Mixed bag...

I went to Bill's for a lesson over the weekend. It was kind of a mixed bag...

We worked Taz first on outruns. Bill set them up about 150 yards away from us with his Blue dog. Bill's been busy with lots of nondog aspects of life lately, and so hasn't been able to work his own dogs very much. As a result, he had to talk kinda loudly and forcefully to Blue while they were setting. I set Taz up about 20 feet away from me and sent him to the left. He really hesitated, not even taking any steps forward at first. I walked forward, telling him to come bye a few more times. He did eventually go, but when he did reach the top, he kind of hesitated lifting the sheep and beginning the fetch. I think he was a little confused—he seemed to take some of Bill's commands meant for Blue, and it looked like he sort of started to maybe bring the sheep to Bill, then decided to sort of just chase them a little before taking my redirections to bring them to me. Yipes. I shortened up the distance a bunch, but he continued to hesitate, though he did better when Bill wasn't at the top. I think that I probably don't work him enough with men, so maybe that's why Taz has problems with Bill at the top. Bill's style is also really different from my own—he likes to give a dog a lot of commands and puts a fair amount of pressure on them. I don't, at least partly because at this stage I am wrong half the time (sigh). So I am not sure whether working with Bill is helpful for Taz (he needs to learn how to deal with people, especially men, commanding their dogs during set out) or harmful (since Taz does sometimes backslide a little in his progress when we work with him). Are we seeing holes in Taz's training that need to be addressed to round him out, or is working him with such different working styles just confusing to a novice dog trying to get to the next level?

We also did work on some driving and inside flanks. He took most of his flanks, but I did usually have to say "here, here" first. But then we haven't done much driving lately, since we're working on his outrun, so I thought Taz did pretty well here. I didn't really want to push him too hard, since I knew he was a little fried from the outrun stuff. Bill warned me again not to focus solely on fixing his outrun to the exclusion of driving altogether.

I also worked with Craig a little. It was very windy, so I think he did have some trouble hearing me. So I worked him a little with the whistles (we were marginally successful; we won't be attempting to work with whistles at the trial this weekend). Our lines weren't super straight, but I knew he did want to turn the sheep back to me and he never did, so that was a small success. I think he just had trouble hearing me. Once again, I realize I need to get him solid on my whistles because if it's windy at a trial, we'll be sunk...

I was hoping to get out to Bill's and work the dogs myself before we leave for New Mexico on Thursday, but I don't think I'll have a chance this week. Rats. Oh well, it's just for fun for me, really—it's not like the early-season novice classes are big pressure cookers ;-) though of course I'd like for the dogs to have good runs. It'll be a neat experience no matter what happens really—I can't wait :-)))