn, the sheep would be less likely to fetch to me. Like holding a side… sortof. I only asked for 4 or 5 steps before i called her off, but she was beautiful. Nice well mannered and thoughtful steps with a little eye.

Our other fabulous little surprise was on the way out of our new favorite field. Since Fido’s was doing their Ranch Trial Training there were sheep in new places, including the alleyway to the field. I noticed that with both Brynn and Molly walking in the alleyway, the sheep were driving nicely. Not freaked out, or really even showing signs of stress at all. I asked Lisa to close the gate behind her and started the process of having Molly fetch the sheep to me and then swinging around and pushing them off me. First just walking with her as we pushed the sheep and she steered (i’ll have to take a video, it’s pretty funny). Then having her walk in front of me, taking her walk up and then lying her down when she was about to flank around and calling her back to me.

At this point, she seemed to really get it. Lying her down and calling her back is a new thing, but she was totally in tune with what was going on. I remembered how Elsie had told me that my homework was to start the walk up as she got in front of me in her inside flank. So she’s be walking perpendicular away from me. However, in a 8′x20′ alley, there really wasn’t enough room to guarantee that she’d take the flank. Instead of risking a bad experience i decided to improvise. While she’d not be learning to take them away from in front me, it seems that something that can be installed as we go.

At one point in all of this i noticed that once she got about 10′ away she kept trying to fetch on the Away side. She’d get just far enough to turn the noses before i caught her and told her to down and the recalled her. After the third time, i’m not sure what happened but instead of saying That’ll Do, Come just came out of my mouth and she pivoted and came around. Heads turned and i wasn’t about to call her back… so Walk up. And Up and off they went.

So AWESOME. I repeated, but was too chicken to try to Away side flank. It’s still soft and i need to keep working on it. Next weekend.

I tested this new game on different sheep in a similar space, and repeated the exercise. At first she was a little unsure as we had inadvertently gone from superbroke puppysheep to the light trial training sheep. Despite that it didn’t take her very long to get her head around the larger flightzone. Whhheeee!!!

Fido’s can be a busy place, which i normally find totally fascinating. However today was a busy day but not so great for people watching.

Today, was all about blowing up patterns. I tend to get into habits; what pen i work in, what sheep i use, what exercises i do… and my dog is quick to learn patterns. I started my day with my normal pattern – one nice big outrun to fetch up my sheep and then start inside flank work in the small pen. I tend to use take pen, walk about and then repen to break up any stress.

blah blah Blah.

Thankfully, today Fido’s was busy and Karen needed my normal field for a lesson. On to greener pastures.  After hunting about and pondering where to go next, Chris suggested moving some of the sheep in the Cattle Pasture to one of the pens. Which was a great idea, but once i got out to the pasture i discovered a much more interesting setting: a field not too big and not too small with 15 or so two year old wethers who didn’t seem to get worked very often. Ohhhh!  Fresh Meat.

Often when one works at a training facility, large groups can be hard to come by.  Usually, there are very functional, utilitarian type reasons for that.  I have been spoiled in that we’ve had to opportunity to work on private property where having fresh sheep for other people or having sheep that are too broke for trial or similar isn’t really an issue.  With that experience, i *love* working larger groups than your average trial arena  and take advantage of the opportunity every time i can.

Large groups provide a different kind of challenge.  Think of sheep like grains of sand; each on it’s own is it’s own entity with it’s own albeit small, mass.  Singularly, sand is annoying.  As stated correctly by Aniken Skywalker: ” It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.”  However physics teaches us that the more sand we pack together, with it’s singularly iddybitty mass… the more gravity that packed group exudes.   A lone sheep has very little presence and a lot of flightzone, but a large group of sheep… those little presences packed together create a force that can intimidate a dog without even challenging it and often the flightzone contracts.

Taking this as on opportunity we worked on flightzones, directions, covering and rating. Which i didn’t really realize i needed to put so much effort into until i sent Molly on her outrun and realized that the sheep were coming to me at a speed less than a dead run and more than a walk – and it didn’t really look like they cared i was standing there.  I could see the newspaper headline: Woman Trampled by Flock of Sheep Under the Direction of Dog.  Because as the sheep passed by me,  Molly was already truckin around to the other side to block them from taking off through the (closed) gate.

The flank work – tradition circle flank work as seen in Hitting for the Cycle.  I’m finding that Molly is very clear what direction Come Bye is, but Away she’s not so sure on.  The large group is helpful as they will hang out in the group and be harder to move when I move or when she moves.  So when i step away from the group to redirect her, my sheep don’t freak out.  They move, but they don’t send stress signals and try to take off somewhere.  I also started moving my flanks closer to the fence.  Molly likes to speed up at the top, which usually leads to her over flanking because she’s moving so fast she can’t feel the pressure of the sheep changing.  Girls got wicked tunnel vision.  She also speeds up along the fence on occasion.  While speed is how she puts out power, i want to start putting her in situations where she’s going to have to problem solve some new ways to exude power.  I want her to have lots of tools, and i want to learn how best set her (and future dogs) up to learn different instinctive tools.  As she approached the top, or the fence i gave her a conversational Lie which seemed to hitch her up just long enough to realize that she was walking inbetween the sheep and the fence and neither the fence nor the sheep tried to eat her.

Miracle, right?

I also tried some of my superfancy inside flanks on the Bye side; so i stand against the fence, the sheep mob attempts to press me like paper and Molly comes clockwise around the sheep toward me, then inbetween me and the sheep and finally looping all the way around to cover.  The first time, not so much in the covering.  But by the third time she not only had it down, but was heading out wide along the fence so she’d not have to run allll the way around to stop them.  Next weekend will be stopping her and walking her into the group.  That should be interesting…

Fall has come to the valley… and it really is a beautiful thing. In any given day there are showers, rain and sunshine. The leaves from the maples and poplars are changing color, giving the hillsides a patchwork look in reds and greens. Thankfully, the walnut trees won’t loose their leaves for another month or two. Which gives me some cover when pups have to go out. To add to the joy, my dairyman neighbor across the river has decided to move to start moving to hay feeding in the winter instead of corn. As this is harvest season, he would normally be harvesting corn directly across the river from the house and I would be searching frantically on line for the side effects of doubling or tripling the recommended dose of OTC Claratin. However, in only having corn in the south fields and making hayrolls in the east fields closest to the house… i’m not trapped in my house. I’m actually enjoying the warmish evening on the deck with the smell of fresh cut grass, watching the headlights of the machinery do their harvest dance. With all this good weather, i’m way ahead on flood preparations and am still getting in my sheep time without the need of hip waiters.

I was really pleased with our lesson time. It seems that often when it comes to lesson time we don’t always put forward the best example of what is going on during our practice time. This time was different. Molly showed off the inside flank work she’d been doing; including her little OCD habit of doing her inside flank work by herself. Elsie didn’t seem to mind it, and since she’ll still stop and change direction on command… there are worse habits she could have. I didn’t name her The Perpetual Motion Machine as an act of irony.

Our homework for inside flanks is to solid up the Away side. That will come with time and considering she was not interested in walking into the sheep from that direction at all during the last lesson, it’s ok that she’s taking a little while. On the Bye side, our next step is to stop her in front of me and then have her walk up and push the stock away from me. 3 steps is the goal, but i think the first trick will be getting her to turn and walk into the sheep since she’s been moving them sideways off me. I’ll have to play around using a few different sets of sheep and locations. The alleyway seemed to be working well for us.

We also talked alot about outruns.  What i’ve found seems to be happening with Molly is that in working to set her up for a correct outrun, i’ve inadvertently taught her to start her outrun by walking directly into her stock.  Whoops.  To at least stopping the perpetuation of a bad habit, i quit ‘setting her up’ for outruns by just having her walk in and around the stock with me and then just letting her naturally cover.  Where her outrun on command is tight and fast and generally not awesome. the outrun she’s doing naturally is wide, more square and thoughtful until she gets close to the top.  When she makes the turn into the top, she speeds up and can’t find balance (because she’s doing mock 9) .  The suggested solution was to use a steady, which we’ve actually taught as an Easy or Lie.   I can already see the difference.  I also had to make a slight change to how i was pushing her out.  Previously we were walking together and i start her out on the Away side outrun, push her out by bisecting her angle and then start to move back to where I was to receive the sheep.  The new version is very similar, but instead of returning to my previous line to receive the sheep, i’m supposed to go back to her original place.  The trick is going to be remembering where she started from!

Apparently, this is called The Push.  There is also a Pull. While it was described to me, i think we’ll address that after i’ve tried it a few times.  Its’ hard for me to make a picture here without a picture in my mind to call on!  But we’re gathering up all these exercises, putting them together and will probably be toying with versions of them all winter long.

We’re off to the Vashon Island Sheepdog trial on Sunday.  Good luck everyone who’s running!!

More inside flanks. When Elsie told me this would take a while to get down, i thought she was trying to make me feel better.  Yeesh.  On the upside, i’ve worked Molly on the Bye side in a few different places and she seems to be getting more solid.  Her Away side still needs work, but she consistently improving.  In this last session, i used less of my voice on the Away side.  She’s always learned best by physical cues, so i wanted to start getting the motion down first instead of having my words confuse her.

We did that a few times and broke it up the session by doing some take pens.  She’s a little hesitant to walk into the pen by herself, but i’d almost rather her to be a little hesitant and turn her up, than have her bolt in there and constantly be trying to tone her down.   At least right now and assuming that she’ll gain confidence with experience.  Honestly, my biggest fear wasn’t her going on, it was the coming out.  I really didn’t want the part where the sheep come out to be pandemonium.   Sheep doing 90miles an hour trying to get anywhere but where they were.  I understand that will happen with some sheep regardless, but I wanted her to get an idea of what i was looking for the first time. She’s a first time learner after all.  Teach her a bad habit and she’ll do it forever. 

After doing the back and forth – inside flanks then take pens and repens – i think i got a little over confidant.  I’m not sure how the picture in my mind looked.  Maybe that was the problem, i’m not sure i had one.  I wanted to see if she’d do the work in a larger space.  Which she will, eventually.  What i really didn’t plan on is the part where the sheep leave. Whoops… and to add insult to injury where she’s really fast, she’s doing exact what i’m telling her to do repeating ComeByeHere over and over sounds a lot like ‘faster faster faster’.  See what i should have done was stood either close to corner so they’d head up the corner and she’d stop right in front of me, or stood further from the corner and had her push them into the corner and stop. This seemed like such a good idea at the time. heehee oh well.

To continue the comedy, inbetween my inside flank and take pen/repens a very nice woman, Lauren i think, came up and asked about that very cute little dog i was working.   She’s puppy hunting.  She made some really nice compliments about how Molly worked and how i was using my voice. EEE!!!  Since i was still standing in the sorting pen with Molly and sheep, I found I had to stop our conversation occasionally to turn Molly the other direction. You see she’d broken her stay and was doing her inside flank drills without noticing that i wasn’t actually involved.  So, instead of stopping her i just turned her the other way and she started doing the away side flanks.  Remember, the ones we’re struggling with?    Apparently the correct command isn’t ‘away to me here’, it’s ‘hey, Obsessive Compulsive.  Other way.’ with a little hand gesture.  Who would have thought?

I got some video of us working the Come Bye inside flank.  To cover the obvious; yes i can see now that the camera needs to be moved to the left.  oops!!

Here is the first video.  Remember this is the 3rd time she has done a Bye side inside flank and the second time she’s done them successfully.  So there is a lot of hand-holding here.  I want to build her confidence.  So there is a lot of leaning over and you can’t hear it, but there is lots of Yes! and such.  She seemed really unsure still.  i want her to go under the stick.  i want her to come around in front of me, but as we played more i was afraid that she would start associating the inside flank with coming to me instead of just coming in front of me.  I realize the difference is small, but Molly gets into these habits. She remembers and associates things. After a while i was not asking her to Come Bye Here not so close to me, but also behind me or a bit in front – depending on where the sheep were.

This is the next time we went out on the same day.  In this video she’s much smoother.  She doesn’t care if the stick is out or not.  She doesn’t need me to draw her in, just use the command that she’s already associating.

We also worked in a different and slightly larger sized pen. I think next weekend i’ll work the Bye side in the corner of a field. Different places so she doesn’t just associate this little chore with one particular location.

There isn’t any video for the Away side, but i’ll start that this weekend.  She did really well on the bone shape excercises.  Just moving them gently from one pen to another.  She had a hard time at first understanding to push them past me and into the other pen. So when she was about to pass she sheep to bring them back while we were all still in the alley, i told her There and then Walk Up again.    These yearling weathers were happy to keep walking to the pen… so that helped too.