It's Thanksgiving!?!?
For as slowly as September crept by, October and November have zoomed by! We had the three weekends that consisted of a clinic, and two all weekend sheep dog trials. Even though it wasn't a full weekend, we did have a one day arena trail the very next weekend!
One of the last warmish days. Ice is starting to form and with the cold we're supposed to get, it'll be to dangerous to walk around this pond for a while.
We had one more, one day Pick Your Poison trials at Robin Brown's. It was mostly novice handlers at this trial. Rooster and I ended up with some crazy type sheep. They didn't want to settle very well. I also tried an away on the outrun and that didn't work out as well either. We had two that really wanted to run and a new obstacle that Robin dubbed the "Mouse Trap". We did get it, but it wasn't pretty at all. After everyone was done, I got to go back and figured out how to handle it. After our run, Robin said that we got two of her crazier sheep. There are some that she got out of Montana that are one step from just plain wild. When Robin got them they ran away and were climbing rocks like mountain goats! She also said that at the barrel she saw Rooster just lean a bit to get them to go through. Wow! Good boy and that shows how reactive they were as he wasn't all that close to them. We ended up winning! Yahoo!
Click to viewIt did slow down a bit, but Pam's father was really ill and I volunteered to take care of the sheep. So, every night after work and on the weekends we headed out to the ranch. I wasn't planning on working Beckit as much, but the weather was agreeable and she finally found her big girl panties.
Beckit
Herding has few foundation behaviors, if any, that are taught away from sheep. What I do think the agility people could learn from herding trainers is to put the dog up when they're not ready to train. I see so many online and in person classes for baby agility dogs. If a young dog balks at training, it is common place to just soldier on and keep at it. In the herding world, if a young dog is not taking pressure well or not showing interest, they actually quit training and let the dog mature. What a novel concept! I have wondered if I made Beep's antisocial behavior worse by putting him in situations he wasn't comfortable in as a young dog in the name of socialization. What if I would have just put him up and let him be Beep? I'll never know the answer to that one. I do know that letting Beckit grow up a bit really helped and finding her big girl panties a little bit at a time paid off.
Here's some video of Beckit up in New Meadows on some woolie ladies. This is her first time on a group that big and on big wool sheep.
She really turned a corner and has come on pretty fast. She's doing little outruns. She'll come in close sometimes and rarely crosses over. Recently she picked some sheep off the fence at a distance with the finesse of an older dog. She geared herself down and didn't just run in like a house a fire and run them off or even through the fence. I have to remind myself that she's only 9.5 months old and take it slow.
Rooster and I went to a Patrick Shanahan shedding/international shedding clinic. Holy cow that international shedding kicked my ass! Ha! I got in trouble for slicing MY flanks! Ha! I put Rooster in the wrong spot, pushed on the sheep to much, etc. It's a very useful real world skill, but sheesh! We have a couple of exercises that we can work on at home. One is lining sheep out along the fence. We can get our five to line out a bit better. I was getting frustrated enough, that we've put that on the shelf for a while. It's not something that we'll need at most trials. Rooster is just so easy to work any more. He's been a great help with Beckit. Our next trial, if it doesn't get snowed out, is Sledding and Shedding in December. We also have a mock trial on December 7th. I think our practice will slow up soon because of lack of daylight.
Rooster
A winter storm is blowing in. It's getting cold and we may get the snow. The majority of the snow is supposed to miss us, darn it! It's starting to feel like it's time to slow down and enjoy some time by the fire.
Good grief, the Noodle!