Fixing Taz’s hesitation

Or, Robin French is a genius . . .

I went out to Bill’s this afternoon. Bill told me he was training his lambs to work with the dogs, so they’d be a little more difficult than usual. I was a little nervous about it—I sometimes still feel a little intimidated working the dogs by myself under the best of conditions. But it was fine. Larry was there when I pulled up and he’d already worked his dogs, so the lambs and sheep were ready to go, over in the northwest pen.

I brought the dogs down and tied up Craig. I’d use Taz to get a few of the sheep out. I usually use Craig for these kinds of jobs, because he’s so good at it and I know he loves doing more practical tasks. But Taz needs to practice these kinds of jobs, too. He did great, moving the sheep calmly and slowly. No lack of confidence here. We brought three sheep out and let them drift about 30 yards away. We’d start small.

I set him up on my left, trying to remember all of Robin's advice to try. I took two small steps to my right while saying nothing more than “ch-ch-ch-ch” (a sound I’ve never used with him before). He took off immediately. A little tight, but no hesitation at all. Yay! Again and again, Taz left my side when I sent him like that. I reduced it to taking one step to the side (which is allowed in a trial, I think). It didn’t work every single time, though. About the third or fourth time out, I set him up pretty far from the sheep (I suck at judging distances, but it was pretty far). “Ch-ch-ch,” I said as I stepped off. He took a step and stopped. So I tried a correction: “Acht!” He looked at me but didn’t move. “Get out of that!” I growled, and off he went. Telling Taz to get out of that often kicks him out when he begins to slice or hesitates further up in his trajectory, but it had never worked before when he hesitated from my feet. Hmm. Maybe with the new sound and stepping to the other side, we were breaking the cycle! I was very encouraged :-)

Another thing that I think helped was that Bill advised me to remember to break things up a little with some informal, light stuff, like just walking and sending him around occasionally. Also, I even practiced the “not those sheep, these sheep” exercise a little. We left a group of sheep in the field to do an outrun with (I must say, it’s really convenient that Taz is having this outrun issue in the spring, when there is plenty of lovely green grass for the sheep to munch on ;-) and walked back to get some distance to send him. We happened to be walking in the direction of the pen where the rest of the sheep were waiting, and Taz began focusing on them. “No, look” I told him. He turned away from the penned sheep. “These!” I said, looking toward our group snacking in the field. He spotted them. “Good!” Yay! Not a bad start.

I have a big question about Taz though: He sometimes still sliced at the top. I am reluctant to correct him when I see him start to slice because I am afraid it will make his hesitating worse. I know every time he does a slicy outrun he is practicing incorrect work, but which is the lesser of two evils? Is it a mistake to let the slicing slide for now or should I insist on correct work while we work through the hesitation? Maybe the answer depends on how quickly I can fix the hesitation—if we can work through it quickly, we can move back to addressing his slicing without worrying about the hesitation anymore, but if the problem persists, I’ll just have to work on both problems together, even though one may exacerbate the other.

I was happy with my work with Craig as well. I worked mainly with whistles with him today. He still didn’t take every whistle I gave—not by a long shot—but he was taking them more and more as the session went on. I did some difficult (if close in) driving and reinforced with fun, easy outruns. When he didn’t take the whistles, I made sure he took the voice commands I followed up with. So really, that’s what I was striving for—not perfection, but improvement. We mostly just need to practice with the whistle, I think, doing outruns and keeping things easy on the drive for now so he is more clear on what I am asking him. It may take a little while until he really understands what I am asking him. (I still ask for the wrong flank sometimes—sadly, the whistle hasn’t magically made that any easier for me. Also, though I’m much better than I was, sometimes the sounds that come out of that thing are not entirely consistent. Poor dog!) I let Craig bring the sheep back up the field and put them away, and I know he was feeling quite pleased with himself, so I think he felt like we had a successful time out, too :-)

I know I have to keep practicing with both Taz and Craig to ingrain everything we worked on today, so I told Bill I’ll be coming out tomorrow as well. I wish I could come out every day! I leave for a family trip to Florida on Thursday, and I might even be able to squeeze in another session on Tuesday, but that might be it for a little while. I am hopeful that this latest strategy to work through Taz's hesitation will have a lasting effect. So far, it definitely seems to be the most effective. And I am confident that Craig and I just need to establish a steady rhythm with our whistles. Maybe three straight days of steady practice doing what we did today and building on our small successes will be enough to make some real progress on both fronts!