Tazimodo

Adventures in Cross Driving

2010-07-24T12:13:00.006-06:00

I am in the midst of an awful copyediting project, and my deadline is looming, with several other tasks being put on hold until I finish it—so what better time to update the blog I've been ignoring for the better part of a year? Eh, so it's not exactly a daily journal. I get to it when I can or when the mood hits...

I've been working Tazzy a bit lately, and after a rough patch this spring things have been going pretty well. He is finally truly on whistles. He is learning to trust me more, and I am trying to help him more with my handling. The past couple of days have gone especially well—we're making good progress with blind outruns and the shape of his outrun, something I will always have to stay on top of due to his poor start, is improving at greater distances.

Today was a bit rougher, though. (I always seem to write about the struggles we have, rather than brag on the successes. S'okay—this blog is one way for me to work out ways to overcome our challenges.) We worked mainly on driving and cross driving this morning. There is one area of the field at which we work where the dogs feel the pressure in a pretty intense way. If the draw is at about 10:30 on the imaginary clock, the biggest challenge for Taz is driving toward 9:00, so maybe a 30 degree angle from the draw. The sheep are rather heavy and always drift in the direction of the draw. And if a dog is not in just the right spot, they can wrap around the dog to try to beat it. On this line, Taz and I have a hard time finding that sweet spot to keep them moving toward 9:00 without turning them back to me. "Let him go far enough so that the sheep see him, but not so far that he catches their eye and turns them" is the advice I've been given. Oh, and don't lie him down so much (though when he gets very focused on what he is doing, I still need to lie him down before giving him a major change-of-direction flank).

We have not had a ton of success trying to follow this advice here—I tend to underflank Taz, stopping too soon, so the sheep continue to drift toward the draw. Then I have to reflank him and try again to stop him in an effective place. Finding the sweet spot to prevent movement toward the draw but not turned back toward me is tough. When I think I have found it, I stop him or give him a there and tell him to walk up. Sometimes this works and we're good for a little while. Other times, Taz will telegraph that I should be reflanking him, but I am often too slow to see it and think he is being hesitant or disobedient. I need to trust him more. By the time I realize my mistake and flank him, he is out of position and rushes to catch up, overcommitting to the flank in the process and turning them back toward me.

The sheep were extra heavy this morning, as it was cool out for a change (a big change!) and there was lots of grass to nibble on. Taz's reaction to the extra heaviness of the sheep this morning was to blow off many of my lie down commands, which served to exacerbate the problems we had cross driving this line. Alas, no matter how many times my evident frustration with Taz results in just freaking him out and making things worse, it is hard for me to stay matter-of-fact when he is continually blowing my commands off, no matter the reason. I am slowly getting a handle on this, but my frustration at my own failure to see the problems clearly enough and in enough time to effectively help him hampers my progress. It's one reason I find it so difficult to not let my dog practice poor work. I mean, what is so hard about stopping what we're doing and addressing a blown command right then? Nothing—it should be a no-brainer! Yet I do let him get away with blowing off commands because I still sometimes don't see things clearly enough until it is too late. After all, sometimes (as in his telegraphing that I should flank him) he is correct and I am the one who is asking for the wrong thing. But what ends up happening is that I allow him to blow off a few commands, then get frustrated that he is not listening and overreact. His mind wasn't blown or anything, but he wasn't thinking as much. We'll try it all over again tomorrow, perhaps setting things up a bit closer and being a bit more mindful that being consistent and keeping my cool will get us there faster in the long run.

The Sun Card

2010-03-23T12:06:00.006-06:00

My Facebook tarot card reading tells me that good things lie ahead. I took a simple multiple choice quiz, and I drew the Sun Card. "Many Good fortunes will soon come to pass in the form of Good Health, Material happiness, and Achievement. There is Joy and happiness in your future."

Say what you will about the accuracy and authenticity of Facebook quizzes, but I am choosing to believe every word. Because, you see, I am on a mission for change. No, not the change Obama promised (though I am looking forward to more of that as well), but a change of my own making. I proclaim that I will heretofore Whine Less and Work More.

What has brought about this resolve? Well, a couple of days ago, I competed in a fun trial. But I didn't have very much fun. Taz and I didn't do very well. There are lots of reasons, but I think the main one was that I have lately been working on loosening Taz up and letting him regain some of the natural ability I've taken out of him with my crappy timing and unique handling style involving nagging/letting him ignore me for a while/until I freak out and overcorrect him and then he freaks out. So I've been trying to let him make more decisions, work things out on his own, do things the way he wants unless he is making poor decisions. Commanding him only when he is making mistakes. This seems simple to do, but it has been surprisingly hard for me to carry out. I tend to either overcommand or let him get away with murder.

And this is what happened at the trial. I was in a stressed-out and pissy mood that morning anyway, and I told myself the one thing I'd do during our run was to keep my cool. No screeching. But I took that strategy too far and didn't really handle poor Taz much at all. His outrun was unexpectedly tight and flat. It hasn't been bad in practice lately (though I'll admit it hasn't been stellar either). I should have taken advantage of this being only a fun trial to "manually" widen him out and remind him that just because he is running in a trial did not mean he could get away with substandard work. But I gave him a mild "get out of that" correction, which he took, before he then sliced in hard at the top. And things went downhill from there. He didn't have a wild run, he just was off line the entire time, and I was uninspired in helping him get the sheep back on line. In an effort not to overhandle him, I might as well have run the course silently for all the direction I gave him.

Not on the same page...

After sulking about my crappy handling skills for a little while, I decided I need to either commit to doing this or accept that it will take me about 42 more years to hope to compete at the open level. I think at least part of the reason I struggle and seem to do so much moving up and down the ladder of understanding how to handle my dog is because I simply do not work my dog enough to effectively build on what we learn. It's true that I am at a disadvantage for not having my own sheep to practice with. It's true that I have a full-time job and must supplement my meager income with a lot of freelance work, so I don't have very much time. It's true that blah blah blah. Excuses I have. More time spent working my dog I need.

Fewer excuses. More time working the woolies!

So I have made a promise to myself that I will work my dog at least three times a week for the next seven weeks (basically until trial season starts here). In the grand scheme, it's not really a long time period, so this should be doable. It won't always be easy to schedule this time with the sheep—especially as I typically do a couple of hours of freelance work in the mornings before going to my day job, but I will change my work habits to complete this freelance work in the evenings before bed instead. I predict I will struggle keeping to this schedule at times. But I feel like three times a week is the minimum I can work Taz and expect to progress. And it's not forever. If I can do this, I can reassess how often I need to train once the trials begin based on how far (if anywhere) we've come.

It beats sitting around whining anyway!

So many things still to learn...

2010-01-17T20:05:00.006-07:00

I've been working Taz once or twice a week this winter, and I'm super excited about everything I've been learning lately. We are figuring out how to work together and still making lots of mistakes but not really fumbling blind as much anymore. I learned some really important lessons when I was at Scott's in November, but the biggest one was how to help Taz when he isn't quite sure what I am asking of him. I've been doing this stockdog stuff for a little while now, but I didn't truly understand how to help my dog before spending that weekend in Alberta. It boils down to using my body and pressure to make things clearer to the dog what I want him to do. Prior to this realization, I had mostly been yelling at him (sigh). It's so basic it's embarrassing, but it was a lesson I absolutely had to learn at some point, and better late than never. And it has made a humongous difference in how I approach working with Taz.

Scott had had me do the same thing over and over (send Taz for tiny outruns) when I was at his place, and for the longest time I was only able to really focus on one different component of it at a time (which I am sure caused Scott to roll his eyes around to the back of his head, though he never showed any impatience, bless him). I just had a real blind spot about Taz's outruns and was at first unable to really see where he was going wrong until it was too late. Scott gave me constant, real-time feedback and I was slowly able to put all the pieces together—to understand what Taz should be doing at every stage, recognize when he wasn't doing it, and then help him understand what he needed to do. (Of course, Scott had taught Taz what correct flanks and nice pace and straight lines were last winter, but I had to figure out how to clearly communicate with Taz what I wanted from him. He needs some guidance to maintain his good habits—he needs someone to work with him to get a job done.) I got it, and Taz was working wonderfully.

Taz's outruns mostly look pretty good these days. He is listening to me well, and we didn't do too badly in a recent arena trial (actually, I think it was the first time we truly worked together during a trial, so I consider it a big success!). But lately we've been working on driving, and it's a whole 'nother challenge. I mean, I thought I knew how to drive. I've been driving with Craig for two and a half years—it's kind of straightforward, right? Hmm. Not so much. Craig has been taking sweet care of me in ways I never even realized. Driving with Taz is very different. He needs more guidance than mega-experienced Craig does. I am back to trying to remember lots of different things at once, and Scott isn't here to keep me paying attention to all the important details. Fortunately, Elaine (another very patient person) has been helping me, though, and I am sure Taz is thanking her for that!

I know enough now to try to help him instead of just trying to correct him (though I lapse sometimes and become inexplicably rooted to the ground, engaging only my larynx—not so often anymore, though). But oh so many other things to keep in mind...

We start with the classic: Watch the sheep, not the dog. I should get this tattooed on my brain. I try to watch the sheep, but I inevitably start to forget to do this as I make sure my dog is listening to me. Elaine keeps telling me how I will be able to tell if Taz is listening by the behavior of the sheep, and I know this intellectually, but I guess I still don't entirely trust it because I keep finding my eyes glued to my dog.
I have an awful habit of saying "there, lie down." Like I don't trust him to take the there or something, though he usually does—at least when I am asking for it appropriately. I am now apparently teaching him to ignore it, though, by consistently giving him a different command right afterward. This has been a surprisingly difficult habit to break, because I don't realize I'm doing it at the time. So I've been working to be very careful when I ask for a there, or just ask for a lie down if I can't control myself...
When the sheep speed up, Taz should check himself, and if he doesn't, he needs a "time," and if he doesn't take that, he needs to lie down.
But he must get up on his feet before the sheep stop, or I'll just end up taking his power away from him by lying him down so much. Get him up if he is taking too long to get to his feet himself.
Don't let him blow off flanks during a drive—get on him if he doesn't take what I ask him, especially when he just walks forward instead of flanking.
In contrast, if I ask for a walk up and he flanks a bit, he may be right in his efforts to keep the sheep on a line. But make sure he flanks a little and then locks on, rather than sidling up until he catches their eye and turns them.

Lots of other little stuff, too, but these are the main points I'm working on for now. It's been tons of fun working and learning all this stuff, and I'm hoping to make some progress before the trial season starts. I'm also trying to get serious about getting Taz to take my whistles—he knows his whistles with Scott, though Scott said he had a rough time learning them. I am trying to work on them a little each time I go out, though I ran out of time today, and I hope to get him solid on them with me by May, too.

This is so much fun!

Taz is still awesome!

2009-12-13T20:33:00.002-07:00

Things are still going really, really well with Taz. I haven't been able to work him very often since I went to Scott's. Well, actually, that's not quite true—I worked him nearly every day the week I got back, which was great. I got a good chance to really practice what I'd learned while everything was fresh in my mind. But then I was away for a week visiting family over the Thanksgiving holiday and I managed to work Taz only once, on the day I got back to Colorado, before it got obscenely cold for the next week and a half. Temps were in the single digits, except when they were in the negative digits, and every couple of days it snowed a few inches. Not exactly optimal working weather, especially when you don't have your own sheep. The weather finally broke a couple of days ago, and I took Taz and Craig out to Cathy's with Elaine this morning. I was a bit afraid I'd forgotten a lot about how to get the best work out of him during our time off, and all the dogs were wild and not listening very well when we got situated onto the field. They'd been cooped up inside for way too long and were ready to go. Surprisingly, though, as soon as Craig brought the sheep over to the field we were using, he and the rest of the dogs settled right down.

I am just so impressed with how Taz is working. He is still working wide and relaxed and stopping when I ask him to. He does slice a bit at the top every now and again, but when I get on him for it, he immediately responds. And he doesn't need much of a correction—just a "hey you" will push him out or get him to check himself. (Finally! Always those who know how to handle dogs would tell me how responsive Taz is to corrections, but he never was with me. Now, I am finally seeing him respond to my body language and small corrections in a big way, too. Hooray!) It still takes me a few times to see when he is slicing. Like today, I saw he was slicing a little but wasn't quite sure it was very much and didn't say anything the first time, but then I saw he did it again, so I corrected him, but was a fraction of a second too late. The third time, my timing was better and Taz not only kicked himself way out, but he also didn't slice on his next several outruns. Also, I am trying to be much quicker to offer him some guidance when he starts to not do what he should. Like during the fetch, he was guarding the draw as much as he was bringing the sheep to me, and I tried to be a bit more proactive in giving him some direction on where he needed to be to bring the sheep to my feet (rather than five steps to the right because he was overcompensating in his zeal to guard against the sheep breaking back to the draw) than I maybe used to. And he is generally looking pretty darn terrific as a result. We are, I hope, finally starting to communicate as partners. It's still early days, of course, but it feels like maybe we're starting to understand each other and work together a bit more. It's a great feeling!

The difference a weekend with Scott Glen makes...

2009-11-22T18:26:00.008-07:00

After my disaster runs at the Strang Ranch trial, I knew I needed to change the way I'd been working with Taz. He is a well-trained dog now, and yet we were working exactly as we had before I sent him to Scott last winter. I did try to quiet down my commands and help him when things started to fall apart, but I realized I lacked some of the tools necessary to achieve the work I knew Taz was capable of. After working dogs with Elaine two weeks ago, she observed that Taz looked confused. "When was he confused?" I asked. "Um...most of the time" was her sad reply. Clearly we needed help making this change!

So, the following weekend, I set out for Canada. I was hoping a remedial lesson or two would help both of us understand what was going wrong and how to fix it. After a long and somewhat sketchy drive—freezing fog and loads of ice on the interstate, eep!—I arrived in Alberta with just enough daylight left for a quick lesson with Scott. I explained how Taz seemed confused and he was slicing his flanks terribly again and not stopping for me and his take time command seemed to now mean "speed up" and a host of other complaints that tumbled out of my mouth willy nilly. Scott furrowed his brow, clearly not happy with the thought that Taz was no longer working very well. We went out into the field, and he watched Taz and I work for a little while.

And...Taz was nearly perfect. His flanks were nice and wide, he was listening to me, he was rating his sheep well—he was a model stockdog. "So," Scott turned to me, "what exactly is it he's confused about?"

The little brat dog was showing me up! Taz hadn't forgotten a bit of all he learned last winter, and he knew exactly what he should be doing. "He doesn't work like this when you're not around!" I sputtered. Taz wasn't suddenly listening to me because of anything I was doing differently—that dog was well aware that Scott was standing next to me and he knew party time was over! Scott and I decided that for the following morning, I'd work in the arena adjacent to Scott's house, and Scott would watch from the open window to see what exactly was going on.

Who, me? A con man?

And here Scott saw us in all our novice glory. Well, okay, my novice glory. I sent Taz, and he immediately sliced his flanks at the top (and, apparently, at the bottom, though I hadn't even understood that that was a problem at that point), so I screamed at him to lie down. He ran through the stop and pushed the sheep toward me. It was not pretty.

So Scott showed me first how to really recognize when Taz is slicing his flanks—even after all this time, I still often don't (or, didn't) see it—and then gave me strategies to get Taz to stop the moment I tell him to (not three steps after). Stay small at first. Send him and walk up toward the sheep, and then tell him to lie down the moment he sees me. Give him hell if he doesn't immediately drop to his belly. Insist he moves off me by getting in his face if he doesn't. Make him really not want to see me start to move toward him. Make sure he bends out on the first steps he takes when flanking and again when he's coming in at the top. How do I make sure he does this? Get on my feet! Move toward him and give him a hard time for being where he knows he shouldn't be. Use my stock stick to help get the point across. Hurt his feelings. Make sure he understands that when in doubt, his best option is to give the sheep more room. I know this is all very basic, and much of it I've heard before (actually, I remember hearing a lot of this at the very first clinic I ever attended with Scott) and thought I understood, but clearly I had somehow moved on to more advanced stuff with Taz before I really mastered this kind of basic training—and that's why things were falling apart now and I was screeching like a banshee. Scott didn't let me let Taz get away with anything, and I began to understand a zero-tolerance policy is necessary for Taz (and me) right now, until both of us understand exactly what I am requiring of him and he gradually earns the right to make some decisions for himself.

It's not like I haven't tried to enforce the rules with Taz in the past. But he began hesitating, causing me to lose confidence in my corrections (which were not very confident to begin with). I fear I was a bit inconsistent with both the timing of these corrections and their severity. Scott helped me to see things more concretely. For example, he told me to think of an outrun as a box with four corners. Taz needed to be bent out at each of the corners, and imagining this mental picture made it much easier for me to recognize when he was collapsing his flanks. Then, I could take clear action to prevent it. It has been a long time since Taz last hesitated, and demanding more of him at Scott's (in an effective way now) didn't threaten to bring any of that nonsense back.

We moved on to some of Taz's more advanced problems in the afternoon. Well, more like my more advanced handling challenges. For example, Taz likes to cover his sheep and is not a fan of walking them up when they are headed toward a draw. He will wait, on his belly, for the sheep to get far enough in front of him so that I inevitably get nervous that they'll get away and I flank him around to stop them. Instead of shouting "walk up!" forty-two times and getting increasingly frustrated when he isn't taking it, Scott told me to try to walk with him. Or change the situation to set things up another way. But don't keep repeating the same command, desperately hoping this time he'll take it. Or, when driving with him, Taz has a tendency to try to catch the lead ewe's eye, turning her and then zigzagging the sheep forward. Scott advised me to stay in much closer contact with Taz, flanking him back around the back of the sheep before Taz can get far enough forward to catch their eyes. Then have him walk into the sheep with a sharp "there," which Taz was now taking immediately. I had known that Taz's driving was not efficient because my timing wasn't quite there, but I hadn't realized how much easier it is to time things correctly when I stay in better contact with Taz. Another benefit of working on those snappy stops in the arena was that Taz suddenly remembered that "take time" actually means "slow down."

That's much better!

Amazing. His pace was much improved, and he was much more relaxed. I was, too! By the end of the day, Scott noted that I sounded like a completely different handler. A quiet handler! Who didn't have a sore throat after working Taz all day long! The difference was incredible.

My head was spinning with all these new lessons learned as I drove back home, but I wondered if I'd be able to keep it up without Scott helping me in real time. I went out with Taz on Wednesday morning, and after a fast, tight first outrun on wild lambs who were up against a fence, I took a deep breath and put into action what I learned. I moved my feet and let Taz know that we were going to do things the same way here as we did in Canada, and he listened! He worked wide, loose, and stopped on a dime. I went out again the following day, this time with Elaine, and she couldn't believe the difference :) We went out again this weekend, and Taz and I have continued to work well together. That's not to say he didn't want to collapse his flanks or not lie down right away every now and then, but each time I went back to basics with him and I repeated the things I did in Scott's arena, and each time Taz improved immediately. Elaine helped me recognize when Taz was slipping, but for the most part I was able to see it on my own. She let me know when I was starting to get screechy, and then I'd immediately take it down a notch. Taz is working with great precision and feeling his sheep very well with me for really the first time ever. I am so encouraged right now I want to work every day! It feels really good to be working so well together! I am going to do everything I can to keep this up. Maybe we've really turned a corner!

On hitting rock bottom and starting to climb back up

2009-10-28T19:45:00.008-06:00

I know it's been forever since I last updated—sometimes, life just gets in the way. I've been doing a lot of freelance work to try to make ends meet, and the dogs have not been at all happy with this. I haven't either! I'm cutting back on it now (I got a new job), and hopefully we can get back to a more normal schedule. What this has meant is that I haven't worked my dogs very much over the past month. However, I was able to schedule a lesson with Faansie Basson in mid-September. Faansie had been in town to compete at Meeker and then flew west to judge the Finals, but he was flying home to South Africa from Denver. This meant he could squeeze in a lesson with Taz :) I'll write about that lesson next time (it was terrific!). Right now, I want to talk about the Strang Ranch Sheepdog Trial and what I learned from it...

I was a bit nervous before the trial, since I hadn't worked Taz much in the weeks leading up to it. When I don't work the dogs regularly, they tend to be a bit wild. More than that, though, is how my timing suffers. It's the first thing that goes out the window, and I have to think about really basic things consciously. I seem to lose all my mental muscle memory about what to do whenever things don't quite go according to plan. Because I am slower to react, Taz starts to make more decisions on his own and becomes a little less receptive to my (eventual) direction. My reaction to that is to lose patience and yell at him to do what I say. This, in turn, freaks him out so he stops thinking and feeling his sheep. It's not exactly a winning formula...

So, knowing this, I wasn't going to take things too seriously at this trial. I got Taz out to work a little at Cathy's before I drove up to Carbondale, and he was a little wild but then settled down nicely. I was excited about a rare weekend off, and I knew I'd have a lot of fun with Kristen, who had very generously offered me a place to stay over the weekend. I don't know Kristen very well, but she is a blast to hang out with and we have a lot of the same philosophies on dogs and life. I got up to the trial site on Saturday, just as the open runs were finishing. The trial site was absolutely breathtaking. Strang Ranch, with its stunning views of Mount Sopris and the West Elk Mountain Range in the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado's Western Slope, is the site of the 2011 USBCHA National Finals. This trial was a sort of "dress rehearsal" of sorts, and it went really well. The field is big, with a few dips and rises, and the sheep were the typically challenging range ewes.

Kristen is new to the area, so I was introducing her around and we were generally having a great time watching the runs. Until out of nowhere, someone I had considered a, well, if not exactly a friend, at least a friendly acquaintance, accused me of spreading false rumors and generally acting unethically. Since this was so far from the truth it was ridiculous, I was shocked and tried to make light of it, but she was dead serious. It caught me completely off guard and quickly ruined my good mood. Much as I tried not to let her accusations bother me, I'm afraid I was pretty rattled all weekend. And it showed in my runs with Taz.

But I tried to shrug it off. Kristen and I decided to take advantage of the practice field being offered—practicing a bit with the challenging sheep we'd be trialing on seemed like a Very Good Idea with Wildman Taz. And wild he was—even more so than he'd been at Cathy's after not working so long. About now I was wondering about the wisdom of entering a dog in a trial I hadn't remotely prepared for. Eh, but I was in it to have fun, right? Wellllll, things did not go as well as they could have. The course was definitely well within both Taz's and my capabilities—the outrun wasn't terribly long, short drive away, really short cross drive and a pen. Taz did a beautiful outrun to start, but when he wouldn't lie down at the top, I, um, guess I lost my mind. I started screeching at him to lie down and continued to yell at him all around the course. Sean, setting the sheep at the top, later joked that I yelled at Taz to lie down so loud that his horse nearly dropped to the ground. That's pretty bad! We didn't do too poorly on the first run (we got third place), but I lost Taz during the second run. He wouldn't take a flank to transition to a cross drive at first, and by the time he finally did take it, the sheep had disappeared behind a rise in front and a little to the left of the panels. I couldn't see anything and there was no sign of the sheep, so I assumed he wasn't moving again. I gave him a few biiiiiiiiiiiiig, loouuuuuuuuud flank commands, and lo and behold, the sheep showed up by the panels, but Taz was nowhere to be found...wait, there he was...way high on the course. Turns out Taz hadn't stopped at all back there, and he was taking my big commands as big, wide flanks and was now waaaaayyyyy off contact, practically at the set out. I called him in, but his mind was completely scrambled by then (and I was hoarse from all that screaming). We retired, not very gracefully...

I was not pleased with our runs. Well, Taz was fine (he really did not do too badly at all)—I was the one who screwed us up. I know I was upset by the earlier confrontation and I've been pretty overwhelmed with the pressure of getting all the work I've had to do done lately, but I just kind of lost my patience and my cool. It wasn't a nice feeling to be yelling at my dog like that at the post. I don't want to be the kind of handler who yells all the time; the handlers I admire most are the quiet ones. I had a long drive home to think about everything, and I decided to put things in perspective. I like training and working my dog, so I need to stop fighting with him and start working with him. I won't yell at my dog like that anymore. I'll work closer in with him until he does what I ask in a normal tone of voice, using body english to show him what I want from him. I'll help him, rather than simply yelling at him when he doesn't do what I ask of him. I'll work mainly with whistles, until he is as fluent on them with me as he is with Scott. And I'll work a bit harder to remember to use the release part of the pressure-release equation. I think, I hope, with more frequent practice working like this, we won't repeat this experience. If we do, it may be time to take a little break until I can get my head together...but I think we're already on the road to recovery. I worked with him this past weekend, in an arena so I couldn't be tempted to do anything too big. I used my whistle most of the time, helped him when he didn't do what I asked for whatever reason, and backed off when he did. Didn't bark at him once. He responded pretty well—he was relaxed and thinking.

Now, the trick is to keep it up. I'm all about analyzing things and solving problems in my head, but often have a little trouble with the follow through. But I think I can do this. I just have to remember how much more fun it is to do things this way—together as a team.

I'm pretty sure Taz agrees wholeheartedly!

Meeker Classic 2009

2009-09-20T18:29:00.008-06:00

I went to the Meeker Classic sheepdog trial last week, and it was just amazing seeing such talented dogs and skilled handling. The sheep were, as always, difficult and challenging and just plain uncooperative. Amanda Milliken and her 10-year-old Ethel made it look easy, though. Their winning run was incredible. Here are a few photos of the trial...

Faansie Basson's Jill

Jill brings the second set of sheep through the panels to join the first set

Derek Fisher's Jen

Bev Lambert's Hemp

Bev penning with Hemp

Reserve Champs Tommy Wilson and Sly at the pen

Red Oliver and Blaze

Libby Nieder's Lyn working at the international shed

Handlers watching the action

2009 Meeker Champs Amanda Milliken and Ethel show us how it's done

For more photos of the 2009 Meeker Classic, take a look here.

Steamboat Stockdog Challenge 2009 report

2009-09-10T07:08:00.005-06:00

The Steamboat Stockdog Challenge was a lot of fun. Some excellent dogs and handlers were there, and the range ewes were TOUGH! On the last day, the open course consisted of shedding off three of six sheep and then penning the remaining three, which proved to be quite a challenge! Only two teams completed the course, but most handlers enjoyed the challenge.

The open ranch class had a fairly long outrun (maybe 275-300 yards) and quite a long drive away. After our last run, I decided to retire Craig. He's 11, after all. He doesn't hear very well anymore and he has gotten to the same point on the course on his last four runs. He overheats easily (was wobbly again after his runs). And he just can't cover the sheep like he used to. He used to be lightning fast! I actually wish I'd ended his career on a stronger note and not waited until he really showed me he isn't up to it anymore, but I kept thinking he'd be okay until the end of the year. But he's ready now...seeing him unable to really cover the sheep this weekend (partly because I think he didn't hear my commands very well and partly because he is slowing down) is what cemented it for me. He knows when he isn't getting the job done and he deserves to not be put through that. He's taught me a lot over the past two years and will enjoy his time on the couch now...

Taz did a fantastic outrun on his first run. He ran nice and wide and did not need any redirects! Hooray! The judge, the inimitable Derek Fisher, actually scored his outrun better than Craig's—a first! His lift was decent and his fetch was a bit fast. As usual, we gained better control the closer we got to the post. Went around just fine and then had a bit of overflanking during the drive. When it went on too long for me to stand it, we retired. Derek said all Taz really needs is a better stop and we'd be fine. So that's my bad—I've known this for a little while, and I guess I really need to prioritize working on that a bit more.

That evening, I was walking my dogs with Cathy, Linda, and Lisbeth, and their dogs, and we heard gunshots being fired in the distance. Most of the dogs were fine, but Taz kept wanting to run away back to my truck. Every ten seconds or so, I had to tell him "that'll do" to keep him with me. But apparently that was too long a time frame, because I looked down after watching Linda's Fly playing with a toy to find Taz gone. No one had seen him take off. Unfortunately, none of us was wearing a whistle at the time either, so the four of us began calling him as loudly as we could. I raced back to my truck to see if he'd made it back there, and someone spotted him off to my right. Thank doG! I grabbed him and put all the dogs up. Yikes, that was scary!

So the next day, right before we were scheduled to run (we were the last team in the running order), what do we hear? Yup, gunshots. This was on top of the thunder that had been rumbling all day. Taz jumped on the end of his leash with every shot. I knew he'd lost his head completely , so why I didn't just scratch I'll never know. I guess I thought maybe once he saw the sheep he'd be okay.

He wasn't. I set him up and sent him to the right, and he took a couple of steps and stopped as though he'd been, well, shot. I gave him another command and he was off again, until he heard another shot and stopped short again. I went out with him to encourage him on to pick up the sheep, but he stopped several times, each time in response to a gunshot. I knew he was terrified, but I thought it was better to at least pick up the sheep before leaving the field. He did eventually get them, and he drove them back to the exhaust pen nicely, but OH MY GOD!!! After all that work on his outrun, I am so afraid it is ruined again now! What was I thinking running him under such conditions before his outrun was rock solid again? I am an idiot!

At least I am going to see Scott for a few lessons next week. Though I don't relish wasting any more lessons with him working on Taz's outrun, at least he can help me fix it again if need be. SIGH...With any luck, Taz will forget about that (or simply associate it with the shots and not generalize to all of his outruns) and be fine. We'll see.

I am bringing him to Meeker this afternoon and will try to exhaust with him over the weekend some to get him working again—hopefully that will help with damage control. I am excited to see some great dogs and handlers working at Meeker and will take pictures to post here next week :)

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a few photos from the Steamboat trial to whet your appetites...

Dan Keeton's York

Larry Adams and Mirk shedding

Cathy Balliu's Dan

Nancy Penley's Hobbs

Melinda Brenimer's Finn

Emil Luedecke shedding with Spot

Mike Hanley's Streak

For more photos of the Steamboat Stockdog Challenge, take a look here.

Getting there...

2009-09-04T01:08:00.003-06:00

I worked Taz last Sunday at Fran's with Larry and his dogs. I don't bring Craig to Fran's usually, as her barbado crosses are just awful about running and know the game all too well, and they can beat Craig. Craig works them well under some circumstances, but other times he either rides on their hips without covering or he just gives up and ignores my commands in favor of just guarding the draw, since he knows that's where they will turn toward and he may not be able to cover otherwise.

We started out doing (what else?) some outruns perpendicular to the draw. We set it up so that I could work on Taz's come bye flank, which is by far his weaker side. He is tighter and much slicier on that side, and he's more likely to hesitate there as well. We did a couple at about 100 yards away, and he was not tight, but he was coming in flat. He kicked out a bit when I told him to get out, but not enough. So we shortened things up even further, and he was fine. Split the difference, and he was better, but still coming in a bit tight at the top. Since he was coming in tight, his fetches were also offline, and he wanted to wait and flank to keep the sheep away from the draw, rather than walk up to bring the sheep to me smoothly. All in all, not pretty. Then Larry suggested we switch our positions so that Larry was holding the sheep closest to the draw, and this made all the difference. Taz was still slicing in a tiny bit at the last minute, but he was much wider and much deeper than he had been. His lifts and fetches were much better as well. Larry said it was pretty clear Taz had been working the field (which he knows well), rather than the sheep. Once we switched things around, he worked less defensively and was much more responsive to me.

Buoyed by this, we then decided to try a longer (250-yard) outrun on the bye side. Well, he fell apart on this—not wanting to go, scalloping back, and then finally loping up to the sheep and not lifting them off Larry with much enthusiasm. Hmm. Too much, I suppose. I sent him on an away, just so he wouldn't spend all morning on one side, and he looked great once again—wide, deep, lifting his sheep correctly and generally feeling his sheep very well. No hesitation at all, even on the long outruns, and he looked like he was very comfortable. It is really strange how his outruns on the away side look so good and his come bye side do not. Larry wondered if something had happened to him to make him so nervous on that side, since there is such a big difference. I don't know though—Scott never mentioned that he was one-sided, so it must have been something that happened after Taz came home. But I have no idea what it could be...

We also worked a bit on driving around the course set up on Fran's field. Taz did really well at this, the best driving he's done with me yet! He wasn't taking my whistles consistently today, so I just talked to him. He read the sheep well and did not rush or overflank, as he had when we first brought out the sheep and had tried to drive them up the field to work on the outruns. Instead, he listened to me and did everything I asked :) It was fantastic! We were in control—the pace was nice, we made the panels, and we transitioned from drive to cross drive to fetch (third leg of drive) without overflanking. He was fabulous! I am very encouraged at this. Come bye flanks on a long outrun notwithstanding, I think Taz did pretty well today and we worked together nicely :)

I'll go out to Cathy's tomorrow for one last chance to practice a bit before the trial, and then we'll be on our way to beautiful Steamboat Springs. With any luck, Craig will hear everything I say and Taz will show everyone a bit more of what he can do!

Working the dogs – August 29, 2009

2009-09-02T13:24:00.004-06:00

I went out to Cathy's to work a bit with Taz and Craig last weekend. (It's too hard to really write about everything as it all happened over the past month or two, so it looks like I'm going to skip ahead after all. C'est la vie!) In preparation for the trial this weekend, I'm trying to get Taz to take more of my whistles and Craig to take all of them. It was hot out, so we couldn't work for too long at a time. I did lots of close-in off balance flanks and stops with Craig, and by the end of our session, he did take them nearly all of the time when we were close in. He still wanted to blow off some commands when he was further away, but I think this is a hearing issue more than an obedience or comprehension issue. I have a hard time blowing my whistle loudly. I might look into getting one of those Master Blaster thingies...

With Taz I am trying to reintroduce the whistles Scott taught him slowly and without a ton of pressure. I asked for whistles when it made sense—when he was on balance, I'd blow a stop and then back it up with my voice. When he had to cover to the left, I blew a come bye. He responded pretty well, I'm happy to report. I worked on a few other things with Taz as well. First order of business was enforcing a stop. Elaine had worked with me on an exercise in a corner that would be good for working on this, but I didn't use it today. (I'll write about that another time. It's really something David Rogers showed a bunch of us at a clinic we attended a couple of weeks ago.) Instead, I just demanded a stop in a (hopefully) confident and certain tone. He always checked himself when I told him to lie down, but he usually didn't lie down until I growled it (which was the second or third time I asked for it). So I did a few circles, demanding a stop on balance until he took it the first time, and then asking for it when he was off balance. He did take it on the first time more often than when we started, but this is still a work in progress. Next time, I will do that exercise—it's much more effective.

We also worked on driving for a bit. Overall, he is feeling his sheep well, I think. These sheep were heavy and not wanting to stay together very much, and he did a nice job knowing when to push and when to use his eye to keep them moving together. His inside flanks looked better today, and he only wanted to come back to me a couple of times. Telling him to lie down got him to turn back on his sheep quickly. (We've been working on overcoming a new little hiccup, where he will sometimes come all the way back to me if I give him an inside flank to the come bye side. I wasn't sure how to stop it, as trying to put pressure on him was not getting him to stop. Turns out the simple suggestion of telling him to lie down and then immediately walk up on his sheep did the trick.) Not only is he immediately turning back to his sheep, he seems to be coming back toward me less often. Phew! Taz is still overflanking, but this is because he is not taking his stops right away. Of course, this means we did a lot of back and forth on the heavy ewes, but I do think once I get his stop snappier we'll be able to push forward easier.

Nicomodes Gulch SDT (August 7-9, 2009)

2009-08-30T17:02:00.024-06:00

I know it's been a long time since I last updated, but I've actually got several entries waiting to be posted now. Hooray! I'll post them sequentially, as they happened, over the next few days...

First up is a trial report from the wonderful Nicomodes Gulch Sheep Dog Trial in Monte Vista, Colorado.

I ran Craig and Taz in this beautiful mountain trial hosted by Dan Keeton and Terry and Tina LePlatt. This is a notoriously tricky trial—the field is not enormous (the open outrun was about 300 yards; open ranch was about 240 yards), but the drive away and cross drive are quite long. In addition, the grass is high in some spots, so the dogs can have a difficult time seeing the sheep during their outruns, and the field has a creek running across the bottom of it, not actually on the course but right below it. The sheep, range lambs, panic easily and often try to escape their canine directors into this creek. It's a tough course, to say the least!

Two back-to-back open ranch classes would be run on the Saturday of the trial. This trial site is at about 7,500 feet elevation, so it wasn't too awful hot, but I was afraid Craig wouldn't be able to handle running twice in the same day. I am happy to report that he did fine! I'd heard the dogs had a tough time during the open runs the day before, with the sheep being very heavy. Taz ran first of my dogs, third in the running order. The first two runs did not go smoothly, with the first dog having trouble at the top and the second one struggling to bring the sheep down the field (which turned out to have a lot to do with a lame lamb, resulting in a rerun for that handler). I decided my strategy (and I use that term loosely) would be to try to keep the sheep moving and just try to keep as much control as I could. But mostly with Taz I was hoping he would just keep going out until he could find the sheep...

I sent him on an away, and off he went. He did need a redirect, but he was fairly wide and lifted the sheep nicely. But Taz was being pretty pushy. The sheep moved down the field at a nice pace, but the fetch was a bit wild. I said nothing to him until he got inside the fetch panels and then slowed things down to line the sheep up to turn the post and begin the drive. Taz was no longer at mach 10 speed, but he was still pretty pushy on the drive. He was not taking my lie downs right away, which resulted in some overflanking. After a little back and forth, I asked for a stop a bit late and he started to turn the sheep back to me. I retired at that point, and when I got off the field everyone asked me why I retired so soon. But I knew it was going to be a long day for everyone, and I didn't want to waste everyone's time.

Next up was Craig. I sent him to the right as well, and he had a very nice outrun and lift. He was listening to me very well, and his fetch was much better than Taz's. However, we did have a bit of a wing-wang experience on the drive. Still, we were moving forward, until I messed up my flanks and gave him an away when I meant to say come bye. He took it and things went a little out of control, and I had a hard time recovering from my mistake. This is one of my biggest challenges right now—I need to learn to better keep my cool and move on after I make a mistake. I retired with Craig soon thereafter, and this time even the judge (the fabulous Don Helsley) asked me why on earth I was retiring. Um, because I'm an idiot?

I was sure I could do better with both dogs during my second runs. And I did, a little. During our second run, Taz was much more in control. His lift was better, and the fetch was nice and straight. Unfortunately, it was not straight down the middle of the field, but about ten yards to the right of the fetch panels. I had been told that I was smart not to try to direct Taz early on in the fetch during my first run, and I clung to these words while Taz sailed past the panels during this second run, only giving him a helpful "come bye" right after he passed the panels. He took it right away and his line was then straight toward me down the center of the field. D'oh! After my run, Don asked me why the heck I had waited to give him some direction, since he obviously would have made the fetch panels if I asked him to come bye above them. Answer: I'm an idiot once again. We struggled mightily around the post, with lambs going all directions and winding and unwinding, but eventually got them moving toward the drive panels. But remember how I said I have trouble moving past a mistake? Yeah, it happened here, too. We did a bit of driving toward the panels, but I was rattled and we soon retired.

Last up: Craigor MacGregor. I knew he could do it if I kept my head together. "Don't retire!" Don called out to me as I stepped up to the post. Yes, sir! I sent him again to the right and off he went. Beautiful outrun, lift, and fetch straight through the panels. Wonderful pace. He had these lambs' number! We bobbled a little around the post, but were set up nicely for the drive away. The drive was nice and straight, and the lambs went straight through the panels. Hooray! Just a quick flank to the left and we'd transition to the cross drive.

"Come bye."

Nothing. He stared at the sheep, who began to drift.

"Come bye, Craig!"

Nothing. The sheep stopped and began to graze.

[blows come bye whistle softly]

Nothing.

"Craig! Come bye! Lie down! Come bye!" [blows whistle desperately]

Nothing.

I looked at Don, but he couldn't help me now. I shrugged and walked toward my dog. "Come bye, Craig." He took it, but of course by then we'd retired once again. After talking with people who saw the run, some thought he just had locked onto the sheep, but many said it seemed like he couldn't hear me. Those who knew 11-year-old Craig best were sure of it. Rats! Don told me I could have tried a recall as well, but I do think it was actually that he was too far away from me to hear what I was telling him. Unfortunately I do blow a soft whistle, so that wasn't much help (though, to be honest, Craig often doesn't take my whistles). But he had been listening to me so well before that. Too bad, it was such a promising run before that happened. Don also told me Craig handled these sheep really nicely and that he was a good dog and that I handled him well. Craig has his moments. I sometimes let him get away with too much, but he really did handle the sheep well at this trial.

So although we got only letters at this trial, I am pleased with how my dogs did. We still need to work on lots of things of course (especially me, with the letting go of mistakes and not quitting too soon), but I definitely learned a lot.

Colorado High Country SDT report

2009-07-26T22:33:00.006-06:00

Last weekend, we went to the CHC SDT up in Hot Sulphur Springs. This trial is always a lot of fun, and the setting is just beautiful.

Not a bad place to spend the weekend...

I ran Taz and Craig in the open ranch class. The course was a bit smaller than it has been in years past, and the sheep were fantastic—they were nice, even range ewes. That doesn't mean it was easy—the course was tricky, with deceptive rises and a narrow irrigation ditch crossing just before the post for the open class.

Craig ran pretty well, doing everything I asked of him. Unfortunately, my timing was a bit off, and I was late giving him direction. It wasn't one of our better trials, but we had fun :)

My main goal with Taz was really just for him to do a proper outrun. And he did it! I let him set himself up, and I sent him to the right (his "good" side). Off he went, nice and wide. He paused at the drive away panels, and looked back at me. So I gave him another "away!" and off he went. He came in very nice and did not slice, but he did overflank just a hair. The sheep lifted just a smidge to the right (my right) and Taz covered and brought them straight through the fetch panels. We struggled a little around the post, partly because he didn't take his stops right away and partly because one ewe was very stroppy and kept leaving the others and then turning to challenge him. But he handled her nicely, walking right into her and then giving her a chance to turn back to rejoin her buddies.

Taz steadily put one foot in front of the other to turn this ewe back
Photo by Larry Adams

First half of his drive was great. He took his inside flanks well. But he went all the way around when I asked for an outside flank and began bringing the sheep back to me. Since we haven't worked on driving at all for the past month or two, I retired. We lost 2 points on the outrun, one for the redirect and one for sending him from too far away from me. Jim Swift was the judge, and he said he thought Taz was borderline too far away from me when I sent him and decided to hit me so I'd learn how far was too far ;-) The following day, Taz didn't stop at all and didn't need a redirect on his outrun, but he overflanked a bit more at the top and the fetch was a bit wilder. Taz did the same thing on the drive as he had the previous day, and we retired during the same point.

Honestly, I couldn't be happier. I am optimistic that this whole hesitation thing is really starting to be behind us and hopeful that Taz is remembering his training from the winter. Our next trial is in a couple of weeks, and I am going to work on driving with him in the meantime (and stopping when I tell him to—that's just me getting lazy on enforcing his lie down and is easily remedied). I hope to get a little further in the course next time—I'd like to at least complete the drive away and transition to the cross drive, but we'll see how things go...

Progress at last!

2009-07-12T13:02:00.008-06:00

I started a new job last week, and it's been completely knocking me out! But I don't want two more months to go by without a post, so I better get on it.

I had a great weekend working the dogs in the mountains. Elaine and I went up to the ranch of a couple of friends a couple of weekends ago, and it was wonderful to work in such a big area! I was able to set Taz up a bunch with me between him and the sheep. This kept him wide enough, without hesitating, though he still sliced at the top. Baby steps, though—I wanted to be sure his attitude was back and he wouldn't hesitate before starting to really correct him again. We also got to work newly acquired range ewes, and that was a blast. Taz moves them pretty easily. Despite his lack of confidence, he has plenty of power.

Handsome, too!

I worked with Craig a bunch on these sheep, too, and he really handles them well. I used my whistle a lot, and I realized that I've been getting very sloppy with it. My come bye whistle was fine, and Craig took it every time, but I had to be careful with my away and my stop whistles—they sound a lot alike when I blow them quickly. Consequently, Craig did a lot of stopping and staring at me when I blew them. I slowed both down, and he took them again, but this is something I'll have to be pretty conscious of for a little while, I think. The following day when I worked him (no longer with so many whistles, as I was advised by a very competitive open handler not to overdo the whistles when just working the dogs), he began blowing me off, this time not because he wasn't sure what I was telling him to do, but because he had other ideas. So I had to let him know my commands were not optional. And after I gave him the business, he was perfect. He listened to every command immediately and very willingly. It exasperates me that Craig and I sometimes have to battle like this before he wants to listen to me. Why does he have to be reminded that he must listen? Is it a respect issue? A willful older dog issue? I am going to institute a zero-tolerance policy with him from now on—the first time he doesn't take a command I give him, I'll tell him off and put him up. Then we'll try again. Perhaps I've just been letting him get away with too much before I start telling him off...

I was also impressed with the way the open handler working with us approached training dogs. He was much more relaxed than I ever am. He said he doesn't do any drilling, just sort of loosely asks the dogs to do different things while walking around his 30-acre field. He insists the dog does everything he asks, but he doesn't ask for straight lines or tight turns around panels or anything like that. Of course, he helps the dog when it's clear the dog doesn't understand how to do something or he's put the dog in an unfamiliar situation. Hence, the dog trusts him and really tries to do everything he's asked to do. I tried to mimic this approach with Taz, but I don't quite have the body English down to really help cue my dog to what I want from him and so it's a bit awkward. Still, I think I'd like to do a bit more practice work like this—it puts much less pressure on the dog and on myself, and it's a whole lot more fun.

Taz is all in favor of having more fun!

I've been out with Taz a few more times since then—unfortunately not as often as I'd like, with that new job I started last week. I still have a ton of freelance work to do as well, so I just haven't had much time to get out, which is a bummer, since I have a trial next weekend. But I'll get on a better training schedule soon. Anyway, last weekend, I went out to Fran's with Larry and did some more outruns with Taz, concentrating on the come bye side. With Taz still slicing at the top, even with me sending him when I was closer to the sheep, I began correcting him with a "Get out of that!" when he started to slice. But I did so reluctantly, as I really was afraid Taz would begin hesitating again, like he's done before when I corrected him at the top. Still, I had to do something, as he was slicing really hard at the top, and he knows better than that. He wasn't slicing at all when he was with Scott. I know I can't let him get away with it either. But the hesitation often followed the corrections, and I wouldn't really know if he was going to hesitate until the next time I worked him.

We went out again today, and I was relieved to see that Taz wasn't wanting to hesitate, even though I'd been correcting him for slicing. I was more confident in my corrections today, and Larry helped me with my timing, so the corrections were more effective. I also started sending him from my feet again. Taz kicked himself out every time I got on him, though he often didn't need it until the very end of his outrun. But that last bit would be a dramatic flattening of his arc. Larry suggested I give him a sort of preemptive correction, before he reached the point that he would typically start to slice, to remind him to keep wide. I tried that a bit, and it seemed to work. Hooray!

I also did a few longer outruns with him (maybe 200 yards), on both sides. His away side remains so much better than his come bye side—he is perhaps a little tight at the top, but he doesn't need any corrections on that away side. He just seems to feel his sheep much better on that side. I will definitely send him to the right at the trial next weekend. I'll likely retire after the OLF next weekend, since I haven't worked on any driving with him whatsoever lately. But if I can get a decent outrun, lift, and fetch, honestly I will be completely overjoyed! We can worry about everything else next time :)

OMG! An update!

2009-06-26T09:43:00.006-06:00

Okay, so it's been a while. A veritable hiatus. But I had a lot going on—I was traveling a lot, and I lost my job last month, so I've been a bit stressed/panicked, and I also had a ton of freelance projects come due at about the same time. Excuses, excuses. Whine. But I finally have a spare moment this morning, so I thought I'd do some catching up.

It'll be impossible for me to remember (let alone recap) everything I've done with the dogs over the past couple of months, so I'll try to just hit the highlights. Looks like the last time I updated, things were just beginning to fall apart with Taz. He wasn't taking his whistles very well, he seemed unsure while driving and cross driving, stretching his outruns to 250 yards or so was resulting in hesitation . . . gee, wonder if I was throwing way too much at him all of a sudden?

We went to our first trial of the season (well, not including the Icebreaker SDT the day after I got Taz back from Scott), and things didn't go so well. It was a nice field, green and mostly flat, and a small outrun by Western trial standards. The range sheep were tough, though, and there was a lot going on at the set out. Both days, Taz didn't really want to do his outrun. He'd go out about 30 yards or so and then stop. I'd reflank him, and he'd go maybe 10 more yards before stopping and looking at me again. Both times, I walked up the field and that got him going, so at least he knew he needs to get his sheep, but I was a bit discouraged.

The following weekend, we ran in a ranch trial. The ranch class, in the west, is the class between novice-novice and open-ranch. This was a perfect course for us. It was a tiny version of a full course (minus a shed, of course). To be honest, the course in general was way too small for Taz, as he made a lot of wide, sweeping flanks that were not very appropriate for the teeny size of the "infield," but the outrun of maybe 125 yards was perfect for him right now. Taz hesistated here, too, but the sheep were set close enough that he could see them very well and only needed redirects to keep going. Each day he needed fewer redirects, and the last day he went without hesitating at all.

In between trials, I worked with him with the sheep set quite close, but he was starting to revert back to his old habits of running too tight. I knew I shouldn't let him get away with this, but I was too afraid that lying him down to correct him would exascerbate the hesitation. It felt like we were right back to where we started before I sent him to Scott.

One of my worst training faults is trying to rush things and, in the process, being kind of inconsistent in my expectations. Taz is a fairly soft dog, and I think I just plain put too much pressure on him at once. He is such an honest dog that he really, really wants to be right. When he's not sure he is right, he becomes insecure and cautious. My job, then, is to show him what I want him to do in a positive, concrete, even exhuberant, way (anyone who knows me knows that I don't do exhuberance naturally—I am more the low-key, cynical type—but if exhuberance will help Taz right now, well then super-excited, here I come! Wahoo!). Taz is hesitating because he is nervous about the top, so I need to keep Taz happy and enthusiastic about going to the top right now. I should stop worrying about making things exactly right—instead, look for attitude over perfection.

I didn't figure this out myself, of course. Earlier this month, I drove out to Michigan to visit friends and go to a Scott Glen clinic. It was an amazing trip—I met some great people and the clinic was fantastic (though I was a little nervous about showing Scott what was happening with Taz now that I'd had him for a couple of months—I needn't have worried at all, as Scott just wanted to help us get everything back).

Scott said that Taz only needs confidence right now, and if I can restore his confidence Taz will relax and begin to work correctly again. He gave me several tips to help get his confidence back, like sending him in the direction of the sheep's tails, and it's even better if they're moving a little, to help draw him in. (I'd always been told I should send to the heads—I thought this was a cardinal rule, conventional wisdom, and I never questioned it. Scott said there are no set-in-stone rules with stockdog work. Just use common sense and don't be afraid to get creative when something isn't working.) He also told me to get between Taz and the sheep and then send him as a strategy to widen him out without having to lie him down or even correct him at all. This is brilliant—it completely circumvents the risk of eliciting the correct-hesitate cycle. He told me not to worry about cross-driving with him right now, but continue to drive with him, and forget whistles for now.

By the end of the clinic, Taz was starting to show signs of his former self again. Scott said it is clear that Taz trusts me, so he doesn't think this will take too long to fix, if I stick with the plan. ;-) That, of course, is the hard part—to remember all of these little things and make little adjustments where necessary without Scott watching and reminding me. It is a little tough right now, as I don't have anywhere to do bigger outruns at the moment, but this weekend I am going to a friend's ranch and we will have all the room we need, along with nice sheep to work and good friends to work with :-)

I'll write about how things go this weekend next time, and I'll also update about Craig then, too.

Setbacks

2009-05-03T07:45:00.004-06:00

This morning I'm off to work the dogs for what might be the last time before the Hotchkiss trial next weekend. I hope we have a better day than the last time I took the dogs out. We went to the smaller, narrow field again, and didn't have a great work session. Craig would not take my whistles at a distance no matter what I did (which eventually involved running up the field and screaming at him at the top of my lungs—not one of my better moments). He took everything I asked for when he was close to me, but not when he got a bit further away. I am not sure if this was a fluke or I have a problem on my hands—we'll see today, I guess. I didn't have much more success with Taz. He didn't really want to take my whistles either. He'd take them when they made a lot of sense to him, like when the sheep were breaking or when he was set up to run an obvious direction, but he seemed to have no idea what I was asking of him when I whistled him along on a cross drive. I will be the first to admit that my whistles are not always the most consistent, and they certainly are not the most pleasant sounds on the planet, so I think more practice for me without the dogs is in order here. And Taz's driving didn't look so hot last time out either. He wasn't wanting to take my direction while he was working, and he stopped to look back at me a bunch. I think he is just still unsure about what I want from him, but we don't have very much time to work it out if before next weekend. We'll see how he does today...wish us luck!

Getting back with Taz & working Craig, too (very long recap)

2009-04-28T11:39:00.003-06:00

It's been absolutely fascinating working Taz again, and I am having a lot of fun with him. He is a neat dog to run because he is such a thinker and he is amazingly responsive when we're in sync. We've been having pretty interesting training sessions...

I went out to Fran's last Sunday with Elaine and Larry. The sheep were extra wild, and after even the Open dogs kept losing them back to the pens, we moved to the extreme far corner of the field and just practiced outruns. I wanted to keep everything as controlled as possible, so I sent Taz from about 100 to 125 yards or so out, still keeping it small with these wild sheep. He was maybe a little tight but not slicing. Very responsive. He lied down when I asked him to and he took the flanks I asked for cleanly on the fetch. He went around our imaginary post well, and would drive a little bit, but the drive was roughly the same direction as the draw, and he didn't much want to give up the pressure. So I walked with him a little, and that helped, but he wasn't super comfortable doing it. I decided to hold off on driving with him until we were working more cooperative sheep. Overall, I was happy with him, though, as he was listening to me really well.

Then I went out last Wednesday evening with Kristen, who just moved here from Arkansas. She now lives out on the Western Slope, and this was her first time working her dogs since she came to Colorado. We had a blast :) We held sheep for each other, though it probably wasn't necessary, as the set we worked were pretty happy to keep their heads down and eat the fresh grass. I worked Craig first, and tried a new strategy with him. I usually leave Craig alone at the top; he generally lifts his sheep nicely and always brings them to me. Elaine told me he has always been worked with minimal interference at the top, and generally things are okay. However, he sometimes pushes on his sheep pretty hard on the fetch and he often won't take direction at the beginning of the fetch. This was very true of his runs at the Icebreaker trial, and it caused us to miss the fetch panels on both of our runs. In fact, Craig often seems pretty much deaf until he reaches the fetch panels. Then he starts listening, and we're fine, but I don't like not being able to get him to listen to me at the top. So I thought if I started lying him down just after he lifts the sheep I might get a better response from him during the entire fetch, rather than just the second half. Well, Craig didn't think much of this idea. He pretty much ran through my stops at the top. I didn't come down on him as much as I should have, but I figured I'd work through this a bit more the next time I went out.

With Taz, I did a few tiny outruns, and Kristen watched us to see if he was slicing in at all. Again, he didn't slice in much, but he did run just a little tight at first. It got better as we worked. We can only do tiny outruns at this field, since it's so narrow that I'm afraid doing longer ones will cause him to run incorrectly—in essence, setting him up to fail. I don't mind running Craig like that because he has a very clear idea of what his outrun should be. Taz is still in a delicate place, so I want to give him the room he needs. The outruns we did were maybe 50 to 75 yards, so they were very small, but he was feeling his sheep very well and his fetch was nice and controlled. I drove with him a little, and he did fine here, too.

I went out to the same field on my own a couple of days later. With Craig, after some remedial whistle work, I again worked on stopping him right after he lifted the sheep. This time, I enforced my point that a stop was not going to be optional, and he began cooperating nicely. His fetches were looking much more controlled by the end of the day. I'll have to work on this with the more wild sheep as well, but it's a good start.

With Taz, I decided to work a bit more on driving and also start acclimating him to my whistles. The driving went pretty well. He bores straight into the sheep, but nicely, so they don't panic. He tucks in the sides on his own, and he takes his flanks well when I give them. He still turns in before I want him to sometimes, but a second flank command will brink him back out for another nice turn. His only real fault on the driving we did was that he was just a bit tentative. I think he was not always entirely sure of what I wanted him to do, and I am hoping that this will diminish as we get more comfortable working together.

I reintroduced whistles to him as well as we were working, mostly on little outruns. It was a little rough going—he is definitely not sure about what I am asking him when I use a whistle. I know my whistles must sound pretty different to him than Scott's whistles did. For one thing, Scott uses his fingers, and I use a stainless steel Montana lite, so that may be part of the reason I can't get them to sound exactly like his. In addition, Scott's come bye whistle is a little different than mine. His whistle is better (naturally), as sometimes the beginning of my come bye whistle can sound deceptively like the beginning of my away whistle if I'm not careful. But Taz was not really taking my attempts at this new whistle very well. For that matter, he wasn't taking my away whistle all that great either, though I was making some progress on the lie down and the walk up. (He did actually already have the walk up before he went to Scott's, though.) I know he'll get them eventually; I'm just taking it slow and being sure to back up the whistles with a voice command.

The following day, Saturday, I went out to Fran's again with Elaine. Fran had put a hot wire up separating her field in half, so the grass could grow without being disturbed. The power wasn't turned on yet, but this meant we couldn't use the further half of the field at all. There was still plenty of room to work, but we'd have to use the area closer to the pens, where the draw was a bit stronger. Rats!

We went down to the far end of the field, and did some round robin outruns, maybe 150-175 yards apart from one another. These were the biggest outruns I'd done with Taz to date. We were working diagonally to the draw and Taz and I were at the top and Ben and Elaine were at the bottom. This was the easier configuration, and Taz looked pretty good. He was running nice and wide and feeling the sheep well. He did come in a little short to my eye, but the sheep were lifting straight. The more outruns we did, the more he felt confident enough to go around a bit further and still be able to control them when they lifted. That part was terrific. His fetches were not very smooth, though. He really felt the pressure of the draw and overcompensated. He'd push them off line a bit and then bring them over to me in a series of stops, come byes, and walk ups. He never found the sweet spot on the side to keep the sheep moving on a line toward me. That may be my fault, as I was maybe not stopping him and getting him up quickly enough.

At first he wouldn't even take my stops—I don't think he even heard me. Elaine advised me to calmly walk up to him and lie him down sternly when I was practically on top of him. He'd be surprised to see me there, seemingly coming from out of the blue, and it might make an impression on him that I might appear in his face at any time and so he'd better listen to me no matter how far away from me he is. Of course, as soon as I made up my mind to do just that, he began listening. This is becoming a trend...

Still, he was bringing the sheep to my feet each time and then listening very well as we had to actively work together to hold the sheep for Elaine and Ben. Elaine and I then switched sides, and this presented another challenge for Taz. It was much harder to control the sheep from this position, and Taz was a bit less sure what to do. He hesitated for the first time since he's been back, and I just gave him a redirect and he went all the way around. Oops, too far, and the sheep broke. Ben had done the same thing the first time or two, so I wasn't worried—I just hoped Taz would learn from the experience the way Ben did. He caught the sheep and brought them to me, and after Ben picked them up for his turn, we tried again. This time he went all the way around, but he sliced in. Elaine admonished me to not let him get away with that, so the next time, when he sliced in, I lied him down and began walking up to him. He immediately turned his head away, and as I kept walking forward, growling at him and waving my stick, he jumped back a few feet.

"Stop!" Elaine yelled to me. "That's enough!"

"But I'm supposed to come all the way up to him, aren't I?"

"Well, yes, if he's not giving ground or showing you that he's not fazed by your actions—but he is turning off now. He's saying 'I'm sorry, you're right, I hear you.' Continuing to give him the business when he's giving ground like that is not beneficial. You don't want to shut him down. He's not challenging you anymore; in fact, I don't think he ever was really challenging you. I think he just needed a little help."

Well, that was a revelation! I hadn't thought about that, but I knew she was right. I'd have to be more careful about respecting that line between correcting him and helping him. But I also didn't think it would be very hard to tell what was needed—Taz is pretty transparent that way, and it's likely he isn't going to need too many corrections. He will, however, need a bit of help from time to time. I am so grateful that Elaine pointed this out to me when she did! I will be sure to use my head a bit more when working with him in the future!

I didn't get a chance to do too much in the way of outruns with Craig on Saturday, so I couldn't test the down-after-the-lift behavior, but we did do a fair amount of driving. I was very pleased that he pretty much took all of my whistles. We'll work more on stopping at the beginning of the fetch another time.

I went out one more time on Sunday, this time with Larry. We did all sorts of things I haven't done with Taz since he's been back, and I was really pretty pleased overall. I'd been trying to choreograph every interaction Taz had with the sheep during his "transition" back to me. But Sunday, we went a little off the plan...

We warmed up by doing the same round robin outruns I'd done with Elaine the day before, though we worked a little closer to each other. Taz's outruns and lifts were perfect, and his fetches continued to be a bit choppy. After a bit, Larry intentionally let the sheep break back to the pens so that he could send his dogs on longer outruns. He encouraged me to do the same thing with Taz. I wasn't so sure this was such a good idea—this was not working in the controlled circumstances I'd been so careful about—but Larry thought it might be good to stretch him a bit and see what he could do. So we walked down the field a bit and I sent him. The sheep were maybe 250 yards out from where we stood. They were bunched up against the pen, not really moving, and I could tell Taz was having trouble spotting them. So this would be kind of a blind outrun of sorts, but I knew these light sheep would move off him once he caught their eyes.

I set him up and sent him to the right. He took a few steps and stopped, looking back at me. "Away to me," I repeated, and he took off. Nice and wide. The sheep still weren't moving by the time he reached about 75 yards away from them, and he slowed and looked at me again. "Away!" I shouted, and off he went, neatly behind them, lifting them clean. Hooray for Taz! He did a bit of back and forth behind them getting them to me, but that was kind of the nature of these sheep, who've had a lot of practice pushing on dogs and often beating them. I was so proud of him! I did it again a bit later, and this time he needed no redirects. The sheep did shoot out to the left toward a big dirt pile before he got to them, and this is an area where the dogs often have a little difficulty getting them under control, so I started running up the field to help him. I needn't have expended the energy. Ten seconds later, up the field they began marching, with Taz in easy pursuit. What a good boy! He did terrific on these little tests! Another thing Larry suggested I do was to flank him around the sheep (at the top of the field) to release enough pressure that the sheep would start heading back to the pens and then stop him. Then, let him up and let him get them and bring them back. I wasn't quite sure about this exercise either—I feared Taz's form would suffer or he would hesitate again and then just watch them get away. But he did fine—he remained wide and he covered them nicely. My confidence in Taz went up exponentially with all of this work—he is capable of much more than I have been doing with him, and I couldn't be happier!

Of course, he still needs a lot of work. I drove the sheep up the entire field with him a few times (walking with him), and much like the way he was fetching them, he didn't give them quite enough room to keep a flow going. He pushed them forward and they'd go to one side or the other, and then I'd flank him to cover. But the second time I did it with him, I decided to be a little more stingy with my commands, and he actually did a whole lot better. He still needed a flank to recover every now and then, but mostly he was covering them on his own and thus learning it was more efficient to keep a little further off. Bolstered by that, I tried to do some cross driving with him at the far end of the field, but wasn't as successful here. He was nervous about giving up the pressure, and we did more stopping and flanking to cover than actual driving. But that's okay. These sheep really are quite difficult, always leaning hard on the dog, and Larry reminded me that I'd need to work lots of different kinds of sheep to keep Taz flexible, so he didn't think all sheep behaved like these sheep do.

We also worked with whistles a bit more, and Taz continues to take more of them, though he's far from being what I'd call fluent with my whistles. A funny thing did happen, though. With these wild sheep, I had less time to think about what I was blowing, so I a couple of times I blew my own come bye whistle, which no one has ever used with Taz. Lo and behold, he took it. He still had trouble taking my attempts at mimicking Scott's come bye, but he took my come bye whistle. I thought that was pretty odd but maybe is due to the whistle simply making sense to him in the situation that called for it (the sheep were breaking), whereas he is otherwise having to work out my "translations" of the whistles he first learned with Scott and isn't quite sure they are the same thing as what he learned. In any case, I am confident it will all come in time as long as I keep working on it with him.

So, all in all, I'm well pleased at where Taz is now. Our first trial is in two weeks. I am not sure we'll be ready, but we're a whole lot more ready than we were a week ago!

All photos taken by Larry Adams.

Working Taz!

2009-04-18T11:34:00.008-06:00

Taz has been home for two weeks now, and I've worked him three times. Each time has been a bit different. It's been pretty interesting working him again . . .

I went out to work Taz for the first time on Saturday. The field we worked in was long and narrow, and I was afraid he wouldn't really have enough room to run as wide as he should. I didn't work him for very long—it was pretty hot and poor Taz has a monster coat after spending the winter up north. He wouldn't take my whistles at all, so I abandoned them for now and concentrated on trying to just get on the same page with him. We did a few outruns, and he seemed to be working okay. He was not dramatically wide or deep, but he wasn't slicing in either. Driving went all right, though his flanks were small—he would flank around just a little bit and then turn in to the sheep. I thought it was not terrible for our first session, but he definitely was not working anything like he worked at Scott's.

We went out again the following day and worked in a much bigger field with much wilder sheep (read: these sheep like to run!). This time, Elaine came with us, and we held the sheep for each other. Taz was really pushy this time, pretty much running over me. I mean, he stopped when I asked him to (I remembered that much from Scott's parting instruction), but sometimes he'd take another step or two after I asked before hitting the ground, he was pushing on the sheep and causing them to run, he was a bit tight on top when the sheep were set opposite the draw, and he was generally not feeling his sheep very well at all. Ack! I began to panic a little—I was taking out everything Scott put into him already! Or, I feared I was incapable of getting the beautiful work out of him that Scott could. I asked Elaine for help.

The first thing she advised was to shorten everything up. Duh! My mind began returning with that basic, sensible advice. We'd been doing short outruns anyway, but I left Taz about 100 yards out and walked up toward the sheep and sent him from about halfway between where he was lying down and where the sheep were set. When I sent him from this position, I could see where he was starting to come in flat much more clearly and I stopped him right there. Then I resent him and he came in a bit deeper. Elaine noticed that I was stopping him a little short on top (this is an old habit of mine, from back in the days when he would run through my stops). Taz usually turns in when he is ready to lift, so I need to be a little more patient and wait to see if he'll turn in before stopping him (and, on the other end of the spectrum, I need to be ready with a stop if he turns in before I planned to stop him). If he doesn't turn in, I just need to be ready to stop him exactly where I think he needs to be.

Another thing Elaine got on me for was my tone of voice. I guess my "lie down" is not strong enough. I developed this tone after a lesson last year with Tracy Derx, where she had admonished me to stop yelling a "lie down" every time (again, I probably started doing that because Taz used to run through my stops). Tracy had recommended that I just say "lie down" in a normal tone of voice (revolutionary!). I couldn't believe the difference in how this relaxed Taz. But somehow over time that normal-tone-of-voice lie down had morphed into a bit of a naggy, questioning one. I need to adopt a more confident, commanding tone. A happy medium between screaming and asking. No need to be over the top—I just need to be sure.

Taz's pace on his fetch was very pushy (again, not at all like it was at Scott's). His lifts were fine—he walked up very nicely after being downed at the top—but then he'd push into them too hard and the sheep would squirt forward and out. I'll need to lie him down again after his initial lift to prevent this. His flanks on the fetch were also too pushy—he was pushing forward with every flank I gave him. Same with the drive.

I called Scott afterward to see if he had any advice. He told me Taz knows better than to do all of this, so I need to make a bigger point of it when I am showing him he is wrong. For instance, if he's coming in flat, I need to lie him down, walk up toward the sheep, look hard at him, maybe whack my stick on the ground, and sharply ask him "what do you think you're doing?" or some such. He should turn off—he'll know he is not working correctly. The idea is not to try to fix that outrun or whatever, it's so that the next one is correct. Make the point now so that he has another chance to be correct later. I have been a bit hesitant to correct Taz, since in the past my bumbling corrections were unclear to him, causing him to hesitate in confusion. But it's different now, Scott explained, because now Taz knows what to do. I only have to let him know that he can't get away with anything with me, that the same rules apply. Scott said that Taz is such an honest dog that this testing probably won't go on for long. And Scott reminded me that the stop is the key to everything. If Taz is pushing on his flanks, I need to stop him and keep him working slower so he is thinking and feeling. And don't worry about driving with him until this is sorted. Work on the fetch first, then the cross drive, then the drive away. Scott reiterated that it shouldn't take very long. And then he reminded me that at this point, it's more about establishing a positive, constructive relationship than about getting perfect lines.

So, with all this in mind, I went out with Taz on Tuesday evening. I was excited to work on our relationship, and I was ready to let Taz know what he couldn't get away with anymore. And you know what? I didn't really even have to make an impression on him! Taz was amazing! He was nice and wide and feeling his sheep well. He did come in slightly flat on an outrun once, and I made a big deal about it and the next one was very nice. And I also made a big deal when he tried to creep through a lie down, and he jumped back and lied down quickly the next time I asked. But mostly I was making a bigger deal about things than I had to, since he was really looking pretty good. His pace was lovely, and he was listening well. I couldn't believe the difference! I think my demeanor was a little different and maybe that made the difference—instead of being a bit cautious about the whole thing, I had a plan and was pretty confident about what I was going to do. After I emailed Scott and Jenny about our successful day, Jenny wrote back that they agreed; Taz had probably been taking advantage of my uncertainty before, and he picked up on and reacted to my confidence this time.

I can't wait to work him again. Unfortunately, we've been having a giant spring snow/rain storm for the past few days, so I haven't been able to get out again with the dogs, but it's supposed to clear tomorrow, so we'll try again. I'll just stick with the plan and hopefully we'll have another successful day.

Icebreaker SDT report + more!

2009-04-11T13:29:00.010-06:00

This has been a crazy week for me, so I haven't had a chance to tell the rest of this story. Better late than never, though. After I picked up Taz from Scott's, we drove down through Montana and Idaho into Utah for the Icebreaker sheep dog trial. The weather was not so good for the drive, with rain and freezing rain and snow in the passes. It was a nervous drive, but a beautiful one.

I arrived in the town of Tremonton at about 7 and met Elaine and her sister (and about half the people competing in the trial) at the hotel. Taz and I had a proper happy little reunion in the hotel room. It would have been quite embarrassing if anyone had witnessed it. ;-) I think he was pretty happy to be back with me, and I was certainly ecstatic to have him back with me! When we drove to the trial field the following morning . . . the check engine light came back on in my truck. Ack! I couldn't do anything about it right then, but at least Elaine and I were following each other, so if it broke down completely I wouldn't be abandoned. Thankfully, it hadn't come on during my drive down to Utah—that would have been a really bad place to break down!

The trial was held on a huge field of turned earth. There was about two inches of snow covering it, and another inch of crusty ice on top of that. A strong icy wind was whipping, and the forecast was for a snowy rainy mixture (fortunately, it never did precipitate, though). The temps hovered around freezing, but with the arctic wind, it was much colder than that. This was, without a doubt, the coldest trial I have ever been to. That's not such a huge claim, as I haven't been to all that many trials. But Elaine agreed that this was the coldest trial she'd ever been to, and, well, she's been to a zillion! Most of us drove down to face the field and stayed warm watching the action in our vehicles. I really felt for the poor set-out crew. Brr!

I planned to trial Craig in pro-novice. I entered Taz, too, just for fun, to see what he'd do. I knew it was much too soon to be serious about competing with him yet, but I admit I was very curious about what he'd do. It turned out not to be such a good idea (and one Scott and Jenny were fairly horrified about when I told them about it after the fact). The sheep for the pro-novice course were set about 350 yards away. This was a BIG pro-novice course, with a full drive and cross drive that was the same for the open class. The wind was blowing back onto the handler's post, so the dogs couldn't hear much. I decided to send Taz to the left, as his come bye had looked slightly better than his away at Scott's (of course, this could just as likely have been due to the draws or any other factors specific to Scott's field). He cast out nicely, but stopped after about 100 yards to look back at me. Since Taz isn't taking my whistles yet, I yelled as loud as I could to come bye. He continued to look at me, and then turned to continue his flank for maybe another 30 yards. Then he stopped and looked at me again. I shouted another come bye, but he couldn't hear me. At this point I left the post to help him, but I was hampered by how difficult it was to walk/run in that crusty snow. I tried to talk to him, but he just couldn't hear me and eventually he just ran straight toward the sheep and moved them back to the set-out pen. By the time I finally hoofed my way up there, he was just hanging out, and the set-out crew reported that he just held the sheep at the pen once he reached it. I am glad he didn't try any funny business up there, but mostly I am mad at myself for trying to do way too much way too soon. It wasn't a good experience for him or for our partnership, and I felt awful knowing I'd had him for one day and already let him down.

I didn't have too much time to reflect about this, though, as I still had to run Craig in the class. I brought Tazzy back to the truck and got out Craig. Craig spotted the sheep up at the top immediately while we waited at the post. I sent him to the right, and his outrun and lift were very nice. He was maybe not quite as wide as he could have been, but that is Craig. His fetch was a bit to far to the left to make the panels, but his pace was good. We had a nice turn around the post and a dead straight, sure drive away through the panels. The cross drive was high, and we missed the cross drive panels, but the turn back was nice. Many dogs had trouble there, as the draw to the exhaust pens was very strong. Craig brought them nicely to the pen, where we timed out.

I scratched Taz the following day (obviously), and Craig and I ran first. This run was similar to the previous day's, but much more speeded up and with a bit less control. The sheep just wanted to run, and I had trouble getting Craig to slow down and take my flanks. We missed the drive away panels, but the cross drive was better on this day. And since we rocketed through the course, we had a bit more time at the end . . . and we penned the sheep! I was pretty happy about that—all the penning work we've done over the past few weeks seems to have paid off! This is the first time I've ever penned at a trial with either dog :)

Craig and I got second place on both days. Hooray! But the real winners at this trial were the sheep. They were among the toughest I've seen! They were older range ewes from three different flocks who had been together a few weeks. They didn't play well together; they challenged the dogs; sometimes they just lied down and gave up. Keeping them moving was the key, but maintaining control was difficult. Craig handled them very nicely, but all the scores were pretty low at this trial.

It was a great trial, well-organized and smoothly run and lots of fun. I like the folks in Utah; they're a friendly and welcoming bunch. Saturday afternoon, I had to miss the open runs and leave the trial early in order to have my poor truck looked at by the Toyota dealer so I wouldn't risk driving home over the mountains with the check engine light on.

It was not good news. Something about spark plugs and misfiring cylinders and ignition coils and packs. The dealer didn't have all the parts, so he fixed what he could and admonished me to get it taken care of as quickly as I could once I got home. Eep, that sounds ominous! So, hundreds of dollars later, we drove home the following day in mostly good weather with the exception of snow over the Vail pass and rain in the Denver area. At least we made it!

Unfortunately, my truck died at the end of my street the next time I drove it, and I had to have it towed to a mechanic in Boulder. He patched it up for a few more hundred dollars, but it was still running rough. The mechanic warned me that I should have some other procedure done (by this time, I just stopped paying attention to the details), which would likely reveal the need to replace some other spendy part. Good lord! What was going on here? My truck was falling apart overnight!

So I cleaned it out and cleaned it up and drove straight to the local Toyota dealer. And traded in my beloved 2000 Tacoma for a brand-spanking-new 2009 Tacoma. It is way more than I can afford, but it's so nice and won't threaten to break down on these long trips to trials and clinics and Canada! Hooray for that!

And hooray for Craig for doing so well at the Icebreaker trial and hooray for Taz being home!

Taz is home!

2009-04-06T21:11:00.013-06:00

I am back from the great Tazimodo adventure! And what an adventure it was!

I left early on Tuesday morning to head up to Scott's place in Canada. I got a speeding ticket in Montana, but the cop knocked 5 miles off my clocked speed so that my fine was only $20. And then he told me I could just pay him and that would be the end of it. It seemed a little shady to me, but he returned with an official-looking printed receipt. Works for me! I made it as far as the tiny town of Shelby, Montana, spent the night in a hotel, spoiling Craig, letting him sleep outside his crate and hang on the bed with me while I watched tv. I know I shouldn't have, but he hates Taz and I knew he was about to be pretty bummed that Taz was coming home.

Enjoy it while you can, buddy . . .

The next morning, as I was getting ready to get on the road, I noticed my check engine light was on. I am so clueless about vehicles that I thought it meant that I should add oil. (My truck does have a slight oil leak.) So I did, and the light stayed on. I then decided it meant that I should change my oil, as that was overdue. So I did that, and the light still stayed on, so the oil-change guy just disconnected my battery for a few minutes and then the light went off. But I knew something was wrong. No time to think about it now, though. I crossed the border without incident and finally arrived at Scott's place around two.

The first thing Scott did was show me a video he and Jenny made of he and Taz working. And holy cow—Taz looked great! His formerly slicy flanks were wide, and his outruns were deep all the way around on both sides. His pace was steady; he was relaxed and feeling his sheep well. His driving was straight and sure. He was even beginning to shed. He's still not taking all his whistles—sometimes he takes them just fine, but he often hesitates just a split second before taking the whistle, as if he's still figuring out what they mean. It's almost like he's translating them in his head or something. Scott reiterated that I should back the whistles up with a voice command until Taz is a bit more solid on them.

Then we went outside to work. I couldn't wait to see Taz—and see him work! Scott told me to be low key, so that Taz wouldn't get all excited and lose his mind before going to work. Taz was definitely happy to see me, but he was pretty much running to be with Scott. That was a little weird for me, but I was happy to see his enthusiasm for working with Scott. Taz obviously has not spent the last few months pining for me ;-)

Scott spent a lot of time working Taz with me, showing me everything Taz has learned (I am most impressed with his flanks. They are amazing—a complete 180 from the hard slicing he used to do!), and then I worked him myself for about half an hour. Even though I thought my whistles sounded enough like Scott's, Taz apparently didn't, and he wouldn't take mine at all. Taz also wouldn't take my stops, even on voice command. I did a few outruns and did some driving, and though things didn't go quite as smoothly for me as they had with Scott handling him, it was fun to work him. I spent the night at Scott and Jenny's place, along with the super nice George Stambulic, and after a yummy breakfast Scott gave me a lesson in the morning (and Jenny took all the photos you see here). Scott showed me that I had to make sure Taz took my stops no matter what at first, and then he could earn his way to just stopping on his feet and even taking a few steps through a stop when the situation called for it. But until he earns my trust, he has to lie down every time. Scott gave me lots of tips for handling him, lots of praise, clear communication, lie him down immediately if he doesn't do what I ask, enforce the stop. Scott told me the stop is the key to everything.

I am pretty confident I can take over now. I think Scott did a fabulous job with Taz. Taz understands the basics; he knows what he should be doing. He understands that a correction means he made a poor choice, but he now has an array of better choices at his disposal. Scott told me to start out with the sheep closer in, so I can more easily control the outcome, and then gradually over the next month or so move further and further out. Basically, I need to let him know that the rules are the same with me as they are with Scott, and the same things are expected of him. I can't wait to get started!

Next post will be about the rest of the trip—the Icebreaker sheepdog trial in Utah! In the meantime, though, I have to say that I am loving having my dog home again :-)))))

My Taz fix

2009-03-24T06:33:00.000-06:00

Jenny Glen sent me some amazing photos of Taz a few days ago. Working shots, no less! And they're terrific! She said, "He listens really well, but when I'm by myself it's hard to get pictures of the dog AND the sheep so most of these are just him walking up on the sheep who are behind me." I am impressed that she got such great working shots on her own!

Doesn't he look good?

All photos taken by Jennifer Glen.

Latest progress report on Taz

2009-03-20T08:04:00.005-06:00

Just a week and a half now until I go pick up Taz from Scott. I can't wait! Scott reports that he is outrunning pretty well. Scott says at 300 yards, his outrun is "dynamite." I'm so happy to hear this! Taz's problems with his outrun have always been a bit of a mystery to those who know his lines, because he comes from natural outrunning dogs on both sides. I am so so glad that Scott has been able to develop this part of his potential. Scott said Taz really only has problems if he's running near a fence because he wants to be sure he is wide enough. So if he's afraid the fence will cause him to run too tight, he'll stop. Blow him on once, and he'll continue on perfectly.

He's still not taking his whistles 100 percent of the time—Scott says some days he'll take them really well, but other days he often needs a verbal backup. Scott stressed that Taz works really well with praise and he doesn't like to be in trouble, so I think I'll have to be careful to keep my tone of voice even when I need to give him that verbal backup. As I wrote about last time, I don't want to let frustration creep into my voice, at least until he's solid on his whistles. Scott said he is surprised it is taking Taz this long to get his whistles, but that Taz really tries to be a very honest dog and if he's going to err on something he'll err on trying to do it right. He's not as confident as he first appeared, when he was trying to run through everything (and I suspect at least part of this confidence thing may be my fault), but Scott said Taz would "suit a lot more people than he wouldn't." At the same time, Taz has to understand what you're asking him to do; he's not a dog you can just intimidate around a course. He's got to understand it or he's not going to do it, and he'll look bad as a result—but it's just that he's a thinking dog, and I have to be sure he understands what I want him to do. (My poor dog must have been struggling so hard to interpret my all-over-the-place instruction as I worked to figure it all out myself—I think sending him to Scott might have been the best thing I could have ever done for him!)

Scott said Taz takes his voice commands real well, he leans into his sheep nice, and his fetch is looking very good as well. He is not driving a very long way yet, but Scott can "stretch him out maybe 150 yards or so" (which seems pretty long to me). He's not super pushy on the drive, but Scott is intentionally holding Taz back a little here because he doesn't want Taz to run me over when I get him back. He wants Taz to rely on me on the drive. He said with heavy sheep, a dog like Taz probably has to be asked up a bit more and I'll have to make sure he doesn't slide around on a flank; with lighter sheep, he keeps a nice pace and would require just little flanks just to keep the sheep on line.

Scott thinks the bond Taz and I have because we "grew up together" means we should do well together when Taz comes back to me. He cautioned me not to try to push him onto his sheep too much—just let him do his job and help where I have to. Don't let him come on too fast, and if it's a little bit slow, then it's a little bit slow for now. I asked Scott how long I should work Taz, and he said to work him until he hits a rough spot, and then help him through that spot, then keep things a little bit nice, and then call it a day. That way, he gets to finish on a good note, but he has to struggle a bit, too, and he understands that he's not allowed to lose his mind because he's struggling. This makes him mentally tough, and he builds trust in me to help him get through pressure.

As we were wrapping up the conversation, Scott said that he tends to focus on the negative when talking about training, and he reiterated that "actually, he's pretty darn nice." Of course, I love hearing that! Scott really gave me a lot to think about this time. I hope I can remember all this when I am working Taz again!

Letting go and other life lessons about training stockdogs

2009-03-17T13:17:00.006-06:00

I had a fantastic working session with Craig and Elaine last Sunday (aside from the fact that Craig wanted to take all her commands and none of mine at first—he used to do that when I first got him, but he hasn't done it in a long time. I guess it's been a while since I worked dogs with Elaine!). It was fantastic in that it really got me thinking and I definitely saw things I haven't paid enough attention to in the past. Elaine is able to pinpoint some of my bad habits/mistakes very easily and communicate them to me effectively. She thinks (and this is something Don Helsley pointed out to me as well at a clinic last fall) that one of my biggest problems right now is that I am not letting mistakes go quickly enough, so I'm not always staying in the moment, which allows everything to go downhill quickly. I have always blamed this vaguely on my bad timing, but it is much more helpful to realize I should not dwell on mistakes either my dog or I make and go from there than to think about the vastness of needing to improve my timing. Not sure if this makes sense, but it's much more concrete to me than just "improve my timing" is. Though it will probably be tough to let things go, this is something I had to learn to do when I was a whitewater kayaker facing churning rapids, avoiding giant boat-sucking holes and violent river boils, and generally reading the river well enough to plan where to place my boat four moves in advance—so I know I can learn to do it here as well.

Also, related to this, I've been thinking about when/how much to make a point of enforcing commands, and I reread Scott Glen's chapter in the Top Trainers Talk About Starting a Sheepdog book. Scott said he is insistent about enforcing only a stop on a young dog, and even then he will let a dog run through a stop if he sees the dog is trying to fix a mess that the dog created. He was talking about starting a dog, of course, but I am going to try to keep this in mind as I sort through the challenge of keeping flow going while not letting the dog get away with bad habits/helping him work through pressure. I needn't make a big deal out of every perceived infraction; if the dog is right or things are going well, just move on. If things are not going well, let the dog know he isn't right but don't spend all day arguing about it with him—just help him make things right.

Another thing that I realized while watching Elaine work her dog is that she gets after her dogs in a much less emotional way than I do. I want to strive to get less emotional, particularly when Taz gets home, since I am 100% sure my emotions have a huge effect on his work (particularly when I am frustrated, even though I am mainly frustrated with myself). I think my emotion-on-display has taken some confidence out of Taz, and I am sure my emotional corrections/commands are the reason he was hesitating on his outrun in the first place and I was unable to fix it afterward. I will use whistles more with Taz, which should help, but mainly I will work to keep my emotions to myself, thankyouverymuch.

I am going to get Taz in exactly two weeks now (for real, this time), and I can't wait. I keep meaning to post the latest progress report I got from Scott, and I promise I will in the next few days.

Catching up again

2009-03-11T08:37:00.004-06:00

I've been doing a bit of work with Craig lately, trying to concentrate on my worst handling weaknesses (timing is always my worst weakness, but it manifests in so many different ways!). I've been working on outruns out at Fran's, where the sheep are very light and the draw back to the pens is so strong, and this gives me an opportunity to gauge how much to trust Craig to set the fetch line and how much to help him. He sometimes doesn't take my commands on the fetch—he just doesn't want to give up the pressure and would rather bring the sheep ten feet to my left than risk losing them. Since it is easy to lose them here, I don't make a point of enforcing my commands, but I hope I am not letting him think that he can decide which commands to take. One thing Scott told me is to be careful about making a point of enforcing a command when doing so would have the result that both the dog and I are trying to avoid—letting the sheep get away. I mean, I am sure generally there is a time to make a point that the dog needs to listen to me, but I also know I risk the dog losing confidence in my direction every time I let the sheep get away, so I need to pick my battles. Really, I need to figure out what is the best way to teach a dog to come off pressure?

I've also been working a bit on driving, though not as much as I have in the past. Really, I can spend every minute of every work session practicing driving and still not perfect my timing here, but it's no fun doing any one thing all the time. Most of the time, we seem to be doing okay, with Craig taking the majority of my whistles, but sometimes all bets are off and he doesn't want to take my commands (again, usually for fear he will lose the sheep). He did this one day when we were working at Irene's, and I decided it was worth it to enforce my commands with him after I saw he was doing this over and over again, since I know that—unlike at Fran's—he could cover the sheep just fine if they started to break here. He just didn't want to do things that way. So I did give him the business for that, and though we continued fighting on the field that day, since then he's been great about listening to me. (That's apparently his MO—he pushes the envelope until he gets in trouble, and while he's no good the rest of that particular day, he is much more obedient in the days following. Somehow, I'd love to time this so that the last practice session before a trial he will need a good dressing down, so that he is better at listening when we run for real!)

Larry has been helping me figure out the fine art of penning the sheep, too. I suck at penning, mostly due to my crappy timing and second guessing myself, but partly also because both my dogs have a tendency to slice their flanks, particularly when working close in at the pen. Larry has given me a few pointers, and they've been pretty useful—it helps to have some sort of a plan when I see the sheep approaching (besides, you know, hoping that this will be the one time they'll just decide to march straight into the pen on their own). He gave me a few general rules:

The side of the pen with the rope is my responsibility, and the other side is the dog's. Of course, if the sheep are bolting, I won't be able to contain them on my side, but I can do things to affect the sheep's behavior (e.g., block, swing my stick, wave the rope).
Try to stand behind the gate when the dog is bringing the sheep over to the pen, and be prepared to move out when I flank my dog as the sheep approach the pen. Ideally, the dog will be flanking around the other side of the gate, so he can cover his side while I cover mine.
The leader is the sheep I need to pen; the others will follow her in. Of course, I've heard this before, but I have had trouble identifying the leader or else just remembering to pay attention to that. I paid attention while Larry penned with his dogs, and I was then able to see the leader, and try to have Craig work her, when it was my turn.
Walk the dog up in the direction I want the sheep to move; they will turn away from the dog. If it's not quite right, give another small flank. Again, this is not new, but I often cheat on this because I am afraid to flank the dog in case he slices. Moving slowly is the key here, to ease the dog into position to walk him up in the right direction.
When sheep and dog are moving, keep the dog flanking until the sheep turn, then stop him, then walk him up. Don't stop the dog as long as the sheep are continuing to move in the wrong direction. If the sheep are stopped, flank the dog to the position required to move the sheep in the desired direction, then walk him up.

I practiced a bunch, and was successful a few times—and I was able to repeat our success at Cathy's last week, too. I have always had a hard time penning Cathy's sheep (though I don't think they're particularly tough to pen; actually, I think other folks find them pretty easy to pen). The first time took a little while, but Craig and I worked as a team and were able to do it without him wanting to grip in frustration (this is a good indicator that I'm getting a little better ;-)

If it's not too windy tonight, I'll go back to Cathy's and work on all this some more :-)))

Workin' dogs...

2009-02-27T09:33:00.008-07:00

So with Taz away, I'm having a little trouble motivating to update the bloggo. I mean, it's not like I'm teaching Craig anything new, though we've been working a bit. Mainly we just work on improving my timing with driving, although for the past couple of weeks I've mainly been doing outruns. I've been going up to Fran's with Larry and her sheep are a bit wild. These sheep like to run, so we do round-robin outruns, with one person holding the sheep with a dog and the other person sending a dog on an outrun, lift, and fetch. Because Larry was working 2 dogs, both of whom are younger than Craig, we usually had each of his dogs do two outruns for every one Craig did. So after the first OLF, the dog would drive them back toward us and Craig would pick them up so Larry's dog could do the second outrun. I like working with Larry, especially because his Raid is Craig's half-sister. It is neat to watch her run and see the similarities between her working style and Craig's. Her outrun is much wider than Craig's is, but they both really have a tendency to want to overcompensate for any draws on the field. I like to watch Larry handle Raid, so I can get ideas about how to better handle Craig :)

I have been learning a bit more about holding and reading sheep during these sessions. Like that sheep can be intimidated into staying put while we're holding them if the dog is standing, but might try to break if I make the dog lie down. Also, they can be very sneaky, moving in one direction to lure the naive handler into sending the dog against the draw. Then, once the dog is committed, the sheep can do an about face and high tail it in the other direction. I've been experimenting with how close I can get myself and Craig to the sheep to keep them relaxed enough to stay put but not so relaxed that they attempt to run back to where they want to go. Often they'd stay put for a little while and then just start to drift in the direction of the side I was on opposite the draw, as Craig was guarding the side they were more likely to take off on. I'd lie Craig down and go to block them. If they kept moving, I got to be able to tell without looking whether I was coming in too hard or straight, or the problem was actually that Craig had sneakily gotten up and was actually driving them back so they'd stay further away from the draw. Because God forbid the sheep move a muscle in the direction of the gate...

Here are some photos from last weekend:

Some of the sheep

Craig lifts the sheep. He's coming in at around 2:00, but you can see he's right where he needs to be.

Mirk flanking.

Craig fetches the sheep to me.

Raid waits her turn.

Craig peeks through the opening as he fetches the sheep to me.

Mirk focuses on the action.

Mirk drives the sheep toward our general direction.

Raid begins an outrun.

Craig takes a break.

Come bye, Raid.

And, finally, isn't Craig handsome?

Back to life!

2009-02-08T18:51:00.003-07:00

So sorry for not updating in so long—I went to the National Western Stock Show a couple of weeks ago to watch the brave/crazy souls run their dogs and got the famous "stock show crud" there. I've been down-and-out sick for a week and a half and finally started feeling better just a couple of days ago. The poor dogs have not exactly been sympathetic and were going stir crazy stuck inside the house for so long. But I've been making it up to them over the past few days. We went on a nice hike on Friday, topped off by a rousing game of fetch in the backyard. Well, Sophie got to play fetch, anyway. Craig tries to eat other dogs when they play fetch, so he spends quality time in his crate during these games.

Sophie had fun, though.

But don't worry, Craig was only inside for a little while. Both dogs enjoyed the nice weather we've been having lately after the ball was put away.

See, even now Craig's thinking about chasing Sophie if she moves a muscle. If he does, though, Sophie will kick his butt. Craig knows this, but he can barely help himself. Sigh.

Besides, Craig got to do something way better than chase Sophie on both days this weekend. Yes, Craig and I actually got to work sheep. Hooray! It feels like it's been so long, I'm surprised we both haven't forgotten what to do completely...

But we didn't. On Saturday, we went to Cathy's and got to work in the big alfalfa field with four of her best sheep. I was expecting Craig to be wild and my timing to be really off, but I was very pleasantly surprised. Craig calmly and quietly helped me sort off four good sheep and drove them up to the alfalfa field. We did a few outruns, just because he loves to do them so much. I made sure he bent out, but we didn't go crazy with any drills. Afterward, we did some driving in a box. I tried to locate some landscape features for Craig to bring the sheep over, and we finished the day by doing a makeshift course a few times (or, well, an outrun, lift, fetch, turn around an imaginary post, drive away to bring the sheep between a dirt clump and tumbleweed and then a cross drive somewhere over another dirt clump).

I forced myself to use my whistle almost exclusively. I know I need the practice, and I want to be more comfortable with it by the time Taz comes home. Scott gave me another report on Taz, and he is continuing to do very well up in Alberta, except that he hasn't picked up his whistles as easily as Scott expected him to. I am sure this is due to my half-assed attempts to put whistles on Taz in the past (and my inconsistent use of the whistles when we hike), so I want to be pretty solid giving whistles now. Once Taz gets it with Scott, I don't want to confuse him (more than necessary) when I take over. So I will try to force myself to use whistles with Craig. And the results were encouraging. Craig did really well—he pretty much took all of my whistles. I think he was so desperate to work, he was happy to generally do what I asked of him.

That's not to say our lines were perfect. Often when I flanked him, Craig had a frustrating tendency to pick his own place to turn in to the stock and walk up. This was usually not where I wanted him to turn in, and he often ended up sort of following them in an incorrect direction. I'd continue to whistle him around, and he'd take another couple of steps and turn in again. In an attempt to compensate for this, I tried to give him several flank commands in a row (so I'd whistle "come bye, come bye, come bye"). The result of this, predictably, was that he would then overflank and turn the sheep too sharply. So we did a bit of weaving back and forth for much of our work session. By the end, though, I was able to keep him more or less where I wanted him by flanking him and then reflanking him—not in rapid succession, but before he had a chance to turn in. It was hard, but we were successful when I timed it right. We did a perfect little mini course this way, and I quit while we were ahead. We'll continue to practice this, but I was mentally exhausted and wanted to end on a good note.

We went out again today. This time, we met Larry at Fran's and spent the morning doing round-robin outruns with Raid and Mirk. We had to actively hold the sheep for each other, or else they would run back to the gate. This was good practice for me; in the past, the sheep I've held have always been happy enough to stay in the general vicinity of wherever we stopped them. These guys wanted to bolt, so I had to use Craig to hold them reasonably still long enough for Larry's dog to reach the top. Sometimes, it was tough! Craig, at 10, looked pretty good. He was a bit tight on his outruns, of course. That's just the way he runs, though, and to be honest he doesn't really upset the sheep before he reaches the top. He lifted the sheep pretty well and most of the time they came right to my feet. Not always, though—once in a while Craig concentrated on guarding the draw a bit too much and so overcompensated on the fetch. He did get tired, but we were out there for a while. I think (crossing my fingers) he should be fine this year for any pro-novice or open ranch trials we run. Yay!

So it was a good weekend for Craig, and Sophie got out some. I do miss working with Taz, and I can't wait for him to come back. But a little more patience will go a long way...in the meantime, I hope to get back into a routine of going out with Craig at least a couple of times a week.

Edited to add: Mary W. had some good insight into why Craig may have been underflanking on Saturday: perhaps it had something to do with the way I was whistling him on. It is true that he is usually more prone to overflanking than underflanking when driving sheep away from me, and it is also true that I usually talk to him on him drive away (as opposed to whistling). It stands to reason that at least part of the reason he was having trouble doing exactly what I wanted might have been because I was communicating a little more (or just differently) than I thought I was with each tone. For example, Craig may have been trained to take that rapid-fire succession of whistles as me asking for a big flank, not a keep-going flank. So I will definitely pay more attention to how I'm whistling in the future...

40 things about me

2009-01-26T19:55:00.018-07:00

Okay, like many other bloggers recently, I've been tagged. Samantha got me yesterday. I have to write 40 things about me and include a recent photo. Then I'm supposed to tag three others to do the same. Let's see...

First the photo...it's not so great and it's from last year, but I really don't have too many recent pictures of me. At least this one has Taz in it, too. That makes it on topic for this blog, right?
I was tempted to write 40 things about Taz, since my life isn't that exciting and, well, this is supposed to be a dog training blog, but I think that might be cheating a bit...so here goes...

1. When I was 16, I was arrested for shoplifting a packet of Reece’s Pieces. I was handcuffed to the wall at the police station and had to go to court with a lawyer and everything. I have never been tempted to steal anything since.
2. I used to do a lot of whitewater kayaking. I loved the feeling of paddling down the river, but it always scared the sh*t out of me.
3. When I was five, I fell off a swing set backwards and upside down. I landed in tall bushes and wound up with a concussion. I cried hysterically, and, finding nobody coming out of the house to see what was the matter, I stopped crying and went to find my mom in the house. Whereupon I immediately started crying again, so I could have a proper fuss made over me.
4. I lived in the UK for a couple of years and would live there again in a heartbeat.
5. My hair is pin straight, and, except for a few years in the eighties when I thought I wanted curls, I’ve had the same haircut since I was four.
6. I get terrible motion sickness, even in a sea kayak, though I’ve always known spending lots of time in kayaks is way worth the discomfort.
7. I have haggled for a wooden monkey in Morocco.
8. I was a vegetarian for about fifteen years. Well, that’s not true. I was a vegetarian for about ten years and then also ate fish for the following five. I started eating meat again a couple of years ago, when I was at a stockdog clinic and the host barbecued such a tasty lamb that I sampled some. And that was that.
9. I used to listen to heavy metal, and my favorite band was Iron Maiden. I’ve since broadened my musical horizons considerably, but I can still rock out to “Run to the Hills.”
10. I’m really pretty shy.
11. One day, I’d like to live on a little hobby farm and have sheep and goats and chickens.
12. I went to Russia when it was still “behind the Iron Curtain.”
13. I love spending time on a trail with good friends and dogs. I went hiking for the first time when I was in my late twenties and going to grad school in Oregon.
14. My first car was a Pontiac Sunbird, with a broken passenger door and a kickass stereo. It stalled and died every time I drove through a puddle containing more than two inches of water. It finally committed suicide for good on a highway in the Bronx.
15. I am pretty impulsive. I got a tattoo before they were cool because someone told me he thought I’d never have the guts to do it (and since I obviously could be manipulated pretty easily, I’m thankful I only got a tattoo—but in my defense, I was pretty young).
16. I took Spanish for four years in school and was completely unable to communicate with the locals when I was in Baja.
17. I think working sheep with a dog is the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to learn how to do.
18. I found my first dog, Sophie, locked and abandoned in the bathroom of a city park, after teaching a kayaking class on the Willamette River.
19. I fell off a horse once in Wales.
20. I met a stranger on a train to Edinburgh and then stayed with her in her parents’ house for a few days. It was the first, and last, time I ever ate haggis.
21. I miss everyone in New York terribly!
22. I used to ride my bike nearly everywhere I went when I lived in Oregon. I wish I still did that...
23. I think Neil Young is a genius.
24. Due to its predominantly Jewish and Italian demographic makeup, my hometown of Massapequa is known locally as “Matzoh Pizza.”
25. I miss the ocean, but I would never want to give up the mountains.
26. I once was terrorized by a big mean cat I was watching while apartment sitting in NYC; if we tried to leave the loft bed, he would launch himself at us spitting with claws and teeth everywhere. We stayed up there for three days before making our escape.
27. My snowboard is pink.
28. I miss my sister every single day.
29. I still watch “The Real World” sometimes. This may not be too surprising, given that my cousin Jen and I once watched videos on MTV (back when they actually played videos) from sunup to sundown without leaving the house all day.
30. I was told (and I believed) my Sophiedawg was a purebred lab when I first got her. Um, no. She’s so not. She’s also not a Chihuahua, despite the results of her DNA test results.
31. I interned as a production assistant at the McLaughlin show on CNBC when I was in college and got my friend Kevin booked as a guest.
32. For a little while, I was also a freelance floor manager and a camera operator at CNBC.
33. I wish I could spend more time with my nephews, Eric and Tommy, who are the greatest kids on the planet...um, along with my friends’ son Michael...and, well, I don’t know them very well yet but I am sure my newest cousins Lucas and Amelia are, too.
34. I was fired twice: once because I ditched my shift at Pergament’s to go play in Manhattan when I was a teenager and once when I dumped ketchup all over some hapless woman’s shirt when I was a waitress at the Ivy in London.
35. I got my first Macintosh computer in 1993 and have never owned any other kind.
36. I love sushi, Italian food, Indian food, and Mexican food. And French toast. With real maple syrup. Mmmm.
37. Sometimes I say ridiculous things I would never normally say because I am afraid I’m not holding up my end of the conversation (see #10).
38. I have zero musical talent. I couldn’t even master the recorder in third grade. No wonder I can’t whistle.
39. I used to work in a word factory in Cambridge, Mass. It was a horrible, horrible job. Remember, Kate?
40. I’ve driven across the country from coast to coast three times and halfway across and back dozens of times. I love road trips!

Okay, phew. That wasn't so hard. Now it's my turn to tag three people. How about Robin, Jodi, and Maddy?

Working Craig

2009-01-18T21:23:00.001-07:00

The last few times I've worked Craig have been rather frustrating. Part of the problem was that due to the holidays and travel and really cold, cold weather before the holidays, I couldn't get out to work very much. Unfortunately, when I take more than a few days off working stock with a dog, my timing really suffers. I need to work often to stay sharp. Craig usually does okay with time off, but we do need to develop a rapport again, so that he listens to what I'm saying rather than sometimes overriding my commands if he thinks his ideas are correct. So the past few times, we've been getting out some of those kinks. In addition, the field I usually work in is very narrow—just 330 feet wide. The sheep are pretty broke and the draw is also very strong back to the barn. It can be hard to work my pressure-sensitive, tight-running dogs here because they don't want to run as wide as they should, and they are either always having to stop what we're working on to cover the sheep or adjusting what we're working on in response to the sheep's learned behaviors. Now, it's definitely not impossible to work dogs here—Cathy obviously does pretty well—but at my skill level I have a hard time compensating for all this. I remember Derek Scrimgeour saying that you should always choreograph the action on the field when you're training a dog. It's really tough for me to do that when we're working in the narrow field.

Fortunately, at certain times we're able to work in the alfalfa field behind her narrow field. Lately, there has been some sort of oil rigging heavy machinery running back there, so we weren't able to work dogs there. Well, this morning Cathy told me it was gone, so Craig and I headed out. Cathy had sorted some of her best sheep off for me, and we worked in the big field, unencumbered and far away from any draws. It was freakin' AWESOME!!!

I spent some time reminding Craig to bend out on his flanks by standing in front of him, but off to the side of both Craig and the sheep and then waving my stick up and down a couple of times before sending him the other way. I tried to lie him down immediately if he came in at all straight and let him go around if he bent out enough. Craig does respond to this, but I guess I'm not quite consistent enough for this to become ingrained, or maybe he's just gotten away with running tight for too long, because he does have to be reminded to bend out every single time. I still don't remember how to transition the exercise into a drive, as it's supposed to be, so maybe that's the problem. Anyway, I wanted to work on driving, so we spent most of our time driving the sheep in a square about 100 yards around me in each direction. I worked him mostly on whistles and tried to minimize any back-and-forth corrections, and we did pretty well. Craig didn't take all my commands, and my timing wasn't perfect, but we were in sync for the most part and our lines weren't too bad.

When I was ready to go, someone else was working her german shepherd in the arena between the field I was in and the outside world, so I had to wait for her to finish up before I could go. There's a pen in the field I was in, so I decided to try to put the sheep in the pen so that they wouldn't hang against the fence acting as a draw for the german shepherd lady's sheep. I absolutely suck at penning, so this would be good practice for me. We spent a lot of time with the sheep going back and forth and around a few times, but eventually we did it. I was pretty proud of us, because both of us figured it out. We started out putting way too much pressure on the sheep and coming in way too strongly, and gradually we moderated and positioned oursleves correctly and got the job done. Craig only tried to grip once, which is pretty good for us, as he grips when he gets frustrated. Only trying to grip once (and not even doing it) means that we were working more or less together, even though it took some time.

Well done, Craig!

So it was a great work session for us today. We're in the middle of a weird warm spell (it was in the 60s today and should be nice for the next few days), and I am looking forward to going out again later this week!

Taz's first time on sheep--old photos

2009-01-14T15:18:00.006-07:00

I was just going through some old CDs I had, and I found these photos of Taz's first time on sheep (taken by my friend Julia)! In these pictures he was about 8 months old and working with our first trainer, Claudia. I think I was in the arena, too, staying out of the way but trying to follow the action (though I had little idea what was going on).

He's not quite sure about them at first but he's interested

Getting up close to investigate the obviously dead broke puppy sheep

Figuring some things out

Now he's getting going...

Looks like he might even be driving a little here

That'll do, Taz

He does look remarkably calm in these photos, and I'm not sure why that is, since I remember him being kind of a little hellion on stock when he was younger. Maybe that part came a little later. Anyway, I'm beyond tickled to have discovered these photos! There are a few more on my Flickr site here.

Not a baby daddy...

2009-01-07T22:29:00.003-07:00

"Well, Taz is still a virgin," Scott said, laughing, much to my disappointment.

Rats! We came so close to that not being so. A couple of weeks earlier, Jenny had contacted me about possibly breeding Taz to their young Megan bitch. Megan is a bright Alta-Pete prospect; she's a half-sister to Maid and a niece to Pleat, and doing quite well in training. Scott thought she and Taz would be a good cross and wondered if I was interested. After we discussed some of the health considerations, you bet I was interested! I have just started to consider getting another puppy, and the timing seemed perfect—and there's nothing I'd like more than a Taz pup! And from an Alta-Pete bitch to boot! Jenny cautioned me not to get too excited—lots of things could happen to prevent it from taking place, not least of which was Scott possibly changing his mind...

Welllll, it turned out Scott was all for it, but Taz had other ideas...

Apparently, Taz needed a girl with experience. He liked to flirt with Megan, and he tried to do the deed, but Jenny said, "Megan was not the nicest girlfriend and whenever she snapped at Taz his feelings were hurt and he wouldn't try again. We held her for him but he was too polite and wouldn't mount her. Megan is just one of those bitches that (at least on her first time) needed a male who wouldn't take no for an answer." And in the end, she tied with another dog.

I guess I'm not that surprised. Taz is very much a gentleman, and I can believe he wouldn't force himself on another girl (that would be so rude). So there will be no Taz babies after all.

Ah well. It was fun to think about for a while :)

A progress report from Scott!

2008-12-28T20:14:00.007-07:00

Scott called me tonight with a report on Taz's progress in the field. Hooray!

It has been particularly cold and snowy in Alberta for the past few weeks, and this has hampered Scott's work with all the dogs a little. He is still able to work them nearly every day, but I think he's having to wait for a little of the snow to melt before doing everything he wants to do with the dogs in training.

The first thing Scott told me is that he likes Taz—he thinks he's a nice dog; nice to be around and nice to work. He likes how Taz rates his sheep; he is powerful but doesn't come on too strong, and he doesn't have too much or not enough eye. He also said he "doesn't have a dishonest bone in his body," and he agrees with my earlier assessment that Taz was mainly just confused about what was expected of him. He hesitated a couple of times with Scott right at the very beginning of his stay there, but he hasn't done it at all since. His outruns are "nice and deep" now with Scott, though the snow has prevented Scott from working with Taz to lengthen his outrun very much, and Scott is now working on shaping Taz's flanks a bit more. This is exciting, but I am not surprised—Taz's outruns looked terrific after the last clinic I went to with Scott. Sadly, it didn't last very long then, but Scott said that is the difference between working with a dog for a couple of days at a clinic and working him every day for a few months. He now has the opportunity to truly make sure Taz understands the correct shape of his flanks so that he does it right most of the time because he understands what he should be doing, rather than because he is intimidated by an unfamiliar clinician—and also if Taz does slice his flanks, he will understand what he is doing wrong when I correct him and will know what he should be doing to make it right.

Scott said Taz sometimes will start an outrun out okay, but then take a few steps forward before widening back out. Scott wants to make sure Taz starts correctly and remains correct all the time. However, he also said that Taz is really not wrong very often—in fact, he is going to have to work on setting Taz up to be wrong so that he can make it very clear to Taz what he is supposed to be doing. The deep snow has prevented Scott from sending Taz without first setting him up properly so he can see what he'll do then—will Taz still run wide and deep, or will he get nervous and try to rush things? Sending Taz on the fly will give Scott the opportunity to see how well Taz understands what he should be doing, and Scott will have more opportunity to correct him for anything less than perfect flanks. In addition, Scott will spend next month putting Taz on whistles.

And that's about it for now. All in all, a pretty good report :)

Quick Taz update

2008-12-22T20:28:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I know you're wondering how Taz is doing. Well, I don't have a lot of info, but I have heard from Jenny that he's doing just fine up in Canada. Scott will call soon with a full work report, but I have heard that Taz is doing well in training. And in the meantime, Jenny says he's settling right in. He's eating well and has apparently gained back some of the weight he lost when I switched him over to kibble. (I guess I was about starving him—he'd lost about 5 pounds in just a week when I switched him; evidently, I wasn't feeding him enough. Who knew the recommended feeding amounts listed on the dog food bag is a big fat lie?) Taz is pretty skinny on a good day, so I was relieved to hear he is putting some weight back on. Jenny assured me he is adjusting well, and Scott's even given him a nickname—Paul Bunyon, because Taz loves to entertain himself with any bit of wood he can find. He picks a stick up and throws it back down, then grabs it and runs around with it, all the while barking up a storm. Silly boy; I'd wondered how he'd do without any toys. Guess the jig is up—Scott now knows Taz is not an All-Work-And-No-Play kind of stockdog.

Somehow, I think he'd already gotten that feeling...

Here are a couple of pics Jenny sent me of Taz in the dog yard. He looks good, right?

I can't wait to get a work report from Scott!

PS: I'm sorry if you saw this post earlier and then it disappeared—I dropped and broke my computer as I was editing it and then it disappeared into the ether—thanks to Robin Q for rescuing this post from the dark corners of cyberspace...

Working & hiking without Taz

2008-12-20T21:32:00.003-07:00

I actually worked Craig today! We worked sheep for the first time since we got back from Canada—for all of half an hour. This winter has been tough for us, and we just haven't been able to get out. (I really, REALLY, need my own sheep...) It was freezing cold with a horrible whipping wind. We had an okay session, I guess. I'm actually surprised it went as well as it did, given it's been nearly a month since I've worked a dog (I actually had to think about which side was come bye and which was away to me when we were driving). I wanted to work on squaring Craig's flanks and thought I could practice what I learned with Scott, but things didn't go quite according to plan. For one thing, I had a hard time transitioning from sending him to driving with him. We were working in the arena, and the various draws were quite strong for the sheep, so Cathy suggested we just work on counteracting the draws and moving slowly on a line, instead of being sucked in by the sheep. Despite the long period of inactivity, after a rough start we did get a nice flow going by the end of the session.

So, without the opportunity to do much stockwork lately, we've been spending time hiking a bit. Last weekend, a couple of friends and I explored the South Boulder Creek trail. I took a few photos...

Three people, five border collies, and one Sophiedawg

It was very pretty!

Sophie (my other dog, who thinks she deserves a mention here every once in a while)

Craigor MacGregor (who is very happy Taz is finally out of the house—more attention for him!)

What good lookin' dogs!

Taz's sister Sage (left) and uncle Ben

A good time was had by all, but of course we missed Taz. But I've gotten some tidbits on how he's doing, and tomorrow I'll write a little update :)

Tag! I'm it!

2008-12-16T16:31:00.008-07:00

So with Taz gone, there hasn't been an awful lot of training going on here. In fact, between the subzero temps and Craig's spondylosis acting up, there hasn't been much (okay, any) time spent with sheep at all. So we've been laying low here at Chez Tazimodo.

But we've been called out of hiding...

We've been tagged by Jenny Glen (who really should be writing a guest blog here, since, well, Taz is currently training at her house instead of mine). The rules are simple: go to your photo archives on your computer and go into the 6th folder and count up to the 6th picture and post it on your blog, along with the story that goes with it.

So, without further ado, this is the picture in question:

Aww, how appropriate! It's baby Tazzy! He was about eight weeks old in this photo, full of promise and ready for adventure. I was pretty clueless about stockdogs in those days (some might say still...) and found him on the recommendation of a woman in the local border collie club. I was looking for a dog whom I could learn to work stock with, and I lucked into a well-bred pup with tons of potential and a fantastic temperament. He is truly a dog like no other. I love my Tazimodo!

So...now it's my turn to tag six more bloggers...let's see...
Aha:
Shoofly Farm
Pippin's Gentle Blog
Willow's Rest
Julia MacMonagle
Live Like a Rock Star
Crooks and Crazies

I can't wait to see what you guys post!

Adventures in Canada

2008-12-01T08:23:00.007-07:00

Well, I did it. I decided Taz deserves the chance to work with someone who will be able to bring out a bit more of his potential, so early in the morning on Thanksgiving, Elaine and I packed up five of our dogs and headed up to Canada. She had never been out of the country before, and explaining everything to the customs folks was, er, interesting (seemed it was a Good Thing I had my iPhone with me, because it contained much of my email chain about bringing Taz up for training—the border patrol guys read every sentence to verify our story, but at least they did not search my truck). We did make it across the border unscathed, and half an hour later we arrived at Scott and Jenny Glen's place—Taz's new home for the next couple of months.

Scott and Jenny welcomed us warmly, and Scott took Taz and me out to the field to see Taz do an outrun. We'd already spoken a bit about what Taz's issues were, and I think he just wanted to get a quick idea for himself exactly where we were. He gave Elaine a lesson with her young dog, Jesse, and he gave me a lesson with Craig. I was a bit intimidated during the lesson, and that was the first thing Scott picked up on. "You can't be afraid to make mistakes," he advised. I definitely have lost a bit of confidence in myself after that last clinic, so I know it is important to get back on track. We worked on making sure Craig really bent out on his flanks—Craig will run tighter than he knows how to do if he is allowed. It is not surprising to me that my biggest weakness with training Taz turns out to be a weakness I have with running Craig as well. I don't insist on square flanks. I didn't really know how to get Craig to give me wider flanks, though. Scott showed me, not by doing endless outruns, but by driving (cross driving, actually) with Craig moving the sheep in a circle around me. Scott broke down Craig's training issues to find the most basic place where things were going wrong, which was sometimes the first few steps Craig took, and he showed me how to use my own body language to communicate what I wanted to see from him. I learned to stand off center relative to the sheep, wave a stick up and down once or twice to clearly show him which direction he was to go, and give him a flank command. Lie him down immediately if he moves forward at all; give him a there and let him walk up if he flanks correctly. It sounds really simple and basic when I write it down, but I struggled a bit when Scott had me try it. Part of that struggle is that I wasn't anticipating giving my next command quickly enough, which resulted in Craig waiting too long for instruction and then deciding to do something on his own. So once I give a command, I need to be ready right away with the following action in my mind. The other thing Scott stressed is to stop saying Craig's name in frustration; I should only be using his name when I am calling him in to me. This goes for Taz, too. It's a surprisingly difficult habit to break, but I'll work on it.

It was a great lesson for me, and I learned a lot. I sometimes struggle with how much I can or should try to change the way Craig runs because he is ten now and pretty set in his ways. But I think I have definitely erred too far on the side of caution and not tried hard enough to demand correct work. Craig is a great dog, so we've done pretty well without me demanding too much of him, but naturally he has gotten a bit sloppy with me and we have had a few power struggles on the field. I think I have a much better idea now of how to run him more effectively.

After the lessons, we went inside and had coffee. I was able to see where Taz would be staying and got a good sense of what his routine would be over the next couple of months. I chose Scott (and was lucky that he had room for Taz) because Scott has gotten the best work out of Taz in the past and seems to have a real way with him. After hearing more about how Scott would work with Taz over the winter, and hearing Jenny talk about the thoughtful care he would receive with them, I felt even better about leaving him there. He is in good hands, and he will hopefully come back a little less confused about what is expected of him and a bit more prepared to meet those expectations.

It will, of course, still be difficult for me while he's away. But I think this might be a good opportunity for me to work with Craig and really develop as a team. I'm looking forward to seeing where we all are in a few months!

To send out or not to send out...

2008-11-18T17:47:00.006-07:00

So I've been considering sending Taz out to sheep camp to finally fix his outrun. As I've moaned about for flippin' ever, Taz's main problem is that he slices his flanks terribly and then overflanks at the top. I just can't seem to consistently widen him out at the top. I honestly think he doesn't fully realize that he is supposed to be wider and squarer than he currently runs. One reason for this is his on-again-off-again habit of hesitating on his outrun, making me a bit reluctant to correct him once he does get going. I don't think he is hesitating because he has too much eye—I think it's a confidence thing. But not a lack of confidence with the sheep—a lack of confidence in what he thinks I want him to actually do. I am not very clear or consistent when correcting his outrun (plus my timing isn't so hot), and I've lied him down too often—now I think he just anticipates being lied down so he often doesn't want to commit to going.

Taz is 4 now and I'm afraid the window for his learning to do this is beginning to close. I mean, he still learns very well, but he has some ingrained habits now and I'd like to fix them before they become something I'll just have to live with. I know he's got a lot of talent, and though I understand he'll never really live up to his potential with me, I'd like to get him a bit further than I fear I would if I don't get past these outrun issues. I have been told that it would be really difficult for me to get him to progress very much because I just can't work him often enough without having my own sheep. Working once or twice a week just isn't enough, for either of us. For others more capable, I'm sure it's possible, but not for me. I am, clearly, not a natural (rats!).

It's not like Taz would come back as a trained dog, of course. I'd just hope for his outrun to consistently get a bit wider at the top. I want him to build some muscle memory of what it feels like to do a correct outrun—to flank wider and come in a bit slower at the top. I'd like to replace his habit of running tight and fast with one of staying off his sheep a bit and allowing himself to feel them a bit more there. He has such a nice feel for his sheep when he is relaxed, but I have such a hard time getting him to that state (see my previous post...). I know I need to be able to run him more relaxed in order to achieve this—I need more training, too—and I am going to work on relaxing with my handling, too. I do think correct outwork depends a little less on handler instruction, so, again, I would just like for Taz to begin to replace the poor habits he learned with me with better ones. I want to get past his outrun problems so we can concentrate on driving, penning, shedding, and all the other fun stuff we work on here and there but never for very long because I know he needs to learn a proper outrun before we can move on. And I know how much the outrun and lift affect the sheep for the rest of a run. Of course, if I had my own sheep, and we had actual chores to do, his outrun issues might be resolved on the job, or maybe they wouldn't matter as much. But the fact is that I don't have sheep right now, and so Taz is always going to be more of a trial dog than a more all-around dog as a result...

This would be a big transition for Taz (which is a big reason I haven't considered sending him out before). He's very much a house dog, and I'll go ahead and admit that he is kind of spoiled. But he adapts well, gets along with other dogs well, and he has a great work ethic, so I think he'd be okay. Actually, I think he might love some time in training—getting to work every day with someone who really knows what they're doing.

Perhaps the real question is, how would I do without my little buddy for a couple of months?

Helsley/Shannahan Sheep Camp—November 6-9, 2008

2008-11-11T06:59:00.010-07:00

Okay, I'd better write a real post about the clinic because the teaser I wrote earlier is being received much worse than I meant! I had a good time and learned a lot. Some things went very well, some things did not go so well, and I came away with a much clearer understanding of how to get the best work out of my dogs.

The clinic attendees were divided into two groups, and my group began with Don Helsley at his ranch. He had a big group of barely dogged range ewes for us to work. The first thing we did was learn to cut off groups of five sheep at a time in the barn without our dogs. As a non-owner of sheep who doesn't have a ton of stock-handling experience, this was really fun and educational for me, and not too difficult. We were then to bring the sheep out to the field. Taz was wild—fast, tight, and slicy—when we brought them out, and Don helped me slow things down. His main points for me were to stop lying Taz down all the time and to just sort of talk to him and check him with an acht when he was too tight or slicing or just coming in too fast. It worked like a charm—Taz responded to this very well, and over the next couple of days I was able to move sheep anywhere in the field and hold them with Taz, checking his speed and proximity to the sheep just by talking to him and achting when necessary. I still had a tendency to lie him down too much, but I was getting better at that, too. It was great! Thursday afternoon, we worked on our own, and I worked on driving with Taz. He did fine, but wanted to turn the sheep back to me every time I transitioned to a cross drive at a particular point on the field (exactly opposite the draw). I got frustrated that he kept wanting to turn the sheep back to me, and I began barking commands at Taz, getting louder and terser with each passing minute. Don came out and rescued us, and he got Taz easily back on track, but he warned me not to panic so easily—to simply let the bad things go and just try doing what I know works again when things started to go to pot.

This is my big lesson for this clinic, but it was advice I couldn't seem to heed right away.

We worked on Taz's slicing the next morning, and on lengthening his outrun. He did very nicely, again responding well to not being lied down all the time and just cueing off warnings when he came in too close. I told Don about his tendency to hesitate and Don recommended trying a configuration where I'd lie him down, move a little toward the sheep in the opposite direction I was sending him, send him, then walk in the direction he was moving toward. It's a little difficult to explain, but he said he used this method often to move dogs off sheep when sending, and doing this made it clear to the dogs what they were supposed to be doing, which should help the hesitation (since Taz's hesitation is not due to too much eye). Taz never did hesitate at Don's, but we practiced this anyway, and I filed the information away for future use.

Don also spent some time demonstrating how volume and cadence of whistles can really convey information to the dogs about where they should be and how they should be coming in. Mostly, he showed us how quiet the whistles can be to still be effective, which can give handlers much more range to work with when communicating with the dogs. It's long been time for me to get Taz on whistles, and I am going to try to teach him both quieter and louder whistles.

Next we worked on penning. This was very hard for us! Because things happen so quickly at the pen, and my timing is still not so great, I did bark commands at Taz. Taz also has a tendency to take a few steps after I tell him to lie down before he stops, which obviously affected the range sheep. It took us a long time to pen, and the longer we were working, the more fried he was getting. Between the sheep themselves, my rapid-fire commands, Don telling me what to say at times when my timing wasn't there, and the general pressure of learning at the clinic for the past couple of days, Taz was starting to take everything as a correction—he was turning away when I tried to lie him down and jumping back when I waved the rope for the sheep to see. We did eventually get them penned, but it was tough for Taz.

I worried (and possibly convinced myself) that he'd be done for the rest of the clinic, and this is where things began going poorly for me. We spent the next day out in the desert with Patrick Shannahan. I overexplained everything to poor Pat, and he watched me do a couple of outruns with Taz. Taz was a little tight, and I decided it was because he was still fried, and started to panic. I started a cycle of handling him in the opposite way that I knew was effective. I lied him down a bunch and I yelled at him. The tenser I got, the tenser he got, and the more he sliced and came in pushy and fast. Patrick recommended working Taz quietly, telling him to "listen" when he didn't take a command and repeating it once. This worked for Patrick, but I never really gave it a chance to work for me—I'd screech at him "Heeeeeyyyyyy!" and Taz would either ignore me all together or jerk around in response and we'd lurch toward the next command. Not surprisingly, he began hesitating, and we spent the next couple of days working on that (I did not try Don's suggestion now, as I wanted to see how Patrick would handle it; for some reason, I thought it might be poor etiquette to tell him Don's recommendation—how dumb was that?). At first Patrick thought Taz was sort of being passive-aggressive, purposely waiting until I got frustrated and yelled at him to move, but I think he decided later that Taz was simply not sure what the heck I wanted from him, since I got tense and then he got tense and then neither of us were thinking calmly. Back at Patrick's place we were able to get him to consistently move again by sending him from a position where I was ahead of him, and Patrick told me not to be afraid to park Taz a few feet behind me at a trial and send him from there. He was still tight and slicy though, and my handling remained very tense.

We worked on shedding a little—taking a huge bunch of sheep and just picking a point and having the dog walk through. Not even really making a hole first—allowing the dog to make the hole. Taz did pretty well at this (he was not being yelled at for once), and I'll have to play around with this a bit more at Cathy's.

By the end of the last day, as people were leaving, Patrick told me I could work Craig a bit and he'd be happy to evaluate us to see if I could do anything to handle him better. I got Craig out and, as I was working him, I kind of had an epiphany. It seemed I was handling Craig in that same tense, terse, loud, growly way that I did with Taz, and so Craig was working just like Taz did—he was tight, pushy, not wanting to lie down...

And the light bulb finally went on for me. The problem wasn't that Taz was too fried to work well in the latter part of the clinic. The problem was that I was way too tense and handling him much too forcefully. I was completely overwhelming him—not doing any of the things that Don or Pat was recommending. I got Taz out again and began working him slowly, softly, quietly. And you know what? He began to relax. He did not hesitate. He slowed up. He still sliced and was still tight, but less so. Pat came out and remarked on how Taz was actually quite soft and this was much better. I guess he'd known I was running Taz much too harshly and knew he'd respond much better with softer, quieter handling (um, like he tried to show me the first time we went out). I realized that he'd been telling me this all weekend. I don't know why I wasn't receptive to his advice earlier—I was just nervously reacting to what I thought was going on without taking the advice of the expert standing right next to me. What an idiot! This is exactly the advice Don had given me earlier—let things go and relax—but I guess I couldn't see it then. At least I got it in the end.

And I learned a lot at the clinic, even though I wasn't handling my dog well. I am sorry I wasted all my time with Pat handling Taz so poorly, but I feel like I learned a very, very big lesson in the end, so it was maybe for the best. I am looking forward to working with Taz and keeping in mind all I learned over these past four days—and really making sure I do not let my own tension get in our way!

Back from Idaho

2008-11-10T20:40:00.002-07:00

We had a rough clinic. I lost my mind and completely forgot how to handle my dogs. Result was not pretty. Poor Taz.
More later...

More progress!

2008-11-02T11:57:00.001-07:00

On Saturday, I continued to learn how to compensate for Craig's reaction to pressure when driving. I used to get very frustrated driving with Craig because he seemed to always overflank, moving too far up the sides to the heads, resulting in a lot of back and forth and not a lot of forward motion. Yesterday, I concentrated on flanking him and then stopping him right at the point that the sheep turned their heads and then letting them drift back on line. It worked like a dream. But today we worked a few yearlings in the big alfalfa field, and the alfalfa was green and apparently delicious—making the sheep very, very heavy. My strategy to drive the sheep with Craig did not work at all, because the sheep did not drift very much once Craig stopped them. That meant he had to lift them over and over again, bringing them on and off line over and over again. He was guarding the pressure and unwinding when flanked, only to swing back to the pressure side as quickly as he could, overcompensating by overflanking in the process. Today, with the help of Elaine, I was able to keep him moving these heavy sheep forward on a line by flanking him to cover the pressure side, lying him down, which did usually result in the sheep turning back to the other side, then flanking him to the other side but then telling him "there," which caused him to stop and walk in on the sheep, pushing them forward several steps before they began to drift to the pressure side again, at which time I'd repeat the process. I know it probably sounds very elementary and simple, but it was a huge breakthrough for us! The key to this strategy is to always keep the sheep moving, but in a controlled manner. Another little tidbit from Elaine, which I'd never really thought about before: after lying Craig down, make sure I walk him up before the sheep start to graze. This is so obvious that is embarrassing that I didn't know to do this, but I had been keeping Craig down as long as possible in an effort to let the sheep drift as long as possible when they were moving in the correct direction. But of course this meant he had to keep relifting them. Moving him just before they put their heads down eliminates that and increases the flow. I did really well after I figured this all out :)))

Taz and I had a good day, too. I think I am finally beginning to see a pattern to his hesitating, and I need to move a little slower with him on driving, walking a little bit with him, far away, but moving just inside his field of vision when necessary. He was driving and cross driving nicely today, and I realized he does everything (inside flanks and outside flanks) very well when he's within, oh, 200 feet from me (maybe 100 feet—I am terrible at judging distances), but he hesitates on his flanks and he looks back at me when he's further than that. So I need to take things a little slower driving with him (by staying closer in for now and walking with him). Elaine also said that if he ever tries to come all the way back to me when I ask for an inside flank (he did this only once today), I should walk into him and lie him down immediately, and once he lies down release my pressure and ask him to walk up on the sheep. He did not hesitate on his outruns today, but we worked close in today. I really think his hesitation might just be distance related there, too (but the distance here is between dog and sheep). So I maybe just need to think about extending his outrun more gradually.

I'm going out again on Sunday. It's rare that I get to work my dogs so often—and, boy, does it make a difference!

Downs and ups and figuring things out...

2008-11-01T21:05:00.005-06:00

I've been working my dogs a lot this week :)

First, a quick recap of a lesson I had last week, where Taz's refusal to "see" the goats Cathy has and bring them along with the rest of the sheep as we were sorting earned him an entire lesson working with a mixture of about 12 sheep and goats, most of whom did not want to flock together. He learned that covering his stock means covering all of his stock and not just the ones who move easily for him ;-) This was a good lesson for him, as he did broaden his scope to recognize and bring all of the stock. It was also a good lesson for me, as it was really apparent that standing around telling Taz to do something twelve different times ("look back," in this case) is not an effective training strategy. I don't know why it is so difficult for me to truly get this lesson, but I do think I went a long way toward learning it for real this time. I began the lesson trying to cajole Taz into looking back and finding the goats scattered around the field, and getting more and more frustrated (and screechy) as he looked back right at the goats but would not move to go get them. Cathy kept her cool, though, moving forward to change the picture for him so that it became easier for him to see what we wanted him to do. Eventually, we were able to move less and less ourselves, as Taz moved more and more himself to cover. By the end of the lesson, he was looking everywhere and picking up everything!

Then, I started this week off with a couple of rather discouraging lessons. We've been trying to lengthen Taz's outruns, but Taz began slicing at the top again and then he began hesitating to boot on the come bye side (curiously, he looks fantastic on his away side—no hesitating, nice wide square flanks, no slicing at the top). Even though it was only on his bye side, it was a little disheartening to see these problems resurface. He did better on both the hesitating and the slicing when I walked in toward the sheep and sent him, but it really was feeling like one step forward, two steps back. And we were in the two steps back part. In addition, his driving really seemed to be falling apart. He was now hesitating when he was driving, and he was not taking his inside flanks consistently at all. When I tried to help him by saying "here" first, he often came all the way back to me before turning back to the stock.

What the heck? He seemed to be a little confused and unsure of himself, but perhaps this is just because he is learning and putting things together in his head...

I went out to work on my own on Friday morning. And this is when things started turning around. Taz and I worked close in on outruns, and he didn't hesitate at all. I began our session walking toward the sheep, and I was able to move back to sending him at my feet without a return of the hesitation. I also brought back the dreaded feed bag, which Taz hates but moves so well off of, and used it when he started to slice. And he did change his trajectory and widen out at the top. So far, so good. I also had him circle the sheep a bit, stopping him off balance in both directions and letting him walk in on the sheep at random places, and this seemed to loosen him up again. We seemed to be getting back on track.

I had a good session with Craig as well. I resolved to really pay attention to the sheep's heads during our drive aways to get more of a flow going well before we reached the panels, which Craig worries about. And we were pretty successful. The first three times we tried, we sailed right through the panels. Then we missed, but the following two times, we were successful again. Woo hoo! We didn't have as much luck on the cross drive. Here, the pull is very, very strong to the adjoining arena (where Cathy was teaching a lesson to another student, and the sheep there further strengthened the draw). The sheep kept drifting up toward the arena, and I could get Craig to bring them back on line, but I had a heck of a time getting him to take the necessary away to me flank to then move them forward toward the cross drive panels. He just didn't want to take it at all (he was guarding the draw to the extreme). So I moved closer to him, made him take several flanks in that direction all the way around, and then we were finally successful, hitting those cross drive panels a couple of times before we stopped. Hooray!

So perhaps the pendulum is swinging back to the steps forward :-)

Negotiating with Craig

2008-10-28T21:46:00.007-06:00

It's been an interesting week or so, trainingwise. I'll write about it in a few posts, since each session has been so different.

First, I had a great session on my own with Taz and Craig. I practiced ouruns with Taz, and he was pretty consistently wide and not hesitating. We did one outrun that was the length of Cathy's field, and he did hesitate just a bit on that one (he hasn't yet learned to keep casting out even if he can't see the sheep), but he took a "get out" and it ended up being a pretty decent outrun. He was slicing less often, so maybe he really is starting to understand that he should be deeper at the top? Too soon to tell.

With Craig, it's all about improving my timing. So we did some driving, and as usual lately, we were we a bit out of sync to start. But things got better the more we went along. Although the draw to the gate beyond the panels is strong in Cathy's field, we worked on actually hitting the panels. Craig has terrible panel anxiety, and if he does not have the sheep well lined up a long way before he reaches the panels, he overflanks terribly or simply ignores commands when directed to try to bring the sheep through the panels. That is, for example, why he cut the course a little at Dan Keeton's trial last August. It's something I haven't worked too much on, since Cathy's panels are set so close to the draw. But I decided that Craig is well equipped to handle that pressure, and I need to learn how to handle him despite that pressure. The first few times we tried, we didn't make the panels at all. We did the familiar underflanking/overflanking back-and-forth, so we didn't line up soon enough before we hit the panels. I knew I needed to stop stopping him too soon so he wouldn't have a chance to overcompensate. (If I stop him too short because I am afraid he will overflank, and the sheep do not change direction, then I must reflank him just a little to try to bump the sheep back on line; this is actually when Craig often overflanks, though. I am anticipating his oveflanking at the wrong time, and stopping him short actually makes him more likely to overflank. I need to stop doing that!) This is the most important thing Craig is teaching me: how much to trust him and let him decide what to do versus how much to guide him, to catch (even anticipate) the incorrect choices he makes in time to keep a flow going. It's really hard, but this is how my timing is improving, I think. By the end of our work session, he'd pushed the sheep through both the drive and cross drive panels successfully a few times.

I think Craig is negotiating the same working synchronicity with me—he is figuring out how much to trust me, how much to listen to me while still maintaining control of the sheep. We will get there eventually, but I wish I could work Craig more often. It's frustrating to always start out working through this stuff; I think if we could work every day or every couple of days, we could pick up right where we left off the last time, rather than working to rebuild trust and having to remember how we work together all over again first each time. I'm working on finding a way to get more access to sheep, and if I do find a way to work more often, I bet we improve much faster. It's not like with Taz, who is learning at his own rate—Craig and I mostly just need miles together to sort through this stuff enough that we can better anticipate and compensate for each other's strengths and weaknesses. Well, I don't know how much he'll be compensating for me—I'm not sure about whether all dogs have that perspective, though I believe at least some do—but I do think we will learn to better mesh our individual work styles if given a bit more time to work together.

Finally fixing Taz's slicing? Fingers crossed!

2008-10-19T10:34:00.002-06:00

One of Taz's main issues is that he slices at the top. He has patterned this by now, and I believe he thinks it's the correct way to approach the sheep at the top. For a while I thought it was because he spent the early stages of his training working very broke sheep in a small arena, and these sheep would break back to me as soon as Taz reached the nine o'clock or three o'clock positions. Now, however, I think it may be that he is afraid the sheep will get away if he doesn't reach them as quickly as possible.

I've tried to fix this in the past by running toward him and/or the sheep to try to kick him out, too, but this has not been consistently successful—he either didn't really change his trajectory once he began to slice, instead racing toward the sheep faster, or he did kick out but I couldn't ever transition to not slicing when I wasn't running up the field. I also tried to work on this by lying him down before he reached the slicing point, and as my timing improved I could often get him to lie down, but this then often resulted in Taz hesitating at the beginning of his outrun. (This, in turn, made me more reluctant to correct him for slicing, which of course just made the slicing more ingrained.) Faansie Basson helped me to understand that part of the problem was that Taz was not moving off me enough to feel the need to change his instinctive/patterned behavior. So I had to work a bit on establishing a little more presence with him (which wasn't difficult to do, once I discovered how I could change his behavior without resorting to heavy-handed force).

I think I was also not seeing the bigger picture. With the help of Cathy, I recently realized that a big part of the problem is that he speeds up at the same time he begins to slice. Thus, instead of running at him (which often just makes him more frantic), I've been working to slow him down so he will begin thinking right at that point that he begins to slice and speed up.The past couple of times I've been out at Cathy's, I set him up to go the opposite direction of the draw (so he will be more likely to slice). I send him and walk (walk, not run) toward the sheep but just as he begins to speed up/alter his trajectory, I growl a "hey." He is starting to check himself now, which results in a very nice approach and lift. This strategy is not very different from what I've been told to do by top clinicians in the past, but I think the reason it is working now, apart from my improving timing, is that I've established a bit more presence with him—now he actually hears me when I'm not screeching at him.

Darci Gunter and Anna Guthrie have suggested that speeding up and slicing is often done out of fear and not liking the pressure of being close to the sheep. Taz is indeed a pressure-sensitive dog, but I'm not sure how this figures in to his behavior. In any case, I think the solution is the same, no matter what the cause is—some how, some way, I need to be able to slow Taz down at the top.

Of course, I don't know if this is truly going to be the fix I've been working toward. Time will tell. And even if it is, I think Taz may always have to be redirected on his outrun. But I don't mind that because as long as I can get him to slow down and think while he's moving, we can progress as a team. Such is the journey for a novice handler with a novice dog ;-)

Amazing weekend in the mountains!

2008-10-08T22:20:00.004-06:00

Last weekend, I packed up all three of my dogs for a weekend of house, dog, and sheep sitting for a friend. She's got six sheep in her little pen, and she usually works them on the lower edge of her vertical property, which she's carefully cleared of sagebrush and scrub. I was very excited about working new sheep in an unfamiliar (to my dogs) area. I was also a little nervous about having no backup in case anything went wrong, since this cleared area abutted the road without any fences. Control would be very important, and this is something I sometimes don't have as much of as I'd like with Mr. Taz.

I worked Craig first, since I definitely had more control over him and he was more predictable in his actions. We let four sheep out of the pen, and they immediately took off in every direction. Yikes! I sent Craig and he gathered them immediately and all of them took off at run down the drive toward the clearing (and the road). I lied Craig down and held my breath. And the sheep stopped! I exhaled with relief, and Craig drove them nicely down to the clearing. Phew! These were good sheep :)

Craig and I did a bunch of driving and a few outruns. I continued working on making sure he was taking shorter flanks. We did pretty well, and I relaxed a bunch. Craig was enjoying working in a new place, I think, and he was pretty tuned in to me and responsive. The sheep went where he put them, and the draw was back up to their pen, not the road. We worked once a day all three days we were there, and, as usual with Craig, he worked better the more we worked.

I hoped I'd have as good an experience with Taz. The last (and only other) time I worked Taz here, we lost the sheep in the woods by the house and had a heck of a time getting them back. That was a while ago, though, and I knew Taz has come a long way since then. And I was right!

On Friday, the first time I worked him, Taz listened to me well as we brought the sheep back down the drive, but he was going pretty fast. I took the cap I was wearing and slapped it against my thigh as I told him to take his time. Taz's pace is usually fast, and I've never had much luck consistently slowing him down. This worked like a charm, though. He looked at me in surprise and checked himself. He slowed himself down a bunch, and for the rest of the weekend, any time I said "time," he slowed his pace! Amazing!

That was not the only amazing thing Taz did. He was like the best version of himself this weekend—he did everything well. His outruns were wide and relaxed, his slicing was greatly reduced, he was picking up sheep in the woods with no direction from me and bringing them back to my feet, his driving was straight and sure, he was taking inside flanks, and he was stopping on a dime. (Well, not on a dime, exactly, but fairly quickly.) He did not hesitate at all. I never got at all frustrated with him—he was working so well, the emotion I was feeling was closer to elation—and both of us were relaxed and having fun.

I kind of can't believe it. Maybe it's the sheep, maybe it's the unfamiliar setup (so no history of either of us working poorly here), maybe it's that he is finally starting to put everything together? I so hope it is that he is really putting things together, but I don't want to get my hopes up too much there. I know it is usually one step forward, two steps back. He is still not quite ready for a pro-novice course, as his outruns are still fairly short and he can't really cross drive yet. But this weekend definitely gave me a huge confidence boost, and reminded me why I like to spend so much time in the middle of remote fields with my dogs surrounded by sheep :)

Meh. A little discouraging. For now.

2008-10-06T21:23:00.009-06:00

I've gone out a few times since my lessons with Faansie. Twice I went to Steve and Lynn's to work their Cheviots, with mixed results. The first time, the guard llama was in the pen with the ewes, and he wasn't so hot on the idea of a dog coming in to take a few away to work. This llama does not like dogs—actually it was a bad incident with Craig that caused him to dislike dogs in the first place—so we worked a few of the lambs and goats instead. Since lambs and goats are not ideal, we were able to sort off the goats and move them back into the arena so we could work just the lambs. Still, they were difficult for Taz to handle in a very controlled manner, and Craig and I struggled a bit as well, though we were able to move the sheep around the course. Craig hurt his foot when we were working, though, so the second time I went out I brought only Taz.

The sheep and the llama were in the big field, which we never work in because there are a lot of prairie dog holes. I almost always use Craig when sorting or getting sheep out to work, since he's so good at it and he loves it. But since he wasn't here now, it was up to Taz. I was a little nervous about relying on him, but I also thought it might be good for him to do some practical work for a change. The sheep moved closer to the llama when we arrived, and the entire group started moving further and further away from the gate. This wasn't getting us anywhere. So I called Taz and thought about sending him. They were getting pretty far away from us by now, though, and I wasn't sure I wanted to send Taz to pick sheep off a llama that might fight him when I was too far away to help. So I played it safe, and we made a long wide arc around the sheep and llama, and when we got around them, they turned back in the direction of the gate. So we drove them forward a bit, and they spread out enough for me to send Taz to pick up some of the sheep, yet leave enough with the llama that he didn't try to drive him off and get those sheep back. Taz was all business and brought the sheep through the gate without any problems at all. What a good boy!

We practiced the corner exercise in the arena with pretty good results and then brought the sheep over to the other field to work. It's often a pain to bring the sheep to this field because there is a big pile of dirt right in front of the gate, and the sheep have figured out that they can split up and catch the dog out as he races from one side of the pile to the other, trying to be in two places at once to push them forward. But Taz was smarter than the sheep, and he surprised them by going over the dirt pile. I swear I could see the surprise on the faces of the sheep as they marched to the gate, mumbling "yes, sir, we're moving right along, sir."

We started out with some walkabouts. He was a bit tight, but I had a rolled up newspaper and threw it between Taz and the sheep and he jumped back again. He then stayed well off the sheep, but he began hesitating a bit. He seemed a little unsure, but perhaps he was just working things out in his head. He moved to cover the sheep when I wooshed him along, and we moved on to outruns. His outruns were reasonably successful—he was usually wide enough to be respectable, but I did lie him down a few times when he left too straight. This resulted in his hesitation returning a bit—not all the time, but he hesitated on maybe three outruns. I tried not to let that frustrate me, and I was able to get him moving again easily enough by telling him to get out of it. We moved on to driving, with me walking parallel with him, and this he did just fine.

A couple of days later, I took a lesson with Cathy, and she worked with us on driving and inside flanks. We worked in her arena, driving sheep along the fenceline and then criss-crossing it while accounting for the strong draw. Taz seems to have forgotten his inside flanks altogether. Plus, I was so used to driving with Craig that I kept forgetting to say "here" before asking for an inside flank (since Craig doesn't need that helpful cue before taking an inside flank). Taz listened a bit better to Cathy than to me, but he still had a strong tendency to take the inside flank only so far before stopping and walking in on the sheep wherever he thought he should (not necessarily where the handler thought he should). And then it was difficult to get him to unlock from the sheep. Still, we made progress; by the end of the lesson, at least he was taking most of his inside flanks again, if not perfectly.

I worked him myself at her place last Tuesday, and things did not go so well here. I started with the corner exercise, but I worked him in the corner opposite the draw. This may not have been the best idea. First one sheep squirted away, and though Taz went to cover her initially, he gave up when she kept running. She ran the entire length of the field we were in all the way to the gate. I wasn't sure if I should focus Taz on getting this runaway sheep or just let her go. I sort of tried to get him to get her before giving up and continuing the exercise with the remaining sheep. When another sheep did the exact same thing, I gave up, but I admit I was frustrated. I forgot all of Faansie's advice about not showing my frustration to Taz, and though we moved on to other things the rest of our session was not fantastic. We did some outruns (Taz was moderately wide) and some driving (he took some inside flanks), and I was happy to tie him up and do some work with Craig. We did some driving, and we were definitely not as sharp as we've been in the past. Nothing terrible, and we worked better the more we worked, but I think my own state of mind was hampering Craig's work as well. Eventually my hour was up and I went home a bit discouraged.

I had another lesson with Cathy a couple of days later, and I told her more about my lesson with Faansie. She was happy to try to work with me on some of the things I did with Faansie, and we began with the corner exercise again. This time was much more successful, with Taz coming straight in and then mostly covering the sheep as they squirted out. He still did need some encouragement to cover them sometimes, but he did better the more he worked. We did some more driving practice and some outruns, and things went pretty well, but Cathy had to remind me that repeating commands three and four times when Taz wasn't taking them was not an effective way to show Taz what I wanted from him. Too often I stand and just repeat commands when I should be changing my position or moving forward to present different cues for him so he better understands what he should be doing. I've only been told this six hundred times...

Sometimes it seems as though I am learning this at an impossibly slow rate, and it will never come naturally to me. I was about to house/pet/sheep sit for a friend in the mountains, and I was nervous about working her unfamiliar sheep on her unfenced property. Things seemed to go well enough when I was working with someone more experienced, but I wasn't very confident in our progress when I worked the dogs on my own.

I was very pleasantly surprised, though. We didn't do so bad. Actually, we did really well :)
I'm exhausted right now, so I'll write about our amazing weekend in the mountains tomorrow...

Lessons with Faansie Basson, Sept. 15 & 16, 2008

2008-10-04T15:14:00.011-06:00

Once again, I have fallen behind on the blog updates. So I'll attempt to catch up yet again.

Let's see...first, the lessons with Faansie.

What presence Faansie has ;-)

I had two lessons with him, on consecutive days, about two weeks after his clinic. He told me straight away that he could see that I'd been working hard with Taz during those two weeks, but he thought I was now being too tough on him! It seems I have begun to get inside Taz's head after all and had to now take some of that pressure off him. No more confrontations. He said Taz and I sometimes do a bit of mental arguing, and I have to be careful to find ways to get in his head without adding fuel to the fire.

Okay, well enough, but what does that mean in a practical sense? Well, we started the lesson by doing the corner exercise, with me in the corner and Taz pushing five or six sheep into me. He gathered them and then I had him walk up slowly, lie down, and walk up some more, so he was pushing into them, making them squirm and start to fight. He was a little reluctant to push in right at first, which puzzled Faansie, as Taz is such a pushy line dog, until I told him about the "other" corner exercises I'd been doing with Cathy, where he was encouraged not to come in straight, but to flank to the sides and come around between the sheep and the fence. He told me to work on this instead, make sure he pushes in and willingly flanks on either side to cover all of his sheep as they squirt out. Slowly I made my way out of the corner to one side. Taz was then a little reluctant to flank around when I was outside of the corner, especially in the off balance direction. Faansie told me to watch my body language: If I am facing him with my shoulders square, that puts a lot of pressure on him and he won't want to walk into that pressure. If I move to the side or drop a shoulder, that will encourage him to go in the direction I'm facing. After a bit of practice, Taz took his flanks, both on and off balance. This is what Faansie was after with Taz. He said Taz is a confident, powerful dog, but he doesn't understand how to really use his power yet. Again, he reiterated that Taz's early ideas about covering sheep somehow got screwed up and so I need to remind him how important this is. So he told me to practice this with Taz from time to time to keep him tuned up.

Along the same lines, we also did some more walkabouts on the field, switching directions and moving back, so Taz was forced to cover his sheep and bring them to me. Woosh him if he's not covering, acht if he overflanks. Don't even give him flank commands. It's baby stuff, but he didn't get any of it when he was a baby, so he needs this remedial covering 101. I lamented how walkabouts were fun for Taz, but kind of stressful for me because Taz just got faster and closer to the sheep until we were barely moving. Faansie was surprised to hear this (since Taz worked so far off us when he was around). He told me Taz always needs to go at my pace, not the other way around. So he stepped aside and sure enough, Taz picked up his pace and got much tighter on the sheep. Faansie told me to throw the taped feedbag between Taz and the sheep when he got too close. So I did, and Taz immediately jumped back twenty feet. Faansie told me to do this right when we changed direction, too, since that was when Taz was tempted to slice in. I did and he again jumped back. And then he stayed well off the sheep, giving us both much more room to move. This is one way to show him that slicing on an outrun wasn't correct. Faansie said Taz is soft enough that I probably only will have to do this a couple of times for him to truly "get it," if I time it right, and to pair it with a "hey" or something, so I can eventually just say "hey" and he'll move off the sheep. He told me to be very careful with the feedbag and do not overuse it, since he does respect it so much. For one thing, I don't want him to lose that respect, but I also do not want to turn him off. I don't think I would ever turn Taz off, but he is soft enough that I don't want to completely overwhelm him. (He did once turn off completely when confronted with a lot of pressure from a Big Hat clinician, and I am now ever mindful of that potential with him.) Faansie told me he recognized that Taz didn't do anything to try to be "bad," or disobey me, or even challenge me really, but he does sometimes feel a lot of pressure from me and reacts accordingly. A lot of it is that I do not always know exactly and/or convey clearly what I want from him, and when I get frustrated, he senses that and gets upset. But if it ever becomes too much for him, stop what I'm doing, call him in, give him a pat, and let him know it's okay. So if he feels the pressure too much, let him know he's okay. And that should reset both of us. But used correctly, these tactics are how to get inside Taz's head without "arguing" with him. No yelling. No nagging. No running up at him. No need to be unduly physical. The more I can affect his behavior while remaining cool and in control of my emotions, the more my dog will respect me.

The other way to address his slicing is to send him, lie him down right before he slices, walk up in a straight line to the sheep just a few steps or even until I am the same distance from the sheep as he is if necessary and resend him demanding the same wide casting out that I now expect in any outrun. One thing that I'd been letting him do since the clinic is, when he starts tight and I lie him down in response, I let him kick himself out instead of lying down. Since I was only lying him down to ultimately resend him wider anyway, I thought this was okay. Faansie told me it was not okay. If I tell him to lie down, he needs to stop entirely and only move when I tell him to go. If I really just want him to recast farther out, I do not need to always tell him to lie down, I can woosh him or reflank him or tell him to get out of it or whatever—but if I do tell him to lie down, he needs to lie down every time. Okay, good to know.

We also did a bit of driving, and though Taz can drive reasonably well in a straight line, Faansie wanted me to walk parallel with him (never getting in front of him), so that he never has to look back at me for instruction or reassurance. And that's all we had time for. We had planned to work on inside flanks and then do some shedding, but unfortunately it got dark too soon. Faansie may come out next year, so we can pick up again then. (At least as far as shedding practice goes, there's no big hurry, I guess—it's not like we'll be running in open between now and then ;-)

My next posts will describe my attempts to follow all of this advice. Stay tuned...

Photos from the National Finals

2008-09-21T16:02:00.026-06:00

I went to the Finals in Sturgis, SD, last week and it was amazing. I met some terrific people and saw some amazing dogs! I took some pictures, but because I was volunteering (scribing and helping with the exhausting), I only got a chance to photograph a few of the runs. But here's a sampling of them:

Dan Keeton and Bingo

Don Helsley and Cap

Larry Adams and Mirk

Marilyn Terpstra's Gin

Libby Nieder and Lyn

Scott Glen and Maid

Dennis Gellings and Jan

Jennifer Clark-Ewers and Sweep

Laura Hicks and Jag

Handlers watching under the tent

Laura and Hub discuss business, while Denice looks on

Sheep were rambioullets

Exhausted sheep moving along

to join their buddies

Judges' tent

The 18 finalists were introduced to the crowd. Here, Don Helsley, Patrick Shannahan, Ron Burkey, Scott Glen, and Amanda Milliken are making their way onto the field.

Set out crew coming down from the hill for the opening ceremony

I spent a lot of time being "Bucket Girl," or, more affectionately, "Bo Peep." We used two sets of three bottle lambs as a draw for the trial rambioullets coming off the field into the exhaust pen, where we removed collars and sent them on their way. One of my jobs was to lure the bottle lambs around with the grain :-)

You can see a few more here. I had a lot of fun, and I look forward to going again, maybe one day as a competitor!

Ketchup

2008-09-19T08:15:00.011-06:00

It's been a while since I've updated. So much has happened that it became difficult to know where to begin once I fell a little behind. But I'll try to remember everything. I worked Taz and Craig a few more times right after Faansie's clinic.

Taz and Craig are ready to work!

A couple of times were at B&I's place; both days were about the same. Things did not go so well—the sheep there are so light and really just want to run back to the draw, so it was difficult to insist on a proper outrun with Taz because in doing so the sheep would get away. Craig was able to compensate well enough to drive okay, but he was listening to me less and covering more (maybe this is a good lesson for me in reading sheep, though). The second time, I tried to bring the sheep far out into the pasture, but the sheep were just. not. flocking. and in trying to cover all of them as they split up, Craig invariably lost them back to the barn. I'm going to have to figure something else out.

I worked them again at Steve and Lynn's with Elaine a couple of times as well. These sheep are better behaved. The first time we went out, things didn't go so well for us. I just didn't have it together or something. My driving with Craig was awful. I was slow to give him commands and didn't really enforce anything, so he did a lot of overflanking because he wasn't taking my stops very well. This resulted in a lot of back and forth motion, not really getting a rhythm going. I think having Elaine standing next to me makes me a little more tentative when I'm working Craig because he used to be her dog. Larry was there also, working Raid and Mirk in preparation for the National Finals, and Elaine asked him to demonstrate driving with Raid (who is Craig's half-sister after all) to show me how to not use flank commands so much when driving so I can avoid the excessive back and forth motion I'd gotten with Craig. He was happy to oblige, but he ended up showing me something else entirely. It seems Raid likes to guard against the draw (hello Taz), so the command Larry mostly used as they were driving northwest was come bye, because the sheep wanted to go to the northeast corner. So although the draw was in one direction, Larry worked to place his dog in the opposite direction because his dog naturally covered and she would have turned them back if he didn't actively place her behind the sheep in the other direction. So he kept her on a come bye line the whole way because she was slowly covering the away side herself. The result was a perfect line through the panels. I don't know how well I'm explaining this, but it kind of rocked my world. Instead of looking at driving as an action-reaction exercise, I saw that Larry understood what his dog was likely to do and then handled the entire drive as a whole to compensate for/work with Raid's working style. Brilliant! This is the difference between training and handling! Elaine told me to pay attention to how Larry was able to set up a nice flow for Raid—he didn't do a lot of stopping and starting and having the sheep change direction abruptly. I know this is something I need to work on.

Craig works so much better when I'm confident and in charge!

And when I worked Taz, he was no longer leaving my feet very wide. I was losing my presence again. I walked toward the sheep and then over to him slowly and placed my hands on the scruff of his neck and growled at him to widen out. (I hate doing this. I am so soft.) He did bend out after that, but I had to kick him out with another "get out" command, and he began hesitating a little again, too. Eep. Things were not going well.

We took a break and Elaine and I went to get something to eat and talked about what I was trying to accomplish with each dog. Coming back, I had a clear plan and much better results! This time, Elaine watched Craig and I driving from afar, and we did much better. We definitely had a flow going, and there wasn't much back-and-forth. We hit the panels most of the time, and the pace was good. Hooray! With Taz, I don't really know what the difference was, but he was working much, much wider again. He still needed a redirect after taking a step or two, but he kicked himself way out again. Elaine thinks the difference with both dogs in the afternoon was that I had a clear plan and was ready to take steps to make sure the dogs acted in accordance with that plan. That my whole demeanor was different. My presence was being restored ;-)

He looks pretty silly here, but he was all business once I was, too.

I worked them again another evening last week myself and we had another good session. I was hopeful and feeling pretty good about their work, and ready to take another couple of lessons with Faansie after my trip to South Dakota to watch and volunteer at the Finals. I had a great time there, by the way. I'll post some pictures in a separate post. And I'll post about my lessons with Faansie separately, too—there's much to report about my plan for Taz!

More soon!

Still working well—but not getting away with anything

2008-08-30T20:44:00.004-06:00

I went out to B&I's place this morning, and we had another productive session. I worked Craig first in the big field first, and Craig seems to have adjusted a bit more to the behavior of the sheep. The sheep still wanted to run back to the barn at every opportunity, but Craig stayed far enough off them to not allow them to fake back and forth anymore. We were actually driving the sheep today, as opposed to just sort of preventing them from returning to the barn, which is what we mostly did on Tuesday. We drove the sheep straight back to the little pen, let them enter the little pen and then gathered them back out, and then drove perpendicular nearly to the road. I walked with Craig as he drove, staying maybe 50 to 100 yards away. We did fine, driving straight, lying down, and correcting where necessary, until we turned back toward the general direction of the barn. Then, the sheep did just want to run back, and I didn't want to totally exhaust Craig, so we let them go. I did have to endure Craig giving me the stink eye several times as we walked back up the field, but once we reached the general area of the sheep huddled next to the fence by the barn I let him gather them up to bring into the arena to make up for it.

Next up was Taz. He continued to do crazy wide outruns. Who is this dog, and what has he done with Taz? I'm so excited! We did some balance work (which is tough with these sheep, since the draw to the direction of the barn in the northeast corner is so strong for them) and some driving, including some inside flanks. He is still slicing, as I reported earlier, which causes him to overflank at the top, and his lie downs were less than snappy. As soon as I realized he was merely slowing down or simply taking several additional steps before hitting his belly, I sent him, told him to lie down at the top, and when he didn't do it immediately, I repeated the command and slapped the empty water bottle against my thigh at the same time. He was down like a shot. His downs were much better after that. It's nice when he actually responds to my training efforts so perceptably. I was really feeling pretty good about Taz's outruns—at least the way he was leaving my side up until he sliced his flanks at the top, which again I'm hoping to fix with Faansie—so I went the length of the arena and decided to send him to gather the sheep, who were smooshed in the corner closest to the barn. I think if we were in an open field, he would have been fine, but he ran nice and wide until he reached them and then crossed in front of them! Taz never crosses, so I was surprised, and then he ignored my commands to lie down. It was like he lost his mind completely. I told him to lie down again, and he took it, and I made my way over to him, stopping to walk slowly toward him once I reached his direct line of vision (as opposed to coming at him from behind him a little, which might encourage chasing). Then, I let him know that I was not happy with him. We set it up again much closer, and his outrun was perfect. I decided to end it there, not wanting to undo the good work we'd done earlier, and I decided to work Craig one more time in the arena.

We did some driving in this more controlled area. I mostly used whistles (at some point I suppose I should start to train Taz on whistles), and with some back and forth, we drove the sheep to the northwest corner of the arena. I began a cross drive to the southwest side, and this was much tougher, since the sheep wanted to bend back in the direction of the northeast corner. Even with the draw, we should have been to handle this cross drive easily, and I realized we were having problems because Craig was not taking the short flanks I was giving him. Instead he wanted to do bigger, more sweeping flanks. So I let him return the sheep to me and we backed up to the fenceline. Here, I flanked him to bring the sheep back and forth, stopping him after two steps, ten steps, thirty steps, and changing directions randomly. I thought this might help him more a bit more responsive to my commands to stop and reflank him. It was hot and the sheep were panting pretty heavily by then, so I decide to wait until next time to see what effect this remedial work had on Craig. I think it will help, though, as he got better the more we did it.

All in all, I feel pretty good about what we did today. Craig worked better in the field than he had the last time we were out, and we zeroed in on a problem and worked to correct it in the arena. Taz had a tough time on that one outrun, which was difficult to begin with, but we dealt with it. His stops improved. His flanks are consistently wide—I did not have to stop him to push him out at all. So far, so good, then :-)

Maintaining our path on the right track

2008-08-28T10:12:00.004-06:00

I've worked Taz twice since the clinic, once in Bill's arena and once at B&I's place, and we have done really, really well. He is continuing to move off me when I send him, and I am able to lie him down and have him kick way out with just a look. Also, I carried an empty water bottle and slapped it against my thigh once each time to remind him to stay behind me as we walked toward the sheep, and he jumped back each time and then didn't need telling again. To be honest, I really wouldn't care so much about him jumping ahead of me, but I think in his case it really does serve as a reminder that he needs to keep me well in the picture while he works. As Scott Glen says, he needs to be a little worried about me, from time to time. I think he is now. Before last weekend, I don't think he was at all, and I kind of liked that, in a "I love my doggy and don't want him to fear me" kind of way. I still don't want him to fear me, of course (and I'm confident he never will truly fear me), but I do need for him to not want to be in trouble with me, so he will override what he wants to do when it conflicts with what I want him to do more consistently. I hope this time, we'll make lasting steps forward. Faansie comes back in a couple of weeks to give lessons, and I hope then we can work on Taz's slicing. He told me how to work on this—pretty much do the same thing I've been doing when he leaves my feet too tight, so lie him down and mean business to get him to give ground, but I'd like to do it a few times with Faansie to sort of set it correctly in my head first. In the meantime, I can work on sending him from my feet and making sure he at least begins his outrun correctly.

Faansie Basson clinic report

2008-08-22T21:16:00.009-06:00

I went to a Faansie Basson clinic yesterday and today. It was really good! Faansie is pretty laid back, yet extremely present. He is intense when necessary, but he is able to adjust his techniques and the level of pressure he places on the dog for each dog he works with. He made sure everyone understood what was going on with each dog, and he worked hard to make sure each dog's owner was truly clear about what they were doing and how they were trying to achieve their goals. I think everyone learned a lot. It was truly an enjoyable and very productive clinic!

Faansie told me all of Taz's problems can be distilled into one issue: my lack of sufficient presence. As crushing as it is to hear, Taz simply does not respect me enough to move off me. Faansie could make him move out 30 feet with just a glance, but it's a lot harder for me to get Taz to give ground. (Thus, he's tight, he slices, he's too pushy, his pace is too fast, etc., etc., etc. All the same issue. All can be solved fairly easily if I can get him to move off me.) However, he doesn't want me to run at him or yell at him or do any of the other things I've tried to do to get him to listen to me in the past that have clearly not been very effective. Instead, I need to "get in his head." He had me walk very slowly toward him, facing him full on, looking him square in the eye, and basically mean business about not accepting anything less than what I ask for. It's pretty hard for me—I'm constantly afraid I'm doing something wrong or somehow screwing him up (especially since he began his hesitation business), and that lack of confidence is undermining my authority with Taz. So I worked at it a bit, and by the end of the clinic today, I was able to get Taz to give ground by taking just a step or two toward him, and he was bending off me very nicely when I sent him. He was still slicing a bit and coming in a bit fast on the fetch, but if I apply the same pressure, we should be able to get past that. I have to be careful working on this, though, because it does put a lot of pressure on him, so I have to take breaks and do fun stuff with him, like balancing in the field, driving, etc.

In addition, as a complete aside, we solved the issue of Taz jumping around in front of me as we walk out onto the field in about twenty seconds by making him stay behind him with a feed bag slapped against his thigh. He did this every time Taz jumped ahead and Taz stopped in his tracks and scrambled back. After a few steps, I used the feedbag with the same results. Then I just needed to say "get back" and he would get back. The last time we went out today, he never even tried to get ahead of me. Um, wow.

So I'm pretty happy. He told me lots of very nice things about Taz—that he was one of the most talented dogs at the clinic, I wasn't ruining him (as I feared I was), he really liked him, and he would win trials with Taz if he had him. He also told me to be very careful about doing any kind of circling exercise with him, because he has a tendency to orbit mindlessly (I knew that, but did it anyway!), and to be careful about "get back" exercises. He thinks I should encourage Taz to learn/understand how to feel for that sort of thing on his own. Also, he told me I should stop "trying on" every approach I hear about, and stick to the one that makes the most sense to me and has the most effect on Taz. And I know he's right about that.

I finally feel like I have a plan, which is what I've been missing for a long time. Happy happy!

Working our way back...

2008-08-19T21:40:00.005-06:00

I met Larry at Steve and Lynn's place bright and early Monday morning. It's an hour and a half drive each way, and I knew I wouldn't have very much time to work, but I was looking forward to working somewhere relatively new. The sheep were very light and wanted to run. This is great practice, since the sheep we're most used to working with at Bill's are very heavy.

Larry set five sheep for me and Taz maybe 125 yards away. I sent him with absolutely no idea what he'd do. He ran super tight, so I lied him down and gave him a redirect. He was still tight and sliced heavily. Aargh. We tried again, with similar results, and I tried calling him back to me to start over. He didn't get much wider (a little, perhaps) but he did start hesitating again. Aaaaack. Larry suggested we move the sheep into a fenced corner of the field and send Taz to get them from about 100 yards away. I did, and he was tight again. This time, Larry suggested lining him up correctly (so Taz was facing out) and taking a few steps in front of him before sending him and then walking up toward the sheep. I did this, and Taz immediately kicked himself much, much further out. YAY! It seems to me that Taz understands that he should be further out, but sometimes something happens to push him back to his default tightness, and then he simply needs a little reminder that he should be further out. It's like he was saying, "Oh! Right, I'm supposed to be out here, sorry 'bout that." I tried this a few more times, on both sides, and he was wide as long as I set him up this way. We moved back toward the center of the field, with Larry and Raid holding the sheep again, and I set him up the same way as we'd done in the corner. He again ran nice and wide (though he still sliced at the top). I was too happy that he was at least running wide again to correct him for the slice (though Larry warned me not to let him get away with slicing either). I know I shouldn't let him slice, but I just feel like I can't do everything at once. He'd lost his outrun entirely over the weekend, and I just wanted to get back to some semblance of a proper outrun. Taz was getting tired, and I was running out of time, so I decided to let Craig work for the rest of my time out. Taz and I would tackle his slicing next time. Maybe at Faansie's clinic later this week.

I had told Larry about our disastrous runs over the weekend, and I asked him to watch Craig and I drive for a while. We ran through the panels on the course set up in the field, then worked closer in, doing square patterns and then randomly moving around. As poorly as we did at the trial is as good we did driving now. We really did pretty well. Craig was listening to me (well, he didn't always take the first lie down, but he always slowed down, which is usually what I actually wanted—I'm going to have to start enforcing my "time" command, so I can go back to having "lie down" actually mean lie down again). He gave me nice short flanks when I asked for them and was generally relaxed and responsive. Larry told me my timing was fine and I was really improving. WTF? How could we look so bad over the weekend and so good now? Well, Craig knows this field and these sheep very well, for one thing, as he spent a lot of time here working with Elaine. Both of us were obviously much more relaxed. The weather was a lot better. I guess all these things make a difference.

We also did a little shedding, which was way fun! The sheep were separating pretty easily, so it was a good opportunity for me to practice calling Craig in and having him walk up on the rear set of sheep. Heh, Larry joked that with the right sheep, Craig and I could run open. Someday we might. In the meantime, I regained a bunch of the confidence I'd lost over the weekend. I'm really glad we went out!

Humbling lessons learned at the CHP arena trial

2008-08-17T20:29:00.007-06:00

I spent the weekend competing in at the Colorado Horse Park arena trial. What to say...what to say...well, I'll just blurt it out: it was a disaster. After running pretty well at the last two trials we competed in, I'd been feeling pretty confident about my improving handling and my dogs' performances. There's nothing like few miserable runs to humble you, I guess!

Saturday we had absolutely torrential rain, the likes of which I haven't seen in the entire time I've lived here in Colorado, with rumbling, cracking thunderstorms all day long. Conditions were rough, to say the least. I worried about how the awful weather would affect both of my thunderphobic dogs.

Neither dog left or was obviously shaken, but I thought both were just a little more frantic. Taz ran straight up the middle, and though I lied him down twice, he did not kick himself out (even with the magic never-ignored-previously "get out of that" correction). Obviously our lift was terrible as a result, and then we played ring-around-the-pen until we timed out. Yikes. Craig's run was not much better. His outrun was very tight, and his lines were not straight at all. He was either overflanking or underflanking throughout the run. We missed the fetch panels, made the drive panels, missed the cross-drive panels, and played ring-around-the-pen before timing out.

I was a little horrified at the performance of both of my dogs, and I decided then and there not to run in any more arena trials. Craig just doesn't run well in arenas, and Taz was just a hyped-up speed demon. After finally getting a halfway decent outrun in the field with Taz I didn't see the point of allowing him to practice running straight up the course in an arena. I'd run on Sunday, but that would be it for arenas for me after that.

On Sunday, we had much better weather. I was hopeful that we'd do better as a result, but I didn't really expect to. I started with Craig in pro-novice. His outrun was fine today, but our sheep were really, really broke. The sheep at this trial are from three different farm flocks. They weren't too bad on Saturday, but not very even on Sunday. They stuck pretty close to Victoria, who was setting, so that she kind of had to stand at the top and they clumped around her. Craig had to lift them off her, and he did a nice job. We did fine up until the sheep reached the post and I was just a bit slow to give Craig an away command, so they turned around the post the wrong way. And then I got all flumoxed, as the sheep split and some moved back around the post on one direction, while others moved in the other. I wasn't sure what to tell Craig, and I got all mixed up about what I was supposed to be doing. We eventually sorted it out, but by then I was rattled, and I had a hard time recovering for the rest of our run. I was very slow to give Craig commands, doubting and mentally double checking myself every time I gave him a command. He began making his own decisions, which were not very good ones, usually way overflanking. We struggled through the course, with the sheep bolting back to me at every opportunity, and when we reached the pen Craig was so frustrated he sort of "bopped" them. He rushed them and wanted to grip but didn't, but the sheep scattered. The judge didn't call us off, since he didn't grip, but at that point I retired. We just were not going to recover, and I really saw no point in playing ring-around-the-pen until we timed out again.

I took Craig to get a drink in the drainage creek and thought about what had just happened. I realized that it wasn't just the dogs who didn't run well in arenas. The arena really showed my handling weaknesses, and the dogs had no room to compensate for my errors. Because the course was so small, and the pressure was so strong, everything was sort of magnified in an arena. If I was slow to give commands, those timing errors would make a big difference. Craig may not do very well in arenas naturally, but our runs really highlighted the mistakes I was making in my handling of him. Ack. I began to rethink my decision to swear off arena trials. I think they may wind up being a good test of my own skills as a handler down the road...

Taz's final run was probably the best of the weekend, but, again, I blew it. His outrun was not straight up the middle, but it was very, very tight. He overflanked a little, but recovered, and I lied him down once he had them. The sheep marched through the fetch panels and I walked Taz up slowly, before lying him down again as I tried to remember which way we were supposed to turn the sheep around the post. And then I remembered that this was the novice class, which meant that we were supposed to bring the sheep directly to the pen. Rats! We weren't even supposed to bring the sheep through the fetch panels, as the line was supposed to be from the lift to the pen, which was on the right side of the arena. I ran over to the pen, and sent Taz on an away to get the sheep back. He was off like a rocket and brought them past me at a run. I lied him down, and sent him to get them back, and he was again off like a shot, causing the sheep to ring the pen. "Hey!" I yelled at him, like I meant it. "Knock it off! Lie down! Easy!" and we regrouped a bit. I must have gotten through to him, because he got up much slower and finally began to get a little thoughtful about his movements. And we penned the sheep.

Finally, we did something right! I spoke to Mindy after that run, and she asked me what my biggest handling problems were right now. With Craig, it was my timing, no doubt about it. I had to work on being quicker to see what the sheep were doing and communicate what I wanted Craig to do. With Taz, it was control. I needed to get more of a handle on him, period. She has gotten a much better handle on her pushy girl Wiz through the same exercises Cathy is now teaching me. In addition, Lynn, a green handler like me, had some very impressive runs with her (formerly) pushy boy Owen. I saw how Owen worked carefully, checked in, and took the commands Lynn gave him. I asked her how she had achieved such a big change in his attitude, and it turns out she worked hard with him on...dun dun dun...those same exercises. Wow. This is what Mindy had been talking about last January, when Pam and I came out to her place to work the dogs. I didn't really know enough to work on this on my own then, once we left Mindy's place (and I don't now either), but it made sense to me even then. I am now even more excited to see them through with Cathy's guidance. It's hard to argue with results like that!

As an aside, I also had the opportunity to spend some time with Faansie Basson during this trial. He gave me some tips (go slow, which I couldn't do), and ran his dogs well (of course), and I decided to take a clinic he is giving this week. I don't really want to inundate Taz with a bunch of different theories and styles (well, inundate him any more than I have been doing), but I like Faansie's handling style (quiet, calm), and this is a pretty rare opportunity to work with this world-class handler—I don't know if he'll be back this way again to give a clinic. I am enjoying being exposed to different top handlers' styles (so far I've been to clinics given by Scott Glen, Kathy Knox, Jack Knox, Derek Scrimgeour, and now Faansie—definitely some of the best handlers in the world right now). Faansie said he liked Taz (despite his rough run) and liked his breeding. Even joked that he'd like to take Taz back to South Africa with him. I am very excited to work with him!

Working through the new exercises

2008-08-13T08:19:00.005-06:00

I had a couple of lessons with Cathy earlier this week. Taz has been responding really well to the exercises Cathy is showing me, so I want to see where it goes. We spent more time with the circles, making sure Taz stayed well off the sheep. He is very, very sensitive to Cathy's training stick with its little flag, so I tried to use it very judiciously. It did work to reinforce that he should be maintaining the same distance, rather than spiraling in as he often does with these kinds of circle exercises, but it came at a cost—he started looking at the sheep in the other pens and a couple of times he even went to the gates where the gates adjoining those pens were. He could always be called back very easily, with just a "shhh," but Taz is a little wiggy about that kind of pressure, so I really want to be careful here. Cathy encouraged me to add two commands to Taz's repertoire—"out," as in "come out," or move out while flanking on the come bye side, and "keep," or move out on the away side. Basically a command for a wide sweeping flank. Since I generally want all of Taz's flanks to be wider and more sweeping than they usually are, and I have always striven (strived? strove?) to communicate that to him, I don't know how successful I'll be teaching him these new commands. Then again, maybe if I reteach the flanks wider with new words, we'll get wider flanks overall anyway. Definitely worth a shot. We also spent a lot of time mixing things up with the circles: flank left for half a circle, stop, walk up, get back, flank right for five steps, stop, flank left for ten steps, walk up, etc. No real pattern, just aiming for more flexibility, more tuning in for instruction from me, less anticipating what he should do on his own, a snappier stop. He looked pretty good, though it was hard on him. He was fried after some time, and then done for the day (well, done for the lesson, I guess—I mean, even after he rested for fifteen or twenty minutes, when we went out again he was not as responsive as he had been earlier).

We also did more driving. He is very responsive when driving in general (at least compared to outwork), but he does get a little sticky if the sheep are moving ahead and he is feeling pressure from a draw. I admit to getting a little frustrated with Taz when he does this (after the resurfacing hesitation issue, I seem to have no patience for any stickiness, especially as this kind of stickiness is not the result of a lack of confidence, as his hesitation on his outrun is). Instead of repeating commands in an increasingly annoyed tone of voice, I am trying to interrupt his laser focus with a neutral sound. This worked pretty well. We also worked a little on increasing his speed on the drive (this is a first; if Taz needs to change his pace while driving, he usually needs slowing down, but again I'm game to try to put different speeds on his driving). I know these are all tools he should have at some point anyway; may as well teach them now. Generally, though, his pace was nice, and he frequently (correctly) stopped himself when he felt he was putting too much pressure on the sheep.

Things were a little different with Craig. On Monday, I asked Cathy to watch me drive a bit with Craig in her big arena. She thought the biggest problem we were having was not that he doesn't listen/respond to me, though that needed work, but that his flanks were often big sweeping movements, rather than occasional smaller ones. This happened especially when he wouldn't take a command at first; instead, he waits until the pressure builds and then explodes. She thought working with Craig the way we were working with Taz would really help me handle him better because he needed to become a little more flexible with regard to taking the commands I give him. She thought she could help by using a few techniques to help him understand that I should be more in the picture with him.

So, back in the tiny arena we went. We did the get back exercise, and he was able to give ground, though not nearly to the extent that Taz had. He also was able to flank without coming in, when we were working in the corner. This was not so easy when we went on to circles in the middle of the arena—he was tight and didn't want to get back. I accepted a widened flank, but Craig was still pretty tense. He responds to pressure very differently from Taz. Taz will get tentative; Craig gets more pushy and busty. When he was tight, he didn't respond to a simple pivot of the stick forward the way Taz did, so I often resorted to trying to get in his space a little. This goes against everything I learned with Derek, and it often turned into me chasing him. So naturally it wasn't very effective. Cathy suggested I work on stopping him and starting over when he gets too tight, and that was maybe a little more effective. Not very, though. Cathy thought it would be a process, but she feels it is necessary, or at least would be tremendously beneficial, to work through this, so Craig will be a bit more responsive to me. Again, I'm willing to try for now, as long as it doesn't become too much of a battle, and I'll see where it goes.

Taz is fab with the "get back" exercises; Craig shines in other ways

2008-08-10T17:57:00.015-06:00

Friday morning, I went out to Bill's to practice the exercises we learned at Cathy's earlier in the week. It's been a bit cooler this week, and it felt really nice not to be sweltering out there! I spent way too much time getting six of the lambs out where I wanted them without using either dog, just for the education of moving sheep myself. They really don't always move quite the way you'd expect them to...!

I eventually put the sheep in the arena and got Taz out to work first. Would he continue to be as responsive as he had been at Cathy's? Well, in a word, yes. We began with an outrun to pack the sheep tightly into a corner, and then I walked him up to hold them there.

When the sheep had settled down, I told him to get back with a quick wave of my stock stick. He backed out immediately, without flanking on either side, and then checked in to see where I wanted him to stop again.

We did this a few times. He seemed to be doing this correctly each time, with barely any pressure from me. That was great, of course; however, I have always heard that it's not such a good idea for a dog to turn tail on his stock, so I was kind of eager to move on to the next exercise. This next exercise was to have him flank around the stock in the corner without turning in at all. Taz did fine here, too. He moved in on the first attempt, but a gentle "get back" moved him right back off again. I suspect he understands this concept so well because of the earlier work we did with Derek—it's really the same idea. We did some circles around the stock, and he was again correct in his positioning.

Next time, I'll try to send him from my feet to see if he will continue to slice, or if this might really be a tool to help reshape his outrun. At the very least, I am hopeful that he will kick himself out if I tell him to "get back" (how different is this from "get out of it," though?).

Taz's tongue was starting to reach for the ground,
so I got Craig out. And I tried the same exercises with him, but frankly it wasn't happening. He would bring them to me fine, lie down,

walk up, and move off them when I asked him to get out, but he always wanted to flank one way or the other while moving off them. Even as Robin was typing out her advice to my last post, I realized it was counterproductive to try to argue with Craig about this. He wasn't going to do this easily, and I really don't want to fight with him. I want to try to work more in harmony with Craig, not less, and if that means not insisting on a technique that could prove helpful in the long run, so be it. I can better spend my time with Craig by focusing on improving my timing.

This means watching the sheep more! I spent the remainder of our time having him drive the sheep around the arena, but paying close attention to how the sheep reacted to his presence and where the sheep were looking when I placed him to change their direction or simply move forward.

When we were ready to go, he helped me put them away, which he loves to do. Craig is happy when he is doing a job he knows, and he knows he is doing it well.

Tomorrow morning we'll go out to Cathy's again to see what the next step is for Taz and perhaps see if she can give me some tips for improving my timing with Craig.

PS: One of Bill's dogs needed surgery for the removal of a foxtail a couple of weeks ago; after I heard this I decided we won't be training in the field at all anymore. I'm just too skeered to take the chance!

New techniques

2008-08-08T08:16:00.004-06:00

At Dan's trial last weekend, I spoke to Cathy about some exercises for moving dogs out and increasing their flexibility and suppleness. She told me she thought Taz could really benefit from such techniques, and she'd be happy to show me if I wanted to come out to her place. So I went out to Cathy's on Wednesday morning to see what she was talking about.

We worked in her teeny arena, which was not much bigger than her round pen but it has corners. First she showed me what she'd been working on with her dog Dan. When she asked him to get back, he immediately backed up, before coming on again. He flanked without taking any steps in, and he walked in on the sheep slowly and methodically. He was clearly thinking the whole time; it was impressive. We tried it with Taz. Happily, she let me work Taz, advising me where necessary but not taking over. This is one of the reasons I had stopped lessons earlier; I just have too much of a tendency to let the more experienced instructor to take over if I'm not sure what to do, and it wasn't helping me to work through problems or gain experience handling the dogs. But today, I was able to listen to what Cathy was saying while trying these new techniques out with Taz myself. First I had Taz gather the sheep. He took a few steps straight up the middle, but I lied him down and told him to get out of that and he widened out around them. He brought them to us against the fence in a corner, and I told him to get back with a very slight wave of the stick I was holding. He backed out immediately and lied down. I shared an incredulous look with Cathy and told him to walk up and we repeated the exercise a few times. He was completely super responsive. I told Cathy that really there are three Tazes—Good Taz, who thinks and feels his sheep; Evil Zat, who thinks he needs to reach his sheep at warp speed and tries to run over everything; and also Clinic Taz, who knows he is learning something new and that someone who knows what they're doing is close by to keep him honest, so he works very calmly and deliberately. This is the Taz we seemed to have today. We progressed to flanking without taking any steps in at all (while we and the sheep were still in the corner), and he was wide and well paced. So we did a few circles in the middle of the pen—which were not like Derek-style circles because I was supposed to not move at all, just flank him verbally and then stop and start him off balance several times, making sure he was not ever coming in (and telling him to get back if he did come in). Taz got this exercise right away, so we graduated to him driving the sheep, with me moving with him along the side but between the dog and the sheep in order to be well positioned to correct if necessary. This wasn't easy, because there wasn't much room, but I think I was supposed to be enforcing a slower pace here. I am not exactly sure—I'll have to clarify this part. Anyway, Taz did very well, but I knew this wouldn't be the same Taz I worked with on my own, so we'd just have to see.

I did the first couple of exercises with Craig, too, but it was much more difficult with him. He wouldn't give ground so easily, and Cathy had to take over, since I was too slow and soft in my corrections. We were eventually able to progress to flanking in the corner, but not to anywhere near the same degree of success we had with Taz. Craig barely ever took his eyes off the sheep, and I think he was only peripherally listening to us. Cathy said he's be much more difficult to retrain (remember, Craig is ten and has been passed around a bit in his life, and he has been working with novice me for the past year, so he's used to taking the reins and not wanting to give them up so easily). We'd keep working on it, but I would probably see the most success using these techniques with Taz.

That is fine. I am hoping this might be another way to try to shape his outrun correctly and work on pace. Because Taz is pressure sensitive, he can really benefit from being more flexible, too. I told Cathy I'd like to come out for more lessons, so I learn these techniques under her guidance. We may as well try!

Lessons learned at the Nicomodes Gulch SDT

2008-08-05T21:50:00.004-06:00

Friday's session was good practice, since we competed in the open ranch class at the Nicomodes Gulch stockdog trial on Saturday. This trial is put on by Dan Keeton and held at the beautiful ranch of Terry and Tina LePlatt. The sheep were very even, super light, older lambs, and they really tested the dogs. I was very nervous before my first run, as the sheep were set some 375 yards away, which is pretty far for me. (Fortunately not for Craig ;-) The sheep were running all over the course in the runs before mine, and even though Craig is so seasoned and trial savvy, I worried about what I'd do in case of a wreck. Thank doG for the people who talked to me before my run, as I think they kept me just on this side of the edge!

Lesson 1: Know Your Dog!
I noticed most people sent their dogs to the right, but it seemed like the sheep often wanted to run in through the trees on the left of the field, so I decided to send Craig to the left to try to counteract that. His outrun was very nice, but he overflanked just a bit on his lift and the sheep began moving down the field to the left. This was exactly what I'd hoped to avoid when I sent him to the left, and this was my first lesson of the trial. My dog (uh, both my dogs actually, though Taz is much worse) naturally runs tight and can tend to overflank just a little at the top. I always think that a tight-running dog will cause the sheep to react too soon and begin running away from the direction the dog is going. This is probably because this is exactly what happened to Taz when he was first learning his outrun on very dogged sheep in a small area. But neither of my dogs run that tight, and they tend to be fine until they start to slice at the very top. This is why they overflank, and overflanking results in turning the sheep so that they usually run in the direction the dog has come from. Duh! So, yes, the sheep were moving down the course in the exact spot I had wanted to avoid.

Craig wouldn't listen to my verbal or whistled commands to either stop or flank away on the fetch until he was a couple hundred feet from me. He did this same exact thing at both Deb's and Lisa's trials, come to think of it. It's almost like he doesn't hear me, but he hears me just fine when we're just practicing at Bill's, so I know he's not deaf (though I wonder if this is why Elaine suspected his hearing might be going when she gave him to me). So his fetch was pretty bowed to the left and we obviously missed the fetch panels. Once he got in closer range, though, he began listening to me pretty well as we moved the sheep back toward the center of the field and then around the post.

Lesson 2: Timing Is Everything!
Our drive away started off pretty well. Craig had a fairly good line going, and we made steady progress forward, but I was often half a step behind him in giving him commands. That is, the sheep would start to move to the left, and I'd think "he needs to go left to get them back on line," and then I'd think "so that means a come bye," and then I'd say it. This didn't always happen—sometimes I was able to think and tell Craig what to do faster than that, but overall the drive was kind of choppy. Our line wasn't that terrible, but sure wasn't super straight. We were muddling our way through, and when we were about three quarters of the way to the first drive panels, Craig overflanked and turned the sheep toward the center of the field. I whistled (and then yelled) a come bye command, but he ignored me. I know Craig has panel anxiety, and he wasn't taking my command to flank, so I let him go. This, I know, was a mistake that would cost us dearly, but I wasn't sure if it would be better to move the sheep back toward the panels we missed or cut the course at that point. We were too low to make the cross-drive panels (which, for the OR class, were actually the fetch panels), so I had Craig just turn the sheep to the pen. I raced over, and the sheep moved to the open mouth.

Lesson 3: Your Dog Can't Cover the Sheep If You Keep Stopping Him Too Soon!
Well, I had a pretty tough time trying to pen the sheep (as did everyone at the trial, actually—there was only one successful pen during both OR class runs, and on Friday, there had been only two successful pens during all of the open and nursery runs). I couldn't seem to find that sweet spot where he was covering them but not pushing them away. He was too tight, but he was coming in mostly because I kept stopping him just a wee bit too short. He'd lie down when I asked him, but the sheep kept going—I was too tentative to wait until I saw their heads turn before lying him down. Then, to maybe save time, he'd move in to cover and succeed only in pushing them out further, which is what I'd been trying to avoid by stopping him too soon in the first place. It was just like that time I'd practiced penning at Linda's, and, after time was called, I resolved to let him cover the sheep before lying him down during our next run.

Joni Swanke was the judge, and she was generous in giving advice to those who asked for it. She said she had to hit me pretty hard for cutting the course, and she understood why I let Craig start the cross drive early, but that she'd have insisted that he take that inside flank. Damn! She also told me that Craig was a great dog for me to learn with, and that I just needed some more miles and more confidence, and I'd be fine :-) I thanked her and we exhausted the sheep for the next team.

This trial was set up unconventionally in that the open and nursery runs were scheduled for Friday and Sunday, while both open ranch runs were scheduled back to back on Saturday. I was able to enjoy the trial between my runs, talking with other handlers, watching the more experienced ones running their younger dogs and the less experienced handlers like me trying to figure everything out. Before I knew it, I was up again.

I was less nervous for my second run, and though I didn't figure out lesson #1 until after the day was over and I was thinking about everything, Craig knew and he clearly set himself up to run to the right. I though it best not to argue, so I sent him on an away. His outrun was very nice, and his lift and fetch were a bit better than the first run. The sheep were just off line enough (on the right this time) to miss the fetch panels again—at least I think we missed them; I don't actually remember, but I am pretty sure I would remember if I made the panels, so I'll assume we missed them ;-).

We again moved the sheep around the post okay and started our drive away without any problems. For this run, the sheep had been brought a bit closer to the post, and we were driving the sheep back through the fetch panels and then through the drive panels to the left. It was a shorter cross drive than the first run, but it was more challenging because these drive panels on the left were very close to the trees, where the only shade on the course was. Since it was in the upper 80s by the middle of the day, when I was running, I knew this could be a factor: if the sheep reached the shade of the trees, they'd be difficult to move away from these trees.

Lesson 4: Watch the Sheep!
I had all this business about the shade in my head even as we began the drive away. I was also determined to make the drive panels this time, or at least make an honest attempt to make them. So I was trying to be a little more exacting in how I set Craig up for the panels, but we ended up doing a bit of zigging and zagging. I know I was late with my timing again. I did actually have a much straighter line moving toward the panels, but at the last minute Craig veered the sheep off line. I did get him to bring them back on line, and I thought the sheep were moving completely through the panels, but a couple missed. Rats! Oh well; we started on our cross drive and it was pretty straight! I can't remember if we made those panels, because I spent the entire rest of our time trying to get Craig to move the sheep out of the shade of the trees. Dang! He didn't have trouble lifting them, but one or two kept squirting around him to run back to the shade. I tried to help him, but I was a bit hopeless here. We timed out there, and that was that.

Several people told me after my run that I need to watch my sheep more, rather than the dog. (Elaine tells me this all the time, actually.) I thought I was getting better at this, but apparently not ;-) Jim Swift ran after me, and Victoria and I analyzed his run together as it happened. She pointed out every time the sheep moved their heads, and sure enough that was the exact moment Jim placed his dog to cover. It was very cool to see, and I was able to really understand how I need to be quicker to convey information to my dogs based on what the sheep are doing. I mean, that seems really obvious, but it's a lot harder than it sounds. At least for me.

We ended up placing sixth in the first run and seventh in the second. I am pleased with how we did, especially the second run, since we did as well as we did without getting any drive points. I am also very satisfied that I learned so much at this trial. I wish I could have stayed to watch the open runs, but I got a little sick from the strong sun, not drinking enough fluids, and the altitude. I hope to have plenty of time to watch some great handlers in the coming months though. Next year, I'll stay and watch everything for sure, and we'll try to better our scores from this year :-)

Skittish lambs!

2008-08-04T21:32:00.000-06:00

Okay, time to update. I've been slacking on updating the blog!

I went out with Taz and Craig on Friday and worked lambs that were very skittish. Taz was definitely not in complete control of them, but they were pretty tough. They would not flock at all and were super light—as in, Taz would look at them and they'd run in different directions. It was cool to watch him as he adjusted his style and tried out different things. He listened to me quite well, particularly on the squirrelly fetch, since he didn't know what to do on his own. It was hard, though, for both of us. But probably very good for us.

Craig also had a tough time, though obviously with his range of experience he was much more comfortable than Taz had been. I couldn't help him as much as I'd helped Taz, since my timing when driving at a distance is so crap. He had to work to cover them and push them forward without letting them squirt too far off line. He resisted listening to me very well at first, but we did better as the session went on and were able to make it around a mini course. We weren't able to work for very long, since it got so flippin' hot so quickly, but at least we were able to get some work in before the trial this weekend.

Happy Birthday Craig!

2008-07-28T17:26:00.004-06:00

My sheep tutor turns 10 today!

Here's to many more, Craigor MacGregor!

I did not yell at all during practice today...

2008-07-25T19:39:00.004-06:00

...because both dogs were responsive and trying so hard for me!

I couldn't wait to get back to Bill's for more practice in the field, but my truck has been in the shop for the past few days (a cyclist crashed into it while it was parked in front of my house, if you can believe that), but I was able to pick my freshly painted truck up on Wednesday evening. So on Thursday morning, bright and early, I headed over to Bill's and we took five lambs down to the west end of the field. Actually, I kept Taz on a leash while I had Craig move them through each of the three sets of panels Bill has set up as a course on the east side of the field, and Craig did really well (we missed the last set by just a hair, but that was more a misjudgment on my part than anything). He moved them carefully and listened to what I asked him to do.

When we got down to the other end of the field, I tied Taz up and sent Craig on an outrun to begin our practice run. Last time we were out here, Craig did well but didn't want to take a come bye command to turn the sheep back toward me for the third leg of the drive. I decided today that we'd do the same "course" as we did last time, but this time in reverse, to see if the problem was the final turn or perhaps the draw, which does have a weird effect sometimes (it was in that same spot that Taz refused to take a come bye command a few months ago, shocking me because he had never before just let his sheep get away without going after them).

Craig did pretty well! He did not refuse any of my commands this time—he listened to what I told him to do and to my whistles. Our lines were not terrible (though one of the cross drives was pretty bowed; I need to be better about finding landmarks to help me keep track of where we should be), and we were generally able to get back on track when we were off. He had no problems turning the sheep back toward me whatsoever, so I do think the issue last time was the odd pressure of the draw in that spot on the field. That's not good either, but at least it's not a general problem with his driving. After a few fairly successful goes running the course counterclockwise, I decided to try it clockwise again. He did pretty well, but overflanked on a bye at one point on the crossdrive to begin bringing the lambs back to me a bit early. Rather than correct the line, I decided to let him bring them back, so we'd end the day being successful with the come bye turn heading them back to me. Two of the five lambs kept going off in different directions (from the other three and the other one also leaving the group, so often there were three little groups). So it was not the easiest group to handle, but overall I think he did great! I love working with Craig when he actually listens to me—it's just so much more fun to work with him when we are in sync!

With Taz, I decided to work on a few outruns to begin, since he'd been a bit tight and slicy last time out. Well, unfortunately, he was still kind of tight and slicy on this day as well. I tried to do a few Derek-style circles to widen him out, and he did get a little wider, but he continued to come in kind of flat at the top. Not enough to really upset the sheep terribly, but he did overflank as a result. I think it's been a while since I've read over my notes from the clinic and looked at Derek's training book and watched his DVD, because I didn't have a lot of success fixing Taz's outrun with this circle practice. It is so fine a line between doing this exercise correctly and counterproductively chasing him around that I am sure I was not doing it right. I clearly need to go over Derek's material again. I thought about calling him in to me when he sliced, the way Robin Q. suggested after her positive experience doing this with her tight-and-slicy boy Hamish, but decided against it for now, since we just started driving again and I didn't want to mess up his nice form there—and also, Taz isn't hesitating anymore, and I really don't want to risk starting that again. (I so need a trainer who can help me sort through all this—sigh!)

Anyway, since I wasn't sure how exactly to proceed here, and Taz was starting to get anxious about the circles (and I was, too, when it became clear the exercise wasn't working very effectively), I decided to stop the outrun stuff there. Instead, I had him drive the lambs a bit. He gladly switched gears and I swear I saw the stress melt off him! I let him bring them wherever he wanted to at first (which was pretty much a straight line ahead), and then began asking for inside flanks here and there. He often did not need a "here" calling him in before taking an inside flank, and a couple of times I had to give him a big, singsongy "Come bye!" but he never refused to go :-) and can now stop at 9:00/3:00 and transition to a cross drive. Usually, though, I let him go all the way around. Next time, we'll work more on off-balance stops. We only worked at very tiny distances today, but I sent him around a little "course" and he did it! I think he really enjoys driving so much more than outwork, and he feels his sheep so much better. I also noticed that after working on driving for a bit, when I sent him on outruns he was much further off the sheep and didn't slice much. I think he was carrying his feel for the sheep over to the outwork. Maybe I should start with driving for a while next time and then do some outruns? I want to direct his natural feel for sheep to the outwork, so I think it can't hurt to try things that way and maybe it will carry over a little more. Something to think more about anyway...

Unfortunately, I have another freelance project deadline coming up, so I won't be able to practice much in the next week. This especially kind of stinks because next weekend Craig is entered in Dan Keeton's trial, but we'll just do our best and gain some more experience and have a good time continuing to learn. We were pretty good team today, so I think it'll be fine :-)

Field work—thank doG!

2008-07-20T11:48:00.007-06:00

When I drove up to Bill's this morning, all of the sheep were out of their pens and way on the other side of the field. You know, the field full of foxtails. What to do...what to do...

You guessed it. I bagged the boring arena and worked the dogs in the field today! Woo hoo! I originally thought I'd just have Craig round them up into the arena, but once we were out in the field, I thought the foxtails didn't actually look all that bad anymore, and besides—we were already out there. We were going to deal with foxtails anyway, we may as well take advantage of the space. Craig is entered in a trial in two weeks, and we haven't done any driving at a distance in a long time. We do need the practice of working together as a team pretty desperately.

So I started with a couple of outruns, which Craig loves to do. The group was bigger than I liked working (Bill has maybe 25 sheep these days), but I didn't want to take the time to put some of them away. It was already pretty hot—it is supposed to get to 100 degrees today—and I wanted to work before it became unbearable for the dogs. So we got down to the real work of the day. I did some driving with Craig around the makeshift course set up on the west end of the field. I started with the whistles, but abandoned them along the way. We did have enough to deal with getting back into the swing of working together in the field. It started out fine—Craig did a nice drive away, and we transitioned to a decent cross drive. But when I asked Craig for a come bye to start bringing the sheep back to me, he wouldn't take it. He kept starting to go around, but then would stop short and just sort of follow them further down the field before swinging back behind them and pushing them down the field. I ended up running up to him and yelling at him to come bye and he finally did, once I was practically on top of them. What the heck was that about? We repeated the "course," and this time his drive away and cross drive were even better, but he did the same thing on the turn back toward me—he wouldn't really take a true come bye. I started up to him again, and this time he did go around before I reached him, but he clearly did not want to do this for some reason. I don't have any idea what that reason could be, since the sheep were headed back toward the barn, so I'd have thought he'd want to cover them and bring them back to me. He was pretty hot after this, so I decided to stop things there and check him out for foxtails and let him get a drink. He didn't look bad at all, as far as the foxtails went, and I decided to put him up. Craig had a seizure last week, and I didn't really want to push him too hard right now. Besides, since he didn't pick up too many foxtails, it seems like maybe we can work more regularly in the field again (YAY!), so no need to overdo it today.

I got Tazzy out, eager to see how he'd do driving in the field. We began with an outrun. I sent him on an away, his "good" side, and he took a few steps and paused. Oh no. "Shhh!" I said to egg him on. And on he went, straight toward the group! What the...? He ignored my commands to lie down as he split the group in two. Wow, was this not a good start! I ran up to him and asked him just what the heck he thought he was doing. Fortunately, that seemed to bring him back to Earth, and when we tried again, his outrun was better, though still a bit tighter and slicier than I'd like to see. The sheep didn't move until he reached them, but he overflanked as a result. He regained control quickly and brought them to my feet. I knew I could, and probably should, do a few Derek-style circles to remind him where he should be, but I was impatient to move on to driving. My bad. Next time we'll work more on mechanics.

I started by having him just drive the sheep forward wherever he wanted to take them. He loves this, and he moved them more or less straight ahead for about a hundred yards. I called him back to me and sent him on another outrun (this was better than the earlier ones; he was wide enough but a little slicy). He brought them back to me and around an imaginary post before driving them forward toward a set of panels. I asked for inside flanks and outside flanks, and he did really well again. He was lying down exactly where I asked him to and when I gave him a flank, he got up slowly and took calm, deliberate steps to move the sheep gently. His walk ups were not always quite as calm, but he moved them very smoothly. As the session went on, he did lose a little of this—he no longer stopped immediately if I told him to lie down after he reached the 9:00/3:00 point and he stopped taking his inside flanks immediately and often needed a "here" first. This happens with Taz a lot, I think—he starts out really well and then seems to get a little less responsive—so I think I need to do some shorter sessions with him before he starts overthinking things. So we called it a day. Once again, I thought he did really, really well, and I am excited to continue working on driving with him. He seems to do this much more naturally than he does his outruns, and it's a whole lot more fun to work on.

I am beyond ecstatic that we can work in the field again. I did pick about 30 foxtails off Taz (only a few off Craig) when we got home, but I will just be sure to be meticulous in checking the dogs after we get back from Bill's. Also, Anna Guthrie recommended a product called Show Sheen, which is a conditioner meant to make the fur a bit more glossy and slick, to help deter the foxtails. I'll pick some up today, so I can try it out next time :-)

More fun with arena driving

2008-07-19T12:31:00.001-06:00

Taz drives the sheep along the fence line.

I took the dogs to Bill's this afternoon for another quick arena session. To mix things up with Craig again, I put a bunch of twine on one end of the arena and another bunch on the other. Then I had him move the sheep in figure 8 patterns. He did not understand what we were doing at first, and I got a couple of double takes from him, as if he were asking "Are you sure you want me to come bye? You just asked me for an away!" I did abandon the whistle for this exercise, though—I had a hard enough time convincing him that I really meant something when I was saying it! But I was insistent, and (after a frustrated grip or two) he began to trust me and we worked together to bring them in neat little patterns. I let him do a few outruns after a bit to relieve the pressure, and we stopped after about 20 minutes.

For Taz, I wanted to pick up where we left off last week with his inside flanks. I started again with some outruns, and he did fine. Then I decided to let him just drive the sheep around the arena for a little while, not really caring where he went. I did the fenceline exercise, and actually he did really well. I didn't even have to say here first when I asked for an inside flank or two. He seemed to understand the purpose, which is a major key for Taz—if he understands the point of whatever we're doing, he really doesn't even seem to need that much input from me. Unfortunately, because I don't have my own sheep, nearly everything we do is manufactured with no real purpose other than imitating trial work—I'll have to try to make up some exercises that mimic real work a little more, I think.

One thing I did notice with Taz, though, is that his lie down is disappearing. I find myself repeating this command over and over to him. I didn't want to tense him up while we were working on driving and inside flanks, but I was getting a bit aggravated that he wasn't lying down very quickly. Even when I took a step toward him, he didn't seem to make the connection to lie down. It's almost like he was trying so hard to work out the nuances of driving the sheep (and, like I said, he was doing really well with that) that he didn't have any brain power left to process my commands to lie down. I mean, I know that's ridiculous, and many would say he's just blowing me off, but I don't know. He didn't seem to be willfully disobeying me because he had other ideas, as Craig sometimes does; instead it was like he didn't even hear me tell him to lie down. I guess as he gets more comfortable driving, I'll start to insist on him lying down more and more, but I didn't really want to shut him down much now, so I let him go a bit. I hope this was the right thing to do...!

We're back, with new arena strategies

2008-07-13T21:44:00.005-06:00

Okay, many apologies for being out of touch for the past couple of weeks. I've been busy at work and finishing up a ginormous freelance project, and, to be honest, I am not very excited to only be able to work my dogs in an arena. But until I can find something else, it's the only place I've really got and I'm lucky to have a place to work my dogs at all...

So on Friday morning, I took the boys to Bill's. It was HOT, ninety degrees at 8:30 am. On the drive over to Longmont, I had had thoughts of working the dogs in the field despite the foxtails—I thought maybe there'd be a safe patch somewhere, even if it was small. As soon as I parked and took a look toward the field, my heart sank. The entire field is simply covered in the dried-out weeds. I tied up Max, the guard dog, and walked the dogs on leash to the arena.

After we got the sheep, I thought about how I could make arena work exciting for Craig. He and I need practice driving at a distance, not close up with the artificial pressures of an arena and doing the same pattern along the fenceline over and over. To mix things up, I decided to use the inside of the arena, moving the sheep diagonally from one corner to the other and then halfway across the fenceline before turning on a right angle toward the opposite fence.

I put the whistle in my mouth and the first thing I discovered is that when I take two weeks off working the dogs, my timing is off like a prom dress. Actually I was okay with reading the situations and deciding what I wanted Craig to do, but communicating that information was not happening. I'd think "go toward that ewe's head" and spend like three looooooooooooooong seconds trying to decide if I should tweet a come bye or an away. I had to translate it in my head every time I made a decision. I sucked! I did get a bit better toward the end, but it was rough for poor Craig. He responded by eventually deciding that he didn't need to listen to the commands that took their time coming out of my whistle (and then my mouth). I kind of couldn't blame him, but I also knew I couldn't let him get away with that (especially as in all honesty I was getting it together by this point and my commands were getting more clear). He had just lost patience with me by then, though, I think. So when he obviously ignored my commands to go left, I made a big deal about running up to him and letting him know that he wasn't the one making the decisions on where the sheep should go. He turned his head away, but I pressed until he gave ground. That made an impression on him, and from then on he listened to every thing I asked him to do. Little turd. We were quite the little team, though, by the end, so all's well that ends well.

After 20 hot minutes for Craig, it was Taz's turn. I started with a few outruns on both sides, and he did fine. I didn't want to spend yet another session working on flanks or outruns when he seemed to be fine right now, so I decided to start reintroducing driving and inside flanks with him. Taz is a line dog, and he really used to have a nice, natural drive before we stopped doing any driving to concentrate on fixing his outrun. He used to take his inside flanks pretty much every time he was asked, and we were successfully weaning off saying "here" before giving the flank. He had trouble always stopping at three and nine o'clock—if he made it that far around, he had often committed himself to going to balance—but it seemed like he was figuring it out. Then we stopped working on learning to drive to focus on fixing his slicing, and at the same time he developed his hesitation issue. Because I feared his hesitation might be related to his learning to stop off balance while taking his inside flanks, I pretty much stopped working on any driving altogether until his hesitation was fixed.

He didn't seem to be hesitating much anymore (though, of course, I know it might come back once we get back to the field), so it seemed like a good time to reintroduce the inside flanks. Unfortunately, he really seems to have forgotten them completely, so we started at the beginning. I sent him on an outrun, lift, and fetch, and had him turn the sheep around an imaginary post and begin to drive them away. After he'd gone a few steps, I lied him down, and then (with a "here" to call him in a little first and make things a little easier for him) sent him on the opposite side to what he had lied down on. We did this on both sides, and he often took the flank, but not always—sometimes he just came back to me. But overall he did great! I tried really, really hard to keep everything very upbeat and easygoing, since I knew he would already be feeling a fair amount of pressure just by working on something new inside an arena. I let him go all the way around when he took the flanks. I didn't repeat flanks more than twice if he didn't take them—I just started everything over (from the outrun) when he didn't take the flank. I discussed it with Elaine afterward, and she recommended making it more obvious to Taz what I wanted by taking a step to the left or right (depending on which way I was asking him to go) toward balance if he was hesitant to take the inside flank. We'll try that next time and otherwise continue in the same strategy. I think he was maybe starting to remember what to do, but due to the heat we also only worked for about 20 minutes as well. We'll see how next time goes :-)

Reading the situation correctly and responding appropriately

2008-06-29T14:48:00.002-06:00

Over on the Border Collie Boards, I was bemoaning my tendency to screech at my dogs during training. Though I strive for calm control, I often get increasingly exasperated until I sound just awful. I think this is partly because I have an idea of what I think should be happening and I can be calm when things go roughly according to plan, but when the dogs don't do what I ask, I get upset. On the surface, this sounds right—I mean I should come down on them when they don't listen, but what about when I do not read the situation correctly? I often don't really understand what is going on quick enough to respond appropriately. This difficulty assessing things in real time is the biggest thing hampering our progress. It may come more intuitively for some folks, but definitely not for me! But developing the ability to read the situation is the key to progressing. I think if I can start to take into account why they might not be obeying me, I might not get so exasperated (and then screechy); if I can unemotionally apply a quick correction at the time he doesn’t take a command, I’ll be fixing things rather than screeching as it all goes wrong. Or if I can look at the big picture and see that he's actually making a correct choice for the circumstances, I won't be upset (I'll actually be pleased and don't want to take that out of him). This happens especially when I'm trying to work on something different than the problem at that point in time turns out to be (e.g., I'm concentrating on encouraging Taz not to hesitate on his outrun but then he pushes too hard on the fetch and doesn't stop when I ask him to).

I worked my dogs yesterday in Bill's arena, which is a little brutal for Taz (Craig's not a big fan of arenas either). He feels and responds to the pressure in a big way in arenas, but I've decided not to work in Bill's field for a while. I have, in fact, been working on Taz's tendency to hesitate on his outrun, and Denise Wall had suggested that I send both of them together on an outrun, as they may spur one another on. I did that a few days ago in the field, and the results were encouraging. So I decided to try it yesterday, even though we were in the arena.

At the risk of embarrassing myself in a big fat way, here is our first (and worst) brace attempt yesterday. Note the progression of the screech (not that you'll be able to ignore it). I was originally upset at my own screechiness, which I knew I was doing even as I was doing it, but only after seeing the video did I see that after Taz didn't take my initial "lie down" command, I should have either shut up and let him cover the sheep before asking for another stop or, perhaps even better, gone up to him and demanded the stop after the first time. (Or maybe that's not better, since the situation was changing so quickly, and besides I am trying to encourage him forward...but then I don't want to let him get away with sloppy work...but I don't want to chance exacerbating the hesitation...but...aargh!) I know I could have handled this better! I asked for, and received, feedback on the BC Boards, and got some amazing, very helpful responses!

I do want to add that I don't actually get mad at my dogs, I get exasperated at myself for being such an incompetent trainer...

Aside from that, we had a pretty good session. I was able to drive the sheep all over the arena (usually around the arena along the fenceline) using whistles only with Craig. At least until my whistle filled up with spit. Eeeuuuww!

What a good boy!

I also did a few off-balance stops and flanks with him to be sure he completely understands my whistles. He does—he took everything. I guess I need to practice a little further out, before trying again at waaaaay far out. I let Craig get a drink and unhooked Taz for our brace outrun practice. Things did get a bit better after that first try, but again Craig stopped going after a bit. I'm not sure why, maybe because Taz was being really pushy...

So I put Craig up and was anxious to see how Taz would do on his own. I decided to send him with another "Shhh" rather than a flank—Taz used to never go on a shh or chchch or any of the other sounds people make to excite their border collies. But Derek did it at his clinic, and Taz took it then to both Elaine's and my astonishment. So I've been trying to use it sparingly since then, and it does seem to work now, though I don't want to overuse it. He had obviously been taking it when I sent both dogs together, so I just continued that same practice. And the work with Craig might have been beneficial because he didn't hesitate at all. I mean, his outrun kind of was terrible in other ways, and his fetch fell apart at the end, but there was no sign of hesitation. Here it is:

In fact, he didn't hesitate at all for the rest of the day, and because he was being so pushy, I put a ton of pressure on him. Yay for Taz!

But his flanks were very tight, so we did a lot of Derek-style remedial widening-out exercises. I'll have to go back and reread my notes and rewatch the videos shot at the clinic, but I tried to remember everything I could about threatening the ground and staying ahead of him. It did work, as his flanks opened on both sides by the end of the day. In addition, I made him lie down every time he started walking up at anything other than a true walk. He was able to slow down a bunch, though I didn't have the heart to make him really w-a-l-k. Poor Taz—it was a day of practicing precision for him, but I am really pleased with how he progressed. He was back on track with everything by the end of the session, and he didn't hesitate at all.

Another good boy!

Now, I just need to work on putting it all together, seeing the resulting big picture in real time, and reacting to the situation appropriately! No worries, eh?

The unexpected handling details

2008-06-26T13:13:00.004-06:00

There's an interesting topic being discussed on the BC Boards today. A novice like myself discovered with surprise how unprepared she was for the seemingly simple handling aspects of a sheepdog trial this past weekend, and she asked for help figuring out where she had gone wrong, clarification on what exactly she was supposed to be doing, and advice on how to do better next time. I sympathized with her when I read her post—I've certainly been there. As novices, we spend so much time learning about widening flanks and achieving straight fetches and dealing with pressure and covering sheep, and we don't often think very much about turning around the post or transitioning to a drive. Fortunately for me, I learned how to prepare for some of the many unexpected practical challenges a trial presents during our novice series this past winter. Lots of experienced folks generously offered their facilities, sheep, and expertise, and after reading that thread today, I am so happy I was able to participate and thus learn some of these tough lessons in the warm safety of a few novice trials hosted by friendly faces!

Whistles and hesitation and brace work, oh my!

2008-06-24T16:13:00.008-06:00

I went out to Bill's this morning and we ran in the field for what will probably be the last time this summer. The foxtails are out in full force now, and I pulled several hundred (perhaps several thousand, no lie!) from each dog. I probably pulled about twenty to thirty from between each toe, and another thirty or more under their arms. It's too much, and I knew it was too much when I saw the little 2-gallon cooler of water I brought for the dogs had about 15 foxtails in it as soon as Craig went to take his first drink. This sucks!

Taz walks up on the sheep grazing in Bill's pasture for the last time in a while, thanks to the foxtails and spear grass.

I worked with Craig first. I had planned to work on cross driving with him, since I have such a hard time transitioning from a drive to a cross drive. But that's not quite how things worked out. We did some driving to begin with, and he listened to me quite well at first. However, there is a definite distance at which he either no longer listens to me or he does not hear me very well. For a long time, I thought it was that he didn't listen to me, but today he kept looking at me from that distance and definitely seemed to be seeking direction. Maybe this is the distance at which his hearing is beginning to fade. So I tried whistling him, and he took the whistled commands only about a third of the time. Thinking we were rusty on whistles again, I brought him closer and practiced whistles with him, reinforced by words. When we were communicating with the whistles again, I let him drive the sheep further out again and was pleased to see that he took more of my whistles at that distance. Not perfect, but better—he took my whistles maybe two-thirds of the time. We'll continue to sharpen the whistles up close in Bill's arena, but if we can't use the field, I won't be able to work with him at a distance very much. I'll have to get more creative (or brave) with finding other places to work...

So I put Craig up and got Taz. We did a few short outruns, and it seemed like he was getting a little tighter and slicier today. Hmm. He wasn't moving the sheep until he got to them, but he was overflanking, which he usually did only when he was slicing. I did give him some corrections, but I think what we need to do is a remedial Derek-style widening-out session. We'll do that next time. This time, I wanted to work on his hesitating, especially since this might be the last time we'd be working in the pasture for a while. I knew he was more likely to hesitate when I gave him a strong lie down to start. This was, I think, because he was starting out feeling a bit more pressure from me than he was comfortable with. I didn't necessarily want to add to the pressure by yelling at him right off the bat. This is something I can control, so I decided to stop putting so much pressure on him that way. Instead, I decided to elicit his hesitation by doing a longer outrun. It worked; he began hesitating just a touch when the sheep were pretty far away. I gave him a correction, and it worked to get him moving again. We repeated this a couple more times, but he was starting to hesitate at different points in his flank. I used a variety of corrections ("hey!" "get out!" step toward him, wave a leash at him), and he always got moving again, but when he did restart he was often tight. I was starting to feel like we were all over the place with what was going on, without steady progress forward, so I changed gears and just started walking around with the sheep and Taz for a bit. This seemed to settle him some, and I decided to try the brace exercise Denise suggested.

I unhooked Craig and lied both dogs down on either side of me. The sheep were about 100 yards away. "Shhh!" I said softly, and off they went—Craig on the away side, and Taz on the bye side. No hesitation whatsoever with Taz. As Denise had predicted, they crossed one another at the top and then brought them back to me together. Whee, this was fun! I did it a few more times, each time a little further away from the sheep, and Taz never hesitated when I sent both of them. He did, however, run tight, so it's probably not something I should do very often, but it definitely achieved its desired result. Actually, I don't know if I could do this too much anyway, as Craig stopped running very enthusiastically after a while when he saw Taz going. That's okay, we won't do it much. Was very fun to see though!

I think next time, I'll do the widening-out exercise and then maybe send the two of them out together a couple of times before continuing to work with Taz on his own. I didn't think to do a couple more outruns with Taz on his own after sending both together this morning (duh!) so I'm not sure what, if any, effect running with Craig had on his own outruns. I guess we'll see later this week!

PS Sorry the photos are kind of crap—I took them with my phone camera...

Crossing my fingers . . .

2008-06-19T21:25:00.008-06:00

I didn't have very much time before I had to get to work, but I took the dogs out to Bill's yesterday morning. First things first—clipping them was a fantastic idea! There were a lot of foxtails out in the field, and I can only assume that nasty spear grass was lurking as well, but neither dog picked up much. And they don't actually look too different than they did before (I did sort of make a pest of myself hovering over the haircuts at the groomer's ;-)

I worked Craig first. I was curious to see what he'd do back at Bill's again. He definitely seemed to be feeling better these days. He had listened to me really well at the trial, and he ran fast and didn't get too hot or anything. And yesterday we worked both in the arena and then in the field, and he took nearly all of my commands and was quite relaxed as he worked. I don't know why he was feeling yucky for the past couple of weeks, but he seems to be over it now. Phew. Maybe he just needed a little time to acclimate to the sudden heat we got when the season changed?

After half an hour or so, I put Craig up and set Taz up for a few outruns. With this past trial out of the way, I wanted to concentrate on fixing Taz's hesitation for good, if possible. I'm tired of this habit, as we seem to conquer it for a while, only to see it rear its ugly head again and again—and, like pounds shed and regained on fad diets, each time it comes back worse than it was before. I wanted to fix it once and for all. I was ready to try Robin French's idea of getting after him when he hesitates and following that up with a soft, inviting flank when he started moving again.

His first few outruns were fine, no hesitation at all. In an effort to try to elicit it so we could stamp it out, I gave him a pretty strong "lie down" before sending him on an outrun. It did the trick—he took a step and then stopped. I repeated the flank in a harsh tone and off he went, but tight and tense. Wait, this wasn't how I was supposed to do it. I wanted to give him a correction, not repeat the flank in a correction tone—I don't want to add tension to the flank. Plus, I'd forgotten to follow up the harsh tone with an inviting tone. I tried again.

This time, when he hesitated after I flanked him, I said "hey," in a correction tone (and not a particularly harsh one) and when he jumped right out, I repeated the flank in a softer voice. This worked! His outrun remained wide and not slicy and he didn't seem overly anxious. I did this a few more times and we quit for the day. This was successful, and I wanted to just give him a taste of it, rather than risk drilling him and souring him. There's no rush. We'll work on this in the coming weeks and set another new pattern in his mind. Hopefully, this will work to end this hesitating behavior once and for all!

CHP SDT report: WOOHOO!!!!!

2008-06-15T18:22:00.018-06:00

I just got back from the Colorado Horse Park sheepdog trial, and we did great! Taz won the novice class Saturday (the only day they ran novice), and Craig came in second on Saturday and fifth today in pro-novice. I'm so proud of them!

The course was really difficult for the open, nursery, and pro-novice classes, and the sheep were really tough for everyone! In fact, nobody in the eight-dog nursery class managed to post a score at all on either day! There were also some dips and rises throughout the field, so some of it was completely blind for the handlers. The sheep were very heavy yet prone to running blindly forward at breakneck speed ;-) They were actually the same range ewes used at the Colorado High Country trial on Memorial Day weekend. For the open course, I heard the sheep were set up about 400 yards up a hill that sloped more gradually to the left and was steeper to the right. I am not sure how much they were able to bring the sheep in for the other classes—the set-out crew reported that if the sheep were set much farther forward, they would break. There was a bunch of scrambly brush midway toward the post, with a clearing just wide enough to place the fetch panels between. Then a bit further down the hill was the post, with the judge's stand set back from that a bit. To the left up another hill were the first set of drive panels, and then across the field the second set of panels stood (these panels didn't actually see much action...), with the pen maybe a third of the way out on the right toward the second set of panels. The exhaust pen was partially hidden behind a brushy berm on the right, just below the area where the competitors and spectators were sitting. Jack Knox was the judge.

Most people sent their dogs to the left, both because the slope was a little gentler and there was less brush to get through. Many, many dogs had trouble finding their sheep, even in the open class. Some dogs ran straight up the middle (erm, some dogs like Craig); others ran so far out they tried to pick up the sheep in the set-out pen. And once the dogs who managed to find their sheep picked them up, the sheep pretty much charged forward toward the exhaust. It was crazy! It was fun, though, and I didn't hear anyone complaining about the level of difficulty of the course. Actually, most of the competitors seemed pleased to run on such a challenging course.

I was nervous before running Craig, but the course seemed so beyond my ability that I figured I had no chance to do well, so I really wasn't that nervous. And I think this really helped me. He wanted to go to the right, but I just didn't think that would be a good idea, so I sent him to the left. He ran straight up the middle. This was Craig, not Taz, so I was shocked! Craig nearly always does a nice outrun. I tried to redirect him and he ignored me. At the last minute, he looped around to the left (someone from the set-out crew said he somehow managed to do this without disturbing them at all!) and picked them up. Then, at breakneck speed and too far over to the right, he brought the sheep to me. He ignored my whistles and commands to lie him down in the first half of the fetch, but once he past the brush, he did lie down and the sheep calmed down. We got around the post and started the uphill drive away. Here, Craig was fantastic! He listened to every thing I asked him to do. We didn't make the panels, but we were able to get a line going for a pretty long way before the sheep had other ideas and Craig turned them back to me to prevent them from breaking off course. Jack waved me on to the pen, so I ran over and tried to pen them, but we timed out. Jack later told me that I stopped Craig too short when he was going around at the pen—I kept lying him down when he had two of the three sheep's heads turned, but not necessarily the lead sheep's head. I will have to remember that for the future.

Well, even though the run was a little bit of a disaster, most of the other folks had even more disastrous runs, so we managed to get second place :-) I was kind of shocked at that but obviously thrilled. Yay for Craig! His run today was much the same, but today he crossed on his outrun (so I wonder what would have happened if I'd sent him on an away, like he wanted to do yesterday). His drive was even better today, though, and our overall score was actually higher today—even with the crossover—but we placed fifth overall today. I am very, very happy with Craig!

For the novice class, they set the sheep out on the open part of the bottom half of the course, so there were no hills, brush, or blind spots for us to contend with. The challenge for us was mainly these tough sheep! Keith Fassbender judged the novice class. We sent our dogs from the pen. I was first (why am I always first?). I sent Taz to the left. He didn't go at all when I said "Come bye," so I immediately hissed a "get out of that," and off he went. He was too tight and ignored my commands to lie down, but he didn't slice and the sheep didn't move much when he came around, so being a little tight didn't really hurt us. He lied down as soon as I asked him to at the top, and his lift was nice. His fetch was also pretty nice, and he took my couple of flanks perfectly to bring them straight to the pen. Unfortunately, I had no more luck penning them with Taz than I had with Craig (none of the novices were able to pen them). We had one sheep that was really stroppy. She kept breaking off from the others, and she really challenged Taz. Taz stood his ground, I'm happy to report, though by the end I think he was starting to lose it a little. I did get two of the sheep in the pen once, with the stroppy one in the mouth, but she squirted out before I could close the gate. I sent Taz around to start over, but we timed out. We ended up with a 44 out of 60 points, enough to give us first place. Hooray for Taz! I got a fancy leather collar for his novice prize :-)

So I am very happy with my dogs this weekend! I got lots of very nice compliments about my dogs and my handling, but one stood out for me. A fellow competitor took me aside and told me that he really liked the way I ran my dogs because I looked like I was having so much fun with them. He liked that I was able to laugh at myself when things went wrong and said I looked like I was enjoying myself more than anyone else out there. What a great thing to hear! I just had a great time, and, well, my dogs are fantastic :-)))

Another training session at Bill's...

2008-06-13T16:54:00.004-06:00

I am way late updating this, and now after reading some of the comments from my last post it really feels outdated, but I'll write the update on the session from Tuesday morning. I went to Bill's again, and I started the session in the arena with Craig, just driving all of the sheep along the fence line. We did okay, I guess, but it was a bit uninspired. After a few rounds of this, Bill came out and recommended we go down to the other end of the pasture. So, we moved the sheep down the field (Craig actually did this pretty well, needing minimal direction from me) and, once there, put them in the pen and let five or six back out. This actually went really well—Craig does best when he knows the job at hand and can get on with it. I did a pretty long drive away with him, toward the biggish target area of "straight ahead" (as opposed to panels) because I think some of the issue with Craig tuning me out might have to do with feeling too much pressure from me and the heavy sheep. So I made it a bit easier and the sheep were definitely a bit lighter over on this end of the field. Craig was able to drive them way out—maybe 75 yards (which, for me, is pretty far). We couldn't quite get a cross drive going, but I didn't mind. It was pretty far out, so I called him back and, since he looked really hot already, put him up.

By now Larry and Bill had joined me, and Larry offered to set again for Taz and me with his Mirk dog. Taz did okay. He went around Larry just fine, but he seemed a bit tight to me. When I discussed it later with Elaine, she asked me if the sheep had moved at all during his outrun. I reported that they hadn't. "Then he wasn't too tight," she replied. Interesting. I have to get the picture of what I think is a perfect outrun shape out of my mind when I'm working the dogs and start to pay attention to what the sheep are doing and what else is going on to affect the shape of the outrun.

Also, when I sent him on the away side, toward the pressure, he stopped at about 10:00 and started walking in on the sheep. I commanded him around to 12:00, which he took, and then he bobbled the sheep a little bit before bringing them to me. After the second time this happened, Larry told me Taz was actually correct where he was turning in. He told me that Taz was stopping there because that's where he felt balance was, and if Taz lifted from that position, he wouldn't bobble the sheep at the top—he'd lift them straight and clean. I was surprised. I mean, I know dogs don't necessarily have to lift the sheep at 12:00, but this seemed really short. Hmm. Larry said I wasn't necessarily wrong to command him around to 12:00, if that's the way I wanted to run him, and many judges really like that 12:00 lift, but I risk Taz losing some of his natural feel for sheep if I do that. Since Taz is quite a natural dog and I barely know what I'm doing, I obviously don't want to overcommand him in this way, at least at this stage of our training. And sure enough, the next time I tested it and Taz was dead on, lifting the sheep in a perfect straight line to me.

Taz did have some trouble moving the sheep off me when we turned them around the imaginary post to push them forward for Mirk to pick them up again. The sheep kept trying to bend around him to get back to the pen, but he was really helping them by overflanking when trying to push them forward. We haven't really done barely any driving in the past few months, and he wasn't easily taking the flanks in the first place, and then when he did take the flanks, he went too far and turned the sheep back to me. Switching tactics, I'd get him going forward and when I thought he'd start sneaking up one side or the other, I lied him down. After a bit, Larry came over to help me, noting that I was lying him down too much and causing some of the problems. He though Taz was correcting for the sheep bending himself, and my lying him down was hampering him. Sure enough, when I tested this out, Taz was often able to make the minor adjustments necessary to move the sheep forward on his own. Larry wanted to work on his inside flanks with me a bit as well, and so we did, using the familiar "here here" method to call him in before sending him around. He did okay, but I suspected he was starting to get a little overwhelmed, so I asked Larry if we could do a couple more longer outruns again before we called it a day.

Bill joined us and between Bill, Blue, Larry, and Mirk, there was a lot of commotion at the top. Taz, who had been hesitating a little all morning, actually turned away from the "course" altogether and went back to the pen holding the rest of the sheep. I sort of knew he was struggling when I told him to lie down before sending him and he turned his head completely away from me. Then, as soon as I said "away," he ran back to the pen. He did come back as soon as I called him, but he was definitely feeling a bit too much pressure. I walked closer to the sheep and resent him, and he took the flank this time. I was definitely ready to quit then, but Bill and Larry wanted me to do a couple more, so we'd end on a good note. The first one after that, he was too tight, moving between the 4-wheeler Bill was on and the sheep, but the second one was really nice—he was wide, picked up the sheep nicely, and fetched them straight to me. The perfect way to finally end the session. Poor Taz was very hot and a little fried, I think, and he drank for a loooooong time after that. So I think we did work too long and do too much, but it all ended pretty well.

I guess we'll see what happens at the trial on Saturday...

PS: I made Taz wear his t-shirt again, and it did help protect him from the spear grass...but he picked up all these foxtails instead:

It's gonna be a looooong summer!

What's in a command?

2008-06-09T22:21:00.002-06:00

As promised: the work session update. This'll be quick because I'm really tired but I have to get it done before I go to bed tonight, since I'm taking the dogs out tomorrow morning again...

Basically, Taz was pretty good. Elaine acted as the set-out person again for us, and Taz had no real problems going around her. He was wide and didn't slice. He was also clearly having a blast—I think Elaine was right when she predicted that once he understands what doing a correct outrun feels like, he won't want to go back to his tight and slicy ways. I just hope his nice outruns aren't limited to working at Bill's! Taz is still hesitating at times, though, and Elaine cautioned me not to overuse the trusty "get out of that" command to get him to go. But it's the only thing that has consistently worked to get him to commit to his flank, so it's hard to wean off it. And, well, I guess I just don't really know how to wean off it. If we have truly fixed his outrun now, I guess working on the hesitating will be the next thing to fix. Then, we'll work on lengthening his outrun a bit. Of course, I'm getting ahead of myself again. After all, trying to move too fast and not paying enough attention to his foundation work is what caused me to have to go back and reteach his outrun in the first place!

Things didn't go as well with Craig. He was really not in tune with me again, and actually he wasn't really responding very well to Elaine either. She wondered if maybe he was not doing very well physically. It's true he is very skinny these days, despite eating 20 ounces of (raw) food a day, and he seemed to get really hot really fast, and take a while to recover from the heat after resting. He was also dribbling while he worked, which I'd never seen him do before, and he had a couple of other symptoms that suggested a possible kidney infection was to blame. I took him to the vet and he drew some blood over the weekend, and he doesn't have anything obvious wrong with him, but he really just doesn't seem himself. He wasn't listening and seemed to tune out whoever was working him. It may just be that he was just frustrated with the sheep. We brought him to the arena to try to reset things, and he was a bit better here for me (he was much better for Elaine) and Elaine noticed that I use the command "there" in a way that Craig is not used to. I have always understood "there" to mean "that is the spot I want you to stop and then turn into the sheep at," but Elaine said she'd always used "there" to mean "don't flank past that point when you're driving." Which it totally different and might explain some of the communication problems I have with Craig. So I tried using "there" her way, and while we didn't suddenly become a team to rival Bev Lambert and Pippa, it definitely made a difference. Tomorrow I think I'll spend all of my time with Craig driving in the arena practicing this and seeing if we can get back in sync. This might be the last practice session I have with the dogs before this weekend's trial—yipes!

Stupid spear grass

2008-06-07T16:23:00.007-06:00

I'm watching over Bill's sheep and feeding his slightly scary guard dog, Max, this weekend. Working at Bill's is both a blessing and a curse. It's absolutely gorgeous over there, and his pasture is big, with varied terrain and bunnies, foxes, deer, and the occasional elk sightings.
This photo of Taz moving the sheep across Bill's pasture was taken last winter. The smallest part of the rocky bowl behind his house and field is visible in the background.

As with all home flocks, his sheep are wise to the lay of the land and the draw to the barn is strong, but the sheep are not terribly broke. Bill is one of the most generous people I've ever met, and he doesn't mind sharing his space and his sheep with others. I am very lucky to be able to work my dogs here.

However, there is one main disadvantage to Bill's pasture. In his field grow these horrid little weeds that sprout spear grass, tiny spirally barbs that get caught in the dogs' coats and can burrow into their skin—and into their internal organs, sometimes causing major damage and, in the worst cases, even death. The last time we worked here, I pulled these out of Taz's fur:

They're kind of difficult to see in this photo, but I pulled out hundreds of the nasty little suckers. Now I'm a little paranoid about working the dogs there. I won't be able to train there much longer anyway, as it'll be much worse in the summer. Rats.

In an effort to hold them off for a while longer, I have an appointment to get Taz and Craig clipped this Tuesday. It'll be the first time I've ever brought any of my dogs to a groomer, and I know they'll look pretty funny, but I am hoping that clipping the fur on their chests and bellies will deter them from picking up so many of these little spears. In the meantime, I tried a homemade solution:

Don't they look cute? ;-) Taz and Craig sport t-shirts fitted to cover their chests. Craig's was off within the first five minutes of working, but Taz managed to keep his shirt on the entire time we were out there. I think they helped: this time, they picked up only a few spears (we did try to avoid the areas where we saw the plants dispersing the spears as well).

Next time, I'll write about our actual work/training session ;-)

Righting wrongs and setting up for success

2008-06-04T21:15:00.008-06:00

Another morning at Bill's. The sheep were grazing in the pasture again, so I got Craig out and we put most of them in the arena and then worked on driving again. It was difficult again. The sheep were just so heavy! I lied him down whenever he reached the sheeps' hips, but it didn't achieve the desired effect because the sheep then wouldn't move forward at all for him to settle in behind. So I'd walk him up, and they wouldn't notice him until he was right up their butts—and then they'd jump and spread out. I had to flank him. Sometimes he lied down when I asked; other times, he'd just act like he didn't hear my commands and go all the way around. I think the sheep were frustrating him, too, and he didn't want to stop because having to lift them over and over again was such a PITA. It's not that he doesn't have the power to move them; they weren't challenging him at all, they were simply so engrossed in eating that they barely noticed him. I was getting very frustrated myself, because he wasn't taking a lot of my commands, but I really do think it's mostly the circumstances of heavy sheep and lots of grass. I took a deep breath and finished up walking with him as he drove, so he stayed in contact with me and together we moved the sheep through the panels. I was happy that we were able to work together at the end, but I think I won't work him so close to the pens anymore. The draw is so much stronger there, and there is so much more grass—it's too much for us to deal with right now. We'd be much better off if I set us up for success as much as I can right now, and one way to do that is to work down at the opposite end of the pasture. The sheep are less interested in the weeds down there and less affected by the draw, and so I can actually practice being successful driving with him, rather than being frustrated and having him being frustrated, and the sheep not responding to what we're doing. For right now, when it feels like we're just going backwards in progress, I think this is really important. We'll worry about working in challenging conditions another time; for now, we need to get back into a rhythm.

So I put Craig up and got Taz out. This session went much better! I practiced sending him on his away side several times, and he got progressively wider on this side again. He was hesitating again a bit, but I was again always able to get him to commit to his flank when I told him to get out of it. I'll continue to be patient with this, I guess...

Just as I was getting ready to leave, Larry drove up. He offered to set sheep for Taz and me with Raid, so we could work on his issues with bringing the sheep to the set-out person and running too tight when someone was at the top. Taz seemed to do just fine when I sent him on the side Raid was holding, but he definitely was a bit nervous going around Larry when I sent him on the opposite side. So I tried to fix it by sending him and then immediately walking as quickly as I could up the field toward the sheep and telling him to lie down as soon as he reached the top. By the fourth or fifth time I sent him, he was getting better about ignoring Larry. Unfortunately, I had to get to work, so I couldn't keep working on it with him (once I'm sure he's ignoring Larry, I'd like to reduce the distance I move forward after I send him, until I don't need to move at all), but Larry generously offered to come out next Tuesday morning and work on this a bit more with me. Hopefully, we can get past this little obstacle fairly easily :-)

Craig's driving; Taz's outruns (of course)!

2008-06-02T21:54:00.002-06:00

I met Elaine out at Bill's yesterday morning. Bill had the sheep already out grazing in the pasture, and she put three in the arena to work her young dogs. That left the rest of them in the field for me. I worked Craig first, doing the same thing I did last time—driving the sheep through the panels on the course Bill had set, near the arena and the pens the sheep live in. This meant that the draw was strong. We had a hard time moving all 30 or so ewes and lambs when they were so intent on munching all the grass and working their way back toward the pens. Craig wasn't taking my whistles as well as he had on Friday, so I sort of half whistled, half shouted commands at him. I did try to lie him down and walk him up more than relying on flanking him back and forth. We made it through the first set of panels all right, but I couldn't transition into a cross drive, and Craig brought the sheep nearly all the way back to me. I reset our path forward and back into a cross drive, and we made it through those panels as well, but things were getting messier and messier. These were actually the fetch panels, so I decided to try for the third set of panels—the ones closest to the arena and pens. Well, we didn't quite make it here at all, so I had Craig bring the sheep back to me and tried to move them up to the first set of panels again. But the sheep had other ideas...Craig would get the ones at the front moving and they'd string out a bit, while the rear sheep would stop to eat. Then Craig would sort out the sheep at the rear of the group, and the front ones would start to bend back toward the pens. Craig would go to cover, and the sheep in the middle and rear of the pack would take the opportunity to eat some more. Craig got frustrated and began just gripping them. I am simply not skilled enough to help Craig move such heavy sheep through such lush grass so close to the draw. Things were just going downhill, so I put him up.

Later, I explained all this to Elaine, and she helped us move the sheep down the pasture to the southwest corner. She noted that I was underflanking him, and I realized I was underflanking him partly because I didn't want him to turn him back to me, as I'd noted in the past, but also because I was expecting him to not take my commands the first time. Craig takes my commands the first time I ask about half the time. So I need to go back and reinforce that he needs to take my commands the first time every time. Elaine tells me Craig has been trained with a two-command command ("Lie down. Lie down!"), but he actually takes a lot of commands the first time, so I know he can. I need to polish it so that he listens to me the first time or else resign myself to a two-command system, but whatever it is, it has to be consistent or my timing will always be a bit off.

The other thing Elaine noticed is that I'm slacking in letting him get too far to the sheeps' shoulders when he's wearing forward. He needs to go no further than their hips. When he gets to the hips, I should lie him down, let the sheep move a bit forward, and then walk him up. If he doesn't move in a straight line behind them, lie him down when he reaches the sheeps' hips again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Next up was Taz. I started again doing the same circle exercise a couple of times with the big group of sheep. He seemed to do fine, so we quickly moved to outruns. He no longer mistook a lie down for a get out (phew!) but I did notice that he was now favoring his come bye side, which used to be his weaker side. I think I've been working so much on that side that I've just neglected working on his away side with the new methods. So I'll have to practice circles and smaller outruns on that away side a bit to make sure he's comfortable flanking on both sides. On a few outruns, I did have to revert back to saying "get out of that," but at least he committed to the outrun as soon as I said those magic words every time. And even on these outruns, once he went he looked really nice. He continued to run way wide today and not slice very much, if at all. His lifts looked great, too.

Until I asked Elaine to pretend to act as a set-out person. I had a sneaking suspicion that Taz's outrun fell apart when he saw a set-out person, regardless of whether or not they were on horseback. And, after a few tests of this theory, Elaine agreed. With no set-out person at the top, Taz ran wide and lifted straight. He lied down when I asked him to, and fetched them straight to me. But when someone was there, he still ran wide (though this is when he was much more likely to hesitate), but overflanked around the person and began bringing the sheep to the setter. I could eventually get him to lie down and refocus on me, but it was more of a struggle and definitely very messy. I'd definitely have to practice this, but I am glad I was able to identify it. I guess I need to do smaller outruns with someone at the top and perhaps walk toward the sheep after I send him to make sure he sees me still in the picture and listens to me when I ask him to lie down, and then just gradually walk forward less and less until I don't have to walk forward anymore. It's a bummer because it requires another person, so I can't practice it alone, but Elaine said she's help us with this.

I'm going back to Bill's tomorrow morning, so at least I can work on getting his away flanks solid again. For Craig, I'll just work on keeping him moving no farther forward than the sheeps' hips and enforcing my commands so that we can build some consistency there.

This is new . . .

2008-05-30T09:15:00.001-06:00

I brought the dogs out to Bill's this morning to practice a bit.

Craig did very nicely when we practiced driving—he took nearly all of my whistles. That is a huge breakthrough, as it means I can now feel confident whistling him during a trial. The driving was intentionally difficult. We worked just three of the sheep in the area right next to their pens, where the rest of the ewes and their youngsters were. I was trying to see what we could do together. It was tough, because the draw was so very strong, but we did pretty well. I tried hard to just use a combination of the lie down and walk up commands, with only a few flanks to get us back on track if we strayed too far. The key seemed to be that if I did need to use a flank, then to lie him down right after the sheep turned, rather than rush to overcorrect with the opposite flank. Most of the time, the sheep settled and began walking forward. Revelation! We did some penning as well. Here, too, we worked as a team. It was lovely.

Taz also did well, but I think he is getting a little confused. First the good: He ran wide and sliced minimally. We started off doing the circle exercise in the arena, and this was fine, so we moved to the field. The circle exercise was working well here, too, so we graduated to doing small outruns. Taz ran very wide, bending out beautifully from my feet. Woo hoo! I was (and continue to be) very encouraged about this.

He did start hesitating just a little toward the end, but I was able to keep him going with a "get out of that." Letting him leave from slightly in front of me also helped this. It's definitely a confidence issue, and I think his hesitation is kind of a gauge for me to see how much he understands what I want from him because at the same time that he began hesitating, something new began happening . . .

He didn't want to lie down much. For the first time in more than a year, he didn't hit the ground when I asked. This had been building up since the clinic, I guess, when he first began really taking several steps forward (and usually into the sheep) when I asked him to lie down. Derek had told me not to worry about it, so I let it go. That will have to be the next thing we reinforce, though, because it's morphing into something else completely. Taz seemed to begin to confuse his lie down with get out, because when I asked him to lie down at the slicy point (10:00 or 2:00), he automatically bent out to go wider on his outrun. This would be okay, but he also started to bend out wider when I lied him down at the top. That is, he didn't lie down, but moved further along in his trajectory after moving out. Weird. He did still take a lie down when I was walking him up, to slow him to a true walk, but he was definitely not stopping/instead bending out when I tried to lie him down during his outrun. I did run up at him once when he did that, and he dropped immediately when I started moving toward him, and during his next outrun he didn't slice at all (so I didn't have to ask him to lie down again), but he also did hesitate. Not wanting to completely overwhelm him, I decided to end our session there—it was a good outrun, once it started—and maybe letting him think about things a bit will help him put all this together.

It is a lot of new stuff for him, and I think he is responding quite well overall, but I do want to be careful not to overdo it. I want to take things slow and steady, building on what we've learned. Things did not go quite the way I expected them to today, but I think he's just figuring things out. At least we do seem to finally be breaking some old bad habits :-)

Lessons learned at the CHC SDT

2008-05-27T19:15:00.010-06:00

Ever since the Derek clinic, I've been thinking about how I can transition Taz from the small circles in the arena to regular outruns in the field. It's been difficult to discern this next step forward from his book because his book focuses on starting a pup rather than fixing a dog you've screwed up ;-) I just haven't been able to visualize or work out how to make the circles a bit more fluid so that he can work the sheep from anywhere in the arena relative to me and achieve the same wide effect. I really wish I'd gotten the idea of how to keep Taz well off the sheep while circling a bit earlier in the week I was with Derek so that I could have worked with him a bit on this. I was quite perplexed about the whole thing, so I was sure I wouldn't risk anything by trying to run him in the Colorado High Country trial I went to this past weekend . . .

Ha! So of course I did run him ;-) but I am actually glad I did, since our run plus the follow-up analysis I did with Elaine helped formulate a plan for retraining the progression of Taz's outrun . . .

First things first. The trial was fun—Nancy and Lisa really know what they're doing. Lisa's ranch is such a beautiful setting, and everyone seemed to have had a great time. Tracy Derx was the judge, and I scribed for the open and nursery runs, so I really got to see how the runs were pointed and what the more successful dogs were able to do to best handle the heavy range ewes.

The novice and pro-novice runs took place on Monday, with the novice class scheduled first. I really was planning to scratch Taz, but was talked into changing my mind embarrassingly easily. "You may as well try," people told me. "Just don't let him get away with anything," they cautioned. The course looked pretty reasonable, so I decided to enter after all. I figured if he flanked way too tight, I'd just lie him down as quickly as I could and leash him up, so there was no harm in trying.

There was a heavy draw to the left side of the field, so I set Taz up to go left. I told him to lie down in the warning voice I learned to use at the clinic, and I really think Taz looked at me with the same expression he wore at the clinic, so I hoped he'd make the connection that we were really just doing the same thing here, sort of. "Come bye," I said in what I hoped was a soft, inviting tone. He took a couple of steps and looked back at me. "Get out!" I hissed, and off he went. And his outrun was nice and wide, nicer than he's ever done in a trial. He did slice a little at the top. I shouted "hey," but I was late—I wasn't prepared for the slice, probably because I was so pleased that his flank was so nice. I should have lied him down and then reflanked him or told him to "get" instead, but the sheep were heavy enough that the slicing didn't really have too terrible of an effect on them. He picked them up . . . and then circled around them in what I think was an attempt to bring them to the set out person on horseback. Rats! Taz doesn't have much experience (actually, I believe he has none) with people setting on horseback, so I couldn't really fault him for getting confused up at the top. I lied him down and that was the end of our run.

Even though we retired, I was very pleased with our run. I saw the score sheet, and we'd gotten only four points off the outrun and lift. I think Taz remembered the work we did at the clinic, and hope we're on our way to fixing his outrun for real. I just need to continue working to set it. After talking to Elaine, we came up with what I think is a solid plan to transition from Derek's circle work to actual outruns using the same philosophy.

Send Taz in small outruns from my feet, but remember to start with the warning "lie down"—send with the inviting flank (and use the "get out" if he hesitates).
Anticipate a slice at 10:00/2:00, so right before he gets there just lie him down.
Walk straight to the sheep and threaten ground between the sheep and the dog (and also the ground ahead of the dog) while saying "get out." He will give ground and widen out. This is what I must be careful not to overdo.
Graduate to just lying him down and saying "get out" (no longer having to walk up to the sheep and physically threaten the ground); then shorten to just saying "get."
Then progress to just saying "get" without lying him down. Try to get to this point as quickly as I can, because if I lie him down too often, he may develop a habit of hesitating at that spot, anticipating the stop.
Eventually, he may not need me to say anything and he just won't slice anymore. This is obviously the best-case scenario.
But if he hesitates at that spot, I may always have to redirect him—I can live with this if I have to. It's better than having him slice his flanks forever.

So that's what I'll work on with Taz over the next few weeks. It might not be a perfect plan, but it seems like it might work. If it doesn't, I'll just go back to the drawing board.

I also ran Craig in pro-novice, which was TOUGH! Really, I was in a bit over my head. The wind was blowing pretty hard, and the sheep were a bit squirrelly in response to the front coming in. Craig's outrun and lift were flawless (no points off, according to the score sheet :-), but the sheep were drifting to the left during the fetch. I tried to get him to lie down to redirect him, but he wouldn't take it—he was too afraid of losing them. He wouldn't take an away on the fly for me either, so the sheep were pretty close to the post by the time he would lie down. They calmed down, and we made it around the post, but our attempt to drive was a whole lot of back and forth. I was afraid he'd turn them back to me (he really wanted to do just that), so I would underflank him for a while, until they were in danger of moving too far to the right, and then I'd overflank him, causing them to turn too sharply. I'd lie him down and things would settle, but then the same scenario would repeat on the left side. He turned them back to me a couple of times before I gave up and we retired. Ah well. Just as with the Free to Be trial in New Mexico, I should have just alternated between telling him to lie down and walk up. I think if I try to flank him too much, he's not quite sure what we're doing, whereas when I ask him to walk up, he understands that we're supposed to be driving and covers while pushing the sheep forward. I'll have to practice this much more before our next trial in a couple of weeks, and hopefully it will be a bit more ingrained for both of us.

Actually, I'm happy to have a plan for working with Craig as well. Usually I go out and just sort of aimlessly practice driving with him, but it feels a bit haphazard. I much prefer the idea of having a goal to work toward, and learning to effectively push the sheep forward with minimum side-to-side movement seems like a good one ;-)

Now, I just need to head out to Bill's to work on it!

Derek Scrimgeour clinic report (River Falls, WI, May 10-14, 2008)

2008-05-18T16:23:00.010-06:00

I'm finally back from the Derek Scrimgeour clinic, and I really don't even know where to begin to write about it. There was just so much information to process! I learned a freakin' ton!

It took us two days to drive from Colorado to the clinic in Wisconsin, and the forecast for the days of the clinic was five straight days of pouring down rain. Yipes! Fortunately, the weather wasn't quite so bad, but the first few days were cold, windy, and wet. Poor Derek was pretty jet-lagged, I think, and the first couple of days were a bit confusing for some people (okay, for me). But each day, I was able to understand and apply a bit more knowledge, and, by the last day, I felt pretty confident that I understood and could apply the basic tenets of Derek's training system.

Derek's system is deceptively simple to understand intellectually, but it was a bit harder to translate into effective body positioning, proper voice tone and cadence, and correct timing. I am very glad it was a five-day clinic, as it turned out that I needed all five days to be able to incorporate enough of what Derek was teaching to be able to repeat his success (well, not to the same degree, of course ;-) by myself when I worked with Taz. (Because Derek's system is a bit different than that of most other trainers, I had decided to put Craig, who will be ten years old this summer and has already been trained in more traditional ways, in the clinic only if Taz wouldn't work for Derek for some reason. Happily, Taz did work for Derek, but really I was working him most of the time myself anyway, and he really responded well to Derek's techniques.)

The basic premise of his system is applying pressure on the ground rather than the dog. Rather than pushing a dog out, he makes whatever area of ground he doesn't want the dog to come in to dangerous. So, if a dog is slicing his flanks *cough, Taz, ahem* then he does not try to run at the dog or otherwise get in the dog's space to force him out; instead, he threatens the ground between himself and the dog, so the dog doesn't want to enter that space. By putting pressure on the ground, rather than the dog, you're claiming the space so the dog respects that he can't push into the area you're claiming. You make your space uncomfortable for the dog. At the same time, his focus is always in front of the dog as the dog flanks, which ensures that he is always in position to cover the sheep if the dog tries to slice in or spiral in while he is flanking around. It's important not to fall into old habits of chasing the dog around on his flanks; this just pushes him forward—it does nothing to keep him out and leaves me out of position if he slices in. I'm probably not explaining it very well, and there are a bunch of little steps that I had to keep straight in my mind to get it, but once I did, Taz was wide and didn't slice at all.

Some things I took away from the clinic:

Think in smaller movements, not big sweeping ones.
Clear, definite communication (even if I'm not exactly right) is vital. If I'm ambiguous or questioning in my commands, the dog is left to guess at what exactly I want.
Corrections must always be followed by praise for the system to be most effective. It's pressure > release > praise. Without the praise, it just becomes a negative system.
Invite a flank; demand a stop.
Walk up means walk. Walking up straight and slow is the key to more advanced stuff.
Organize the work; choreograph everything.
A correction is a "focuser" for the dog. Dog begins to respond to tones if they convey information consistently. "Lie down" can be said in a normal tone of voice to tell the dog what you want him to do; if he doesn't do it or if he takes another command incorrectly, "lie down" can be said in a harsher voice to convey that you are not happy with his choice. This is immediately followed by another chance to work correctly.

There's about a million other little things, and I'm still sorting everything out in my head, but I worked Taz this morning at Bill's and I was able to continue our success. Derek warned me not to overdo this, because I am putting a lot of pressure on Taz right now, but I need to ingrain it a bit more before transitioning to the driving stage (where I'll have to reteach Taz to drive a little according to this method). Because these lovely new flanks are not completely set in his mind yet, I think I am going to scratch Taz in next weekend's trial. I am pretty disappointed about that, but I am trying to think about the big picture here, and this is my best chance to fix Taz's flanks once and for all. (Well, I may have to remind him once in a while, of course ;-) But if this new foundation sticks, I think our progress forward will go a lot faster.

So, I know this post has been a little all over the place, but my mind is a bit of a cyclone right now. All these new ideas are swimming around in my head, and I'll write more about them as I try to make sense of everything I've learned. Elaine took some videos of Taz and me working, too, so I can review what was happening when things were working and when they weren't. If they aren't too embarrassing, I might even post them ;-)