Letting go and other life lessons about training stockdogs

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

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...

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!

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

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

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

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...

"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 :)