Posts Tagged ‘training’

Still Counting….

Jul 27th, 10 / 0 Comments

A little over three weeks to the Outback Trial.  Our first trial this year.  Wow, hard to believe.  But I guess that’s what happens when life interferes with dog activities.  In true Aussie fashion I think Rowan and Quinn knew exactly when I sent my entries in as that day Row started acting like she wasn’t feeling well and Quinn turned into a royal shit during training.  I’m happy to say, however, that things have swung around a little.  A trip to the vet for Row revealed nothing more than a bad case of vaginitis and Quinn, after a few less than stellar training sessions, Sunday morning gave me back the dog I love to work.  One outcome of Row not being herself for a few days was the real need to have another dog capable of helping with chores.  And where I have been using Quinn on occasion to sort the lambs out he’s never had to bring all 47 or so ewes, yearlings and lambs in from the field.  I have to remind myself that Row wasn’t all that brilliant at it when I first started using her but the regular work, the actual job, really turned her around.  So last night it was Quinn’s first shot at filling his 1/2 sister’s very large paw prints.

As we were heading down the alleyway around the arena I could see him taking notice of the sheep in the field and starting to get that “gonna take off” look on his face so I downed him and kept walking.  Almost to the corner of the arena I had him walk up to join me, then downed him again as I made my way along the top side to the open gate.  My plan was simple.  Since the flock was on top of the hill, maybe 50′ or so from the gate, I was going to down Quinn in the opening, set myself up between him and the sheep and send him on a go bye.  The first half of that worked just fine.  The go bye part, not so much.  He went away to me despite my best efforts to block him, sent the sheep back out into the field and split them before I could get him to down.  I always like to try and find at least one positive and in this instance I had two.  Away to me would have made more sense than go bye as the clockwise flank would have trapped the sheep behind the gate.  Duh.  And even though he split the stock there was no pulling of hair or attempts at fly-bye bites.  And I guess a third, he did lie down.

Okay.  Deep breath.  I now had one group of sheep behind me, close to the gate, and a larger group out in the field with Quinn in between them.  No problem.  Step into him, tell him to look back and send him to get the group in the field.  That was my plan.  Quinn’s plan?  Blow past me, get the smaller group, take them out to re-join the larger group in the field and bring them all back through the gate.  Again, it worked.  And again, he took my down instead of pursuing them at a high rate of speed down the alleyway.  I don’t recall Rowan’s first attempt at this part of the job but Quinn’s wasn’t any worse, I’m sure.  Back in the pens Quinn was calm, only arguing with one ewe who more or less started it, and handling the lambs like a true gentleman.

He was so good I decided I’d give him another job.  I had kicked the lambs into the arena for their grain but hadn’t put it out yet so they had all drifted down to the far end to nibble grass.  Quinn came along with me as I filled the feed troughs.  I hoped the lambs would notice the grain being put out and wander down but they didn’t so we started down to the far end of the arena to push them back up so they’d eat their grain.  As before, I had a plan that differed somewhat from Quinn’s.  I planned on skirting the center pen on the B course side and sending him on a go bye toward the second panel (B course) where the lambs had congregated.  Before we got to the center pen, however, Quinn went away to me, flipped it into a go bye, spun the lambs around and everyone tore off toward the other end.  Right direction.  Wrong speed.  In my quest for positives:  all of the lambs were sensible, meaning no one tried to go through a fence, and Quinn was actually well off them just extraordinarily fast.  Everyone stopped at the far end around the feed troughs without landing in or tipping over any of them and Quinn came trotting happily back when I told him that’ll do.  I told him a few other things as well as we left the lambs to their dinner.

So I remain positive and hopeful that the trial will go well.  The weather has been more cooperative as we enter crunch time.  The one thing I need to keep in mind as we draw closer to the trial is that I’m doing this because I enjoy it and I have fun.  If I lose sight of that then I may as well stay home.

Dogs

Quinn at Work

Jul 11th, 10 / 1 Comment

I tried repeatedly to post this to Facebook but it wouldn’t work so I decided I’d just put it here.  This is a video clip of Quinn and I working this morning.  It’s far from perfect but if you are one of the folks who has seen him over the past year or so you’ll know what a giant step this is.  For him to listen to me and work off this flighty a group is awesome progress.  We still have a ways to go but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not a train.  Which even at the beginning of this year, this would have been.  He had been super reactive around stock this light.  Oh heck, even heavy stock.  Wouldn’t lie down, wouldn’t back off, just charged in and made a mess.   We did have one sticky, older ewe in at the beginning which I sorted off.   I actually like working Quinn again.  :-)   Please let me know if you can’t view the video.  Thanks, Sue, for filming.

Dogs

Hitting the Wall

Jun 8th, 10 / 2 Comments

Working with dogs can be extremely rewarding, not to mention a whole lot of fun.  There’s nothing like working hard at getting your dog to understand some new skill and then putting the pieces together and watching it flow.  On the flip side, training can be very frustrating.  There are times when you aren’t sure how to make your dog understand what you want, think your dog ought to already know what you’re asking for, or have reached one of those plateaus where it seems you’re either taking steps backwards or not moving at all.  Throw livestock into the mix and you have a whole new level of frustration, especially if you’re not used to dealing with stock on a regular basis.  Suddenly your dog knows way more than you and, worse, knows he knows more than you.  Depending on your relationship with your dog that’s going to be either a blessing or a curse.  A good dog can save your bacon when you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.  A good dog with a wicked sense of humor may or may not be inclined to be so generous.

The more I work with dogs the easier it’s become to accept that some days it’s just not going to happen.  You’re not in the mood, or the dog isn’t, the stock isn’t, or maybe the planets are just out of alignment.  Whatever the case, sometimes it’s better just to forget training and do something else.  And sometimes you just need a reminder that it really is all about the little stuff.  Your dog holds that down for longer than it takes to turn your back.  He squares up on a flank.  He moves off your pressure.  You don’t trip over your own feet trying to get around the sheep.  If we only count the big success and forget all the little steps it took to get there we’re going to spend so much time being frustrated we might as well give up dog training all together.

About then it’s time to sit back and ask yourself why you’re doing this.  For me the short answer is, because I enjoy it.  The long answer has to do with loving my particular breed of choice and wanting to do my small bit toward preserving what they were created to do.  And, yes, some days it’s harder than others to take joy in the little accomplishments.  Some days I’m as frustrated as the next person to be backing up so far in my training it feels like starting over.  But at the end of the day I wouldn’t trade any bit of it.  I’ve met some great people through my dogs.  I’ve learned a lot through my dogs.  Life is fraught with frustrations.  How many sources of that frustration will love you no matter what?

Dogs

Gonna Go ‘Round in Circles ~ Steve Shope Clinic con.

May 18th, 10 / 0 Comments

One of the training exercises Steve introduced us to at the clinic is what he calls The Circle Game.  It’s what he likes to start a lot of his working sessions with.  I’ve actually done a variation of this game with my dogs and have had my students do it with theirs.  However, lacking the solid foundation mentioned in yesterday’s post, it wasn’t quite the same nor quite as effective in the long run.  I used it mainly to solidify verbal and visual flanking cues as well as get my dog comfortable dropping anywhere on the circle.  Which, with Quinn, meant a lot of pushing out and arguing about downing.  The pushing out that I thought was him giving to me but was really avoidance.

Steve’s version of the circle game assumes your dog has a down, a get back, and an understanding of what moving off your pressure is all about.  The Foundation.  The dog starts in a down, is given a get back (Steve uses “go” but since my dogs are already somewhat accustomed to “get back” I’ll continue to use that), there, down, and then a flank.  At any point in the game if the dog starts pushing, you push back.  Just remember to keep praising your dog when they are right and use the opportunity to repeat the verbal flanking cue as your dog is circling.  In the beginning you’ll use verbal, visual, and body language to cue your dog.  As the dog starts to get it, you start dropping one cue at a time until the dog is working only on verbal.  If the dog is wrong, tell them no, lie them down, start it again.

From this exercise you can then start working on fetching and the basics of driving.  The real benefit of The Circle Game as I see it is that you are solidifying some very basic commands that will be the basis of everything you do going forward.  The down, get back, and your flanks, combined with a steady or easy gives you just about every command you’ll need while working.  If your dog knows to give to your pressure, getting them to steady up as they approach the stock becomes a much simpler process.  Especially when they have firmly grasped the visual cue for the get back.  If they know that cue is a raised stick and you’ve proofed them on it, as you drop into a fetch and feel the dog pushing a bit you can simply raise your stick to get him to slow down.

This will be the next step in my re-training of Quinn.  As we progress from the alleyway we’ll start playing The Circle Game to solidify our foundation.

Dogs

Steve Shope Clinic ~ Building on a Strong Foundation

May 17th, 10 / 0 Comments

Foundation: By definition a basis upon which something stands or is supported.  An underlying base or support.  A body or ground upon which something is built up or overlaid.

By definition, a pretty import piece of any endeavor.

There are very good reasons to have a firm foundation.  Without one, whatever is built on that spot figuratively or literally, will be precarious at best.  Which begs the question why, in dog training, so many people (myself included) skimp on the foundation work?  Or skip it altogether?

The importance of a truly solid foundation was just one of the take-aways from the clinic with Steve Shope this past weekend.  I would highly recommend anyone who can get to one of Steve’s clinics, do it.  Even if you’re just able to audit, it would be worth your while.

I went into the clinic with one goal: get the answer to what had short-circuited between Quinn and I.  I wasn’t expecting a miracle.  But I did need some guidance as to how to get back to where we worked as a team and he wasn’t always pushing on me.  This has been an on-going problem and I thought we were making strides in the right direction until the first time in the pen with him Saturday morning.  It wasn’t horrendous but it took Steve only a matter of minutes to figure out what I couldn’t see for myself and had no one else to tell me.  Quinn has absolutely no idea that he should be giving to my pressure.  Where I thought he was finally giving because he was turning away and working wider was only avoidance.

We had apparently skipped a critical foundation step.

Truth be told, when I started Quinn the only foundation I had on him was a down and a recall.

His down has become something of a slow motion maneuver which was only one of several indicators that Quinn (dubbed “the player”) has gradually trained me.  He would give me just so much and I would accept it.  I have been accepting it.  Sort of like this.  I’d ask for a down and he’d stop.  I’d repeat my command and he’d start to crouch.  I’d step toward him and threaten and he’d crouch a little lower.  One more threat and he’d finally, grudgingly lie down.  And give to me?  To my pressure?  Yeah, not so much.

We weren’t the only team in the clinic with that issue so we set up a narrow alleyway using my weave poles and some duck arena panels and Steve started teaching us how to show our dogs what we wanted when we asked them to “get back”.  What we expected when we showed them some pressure.  This is one of the foundation pieces Steve believes in teaching his dogs before they ever get on stock. 

Here’s a picture of the alleyway we set up.  It is roughly 3’x20’ with the back end blocked so the dog can’t just run out.  The object is to stand at the mouth of the alley, show your dog the cue, and have him turn and go to the back of the alley.  Then have him lie down.  Obviously it happens gradually and Steve made a point of making sure everyone understood this wasn’t something to work on for more than a few minutes a day.  You can do the same thing in a hallway in the house although this alley works well because I can have sheep in the picture by putting them in the pen at the mouth of the alley and making the dog get back away from the prize.

This is a picture of the eventual goal, or at least my eventual goal. 

To get your dog to give to your pressure and get back down the length of this alleyway.  Then up the stakes one more time, put sheep behind me and get him to get back off my pressure and away from the stock.

This exercise, this foundation piece, is only one of a handful that Steve discussed with us.  All building up to more control when starting to work stock.  It’s the first foundation piece I’m going to work on with Quinn.  He already began getting it on Sunday.  I didn’t take him back into the arena Sunday.  I had Steve coach me on the alleyway exercise to ensure I had the concept down pat.  Quinn won’t be going back on stock until his down, and his get back are firm.  There is just no sense to it.  To work him without those foundation pieces is just building on sand and I’ve done enough of that.

I plan to video the progression and will post clips as I get them.

Oh, and SBSDC, start planning a trip to New Mexico!

Dogs

The Best Laid Plans…

May 14th, 10 / 0 Comments

When you do a search on the internet for quotes regarding plans and planning, you come up with quite a few.  Not just the well known ones (like the one referenced in the title of this entry) but one’s like Mike Tyson’s quote, “Everyone has a plan – until they get punched in the face.”  Or this from Ben Bayol (whoever he is), “Most plans are just inaccurate predictions.”  Plans are, depending who you talk to, either necessary, ridiculous, or fruitless.  All I know for sure is they oftentimes do go astray.

As I write this, Steve is stuck in Dallas/Fort Worth and won’t be able to get a flight into Milwaukee until tomorrow morning.  So even though my order for great weather was filled here in Wisconsin, apparently the same is not so for the Southwest.  Tornadoes, hail, bad, nasty weather in general.

Our best laid plan has gone astray.  But not to worry.  We’ll just start a little later in the day and folks will get a chance to sleep in.  That’s the plan now.  But do I dare even call it a plan?  Am I cursing it by the very labeling of it?  <shrug>  Who knows.  I guess we’ll just play it by ear and hope for the best.  That’s about all we can do at this point.

Dogs, In General

Upcoming clinic

May 8th, 10 / 0 Comments

We’re only a week away from the Steve Shope Clinic and I can’t wait.  Of course it’s an opportunity to spend the weekend with working dog enthusiasts so that makes it worthwhile all on its own.   And I love going to clinics.  I believe you should never stop learning, no matter how long you’ve been doing something or how much you think you know.  Especially where dogs and livestock are involved.  And also because those of us who train alone most times can easily fall into ruts and bad habits without realizing it.  Thankfully I have the SBSDC to remind me on the Sundays that I actually work a dog as well.  They’re very quick to point out when I’m messing up.  As we all know, it’s much easier to see what’s going right and what’s going wrong from outside the fence.

Quinn is going to be my clinic dog.  I really would like to trial him this year and neither of us is getting any younger, even though he acts and thinks like a two year old, he’s not.  He can do some awesome stuff but we’ve mis-communicated for so long I don’t know how to get him back.  He moves off me now, that was a big step, and he isn’t near as rowdy and will work wide on the stock but he still wants to constantly get to head and is very reactive.  I need to get some suggestions on how to deal with that because, obviously,  what I have been doing isn’t working.  My plan is to work him several times this week so he’s not a total crank-ball for the clinic but we’ll see how my schedule plays out.  We all know what happens to the best laid plans and the weather forecast doesn’t look all that promising.

I’m also looking forward to this clinic because most of my students will be attending.   It’s good for them to get evaluated by a fresh set of eyes and hear it from somebody besides me.

I’ll post details of the clinic next weekend and hopefully some photos as well.

Dogs

Workin’ Wednesday

Apr 29th, 10 / 0 Comments

I had a fairly decent day of working dogs Wednesday.  More practice with Rowan on understanding flanking and gathering which she did fairly well but then wouldn’t steady up on her drive.  I’ll chalk it up to a full moon.  I gave Murphy a try on sheep, thinking I’d pull him out of retirement to try for that last Advanced Duck leg only to help Lace into HoF some day.  Yeah, well, I’m rethinking that.  He had the attention span of a gnat and I swear he’s going deaf.  I’ll try him a few more times on ducks and see if he perks up.  He got himself rammed in the pen because he wasn’t paying attention.  It wasn’t a bad hit and he didn’t seem phased by it but it wasn’t his crowning moment to be sure.

Quinn had some good moments and some not so good but overall, when I look at how he was a year ago and how he is now, it’s a vast improvement.  He still pushes too hard and wants to constantly go to head.  I’m anxious to see what suggestions Steve Shope has when he comes up for the clinic in a few weeks.

Beth was up to work Hazer and Rein.  I took Quinn into the round pen to demonstrate pushing a dog out as Beth was having some timing issues.  I expected Quinn to be naughty and he wasn’t even close.  In fact, every flank I sent him on was a wide out to the perimeter of the pen flank.  Even when I switched him up he stayed out.  I was pleasantly surprised.  Now I just have to get him to rate his stock a bit better and stay off the heads.

Dogs

The Journey of a Thousand Miles…

Apr 18th, 10 / 0 Comments

I had a fairly good morning of working dogs.  I think Rowan is finally starting to get the whole flanking thing and we *almost* got the sheep in off the hill this time.  They readily come in for a bucket of grain but I prefer to give my dog something to do so we always try that first.  Now, in Rowan’s defense, getting the sheep off the hill is no easy task.  Right now the whole flock is together so not only are the yearlings and adult working sheep on the hill, but ewes and lambs as well.  Forty eight in all.  They know the game and know what they’re being brought in for and really aren’t all that inclined to come in without the proper bribery (the aforementioned bucket of grain).  And, without fail, Chunk, Mother or Roach will decide to pick a fight with Rowan and, Rowan being who she is there is no backing down.  That’s good in one regard but she also quickly looses focus then and forgets what our task truly is because after all, arguing is much more fun.  At that point, I put her up and resort to bribery.

Once everyone is in, however, Row gets to come back and do the sorting.  I still marvel that the girl who used to think ripping ears off sheep was a respectable hobby can now quietly and efficiently sort out ewes and lambs without once laying a tooth on anyone and not panicking a single lamb.  And that’s not easy either given that the lambs panic at just about everything at the moment.

We sorted out a group for Sue & Thistle, the only one of the SBSDC in attendance today.  Sue needs to back up a bit with This.  He’s gotten away with some things, like not lying down, that are going to turn into problems so today we started fine tuning him and insisting he do what Sue says, even if he thinks she’s wrong.  And Thistle, in true Border Collie fashion, always things Sue’s wrong.

I used the same group for Quinn.  More work on his walk up and control of the stock dragging a long line and not creating a mess.  Again today I could see the moment he hit the bubble Jerry Rowe talks about.  Actually, could see it and hear it since he’s started to give a small whine before averting his eyes and turning away.  This is usually the point right before the rodeo begins because as he takes a step closer the sheep begin to roll and he decides to push harder.  Today, however, after several attempts he was walking in on the sheep and as they began to roll he merely took a single step totally on balance.  The sheep started walking up the fence line and Quinn took another step, this one in the wrong direction which sent two of the sheep breaking.  Instead of turning it into a chase Quinn trotted out to push them back in.  I downed him, broke him off and threw a major party.  That was awesome!  A baby step, to be certain, but something we have battled with for a long time.

I owe .50 to the negativity jar (thanks, Sue!) for saying after he did it that I’d probably never see it again.  The SBSDC has decided to start a negativity jar based on theories expressed in the book That Winning Feeling. Quinn proved me wrong anyhow.  On his next walk up he did the same thing.  We practiced some quasi parallel driving/fetching then to give him something else to do.  He didn’t do half bad, 1000 times better than anything he had shown me last year.  He still gets far too wound and starts pushing too close so I had to resort to the boogie bottle to push him out.  The difference is that now when the sheep break he goes wide to bring them in and isn’t pulling hair and running close.

There were only baby steps today but as long as we’re stepping in the right direction, I’ll take it.


Dogs, Uncategorized

Pushing the Bubble

Apr 16th, 10 / 0 Comments

I know, it’s been a while since my last entry.  I do have an updated photo of the Zoe drawing but it’s still on the camera and I just haven’t gotten around to downloading it.  The weather has been great for springtime in Wisconsin so I’ve been trying to get in some regular, steady work sessions with Rowan and Quinn.  Plus my one night of lessons started up this week and the SBSDC has it’s regular Sunday morning training sessions.  Add in everything else and it’s been a pretty busy schedule of late.

I did, however, manage to find time to give my newly acquired Jerry Rowe videos the once over (www.twincreekherding.com).  I purchased both The Theory of Herding and The Theory of Respect and while I wouldn’t call them training videos in the strictest sense in that they don’t give you lessons or techniques to try out, they are definitely learning videos that I would highly recommend if, like me, you like to know they whys and wherefores of what you’re doing.  I particularly enjoyed The Theory of Herding and plan share it with my students.  Jerry gives a lot of insight into why sheep act the way they do in the presence of a dog and what exactly our dogs are doing in the presence of the sheep.  He uses comparisons to wolves and elk that I found enlightening and fascinating.

One of the things Jerry talks about are bubbles.  The bubble around the stock.  The bubble around the dog.  And how those two bubbles and the creatures in them react when brought into contact with one another.  If you watch as your dog approaches the stock (and I’m talking a straight on, controlled walk-up approach) you will notice that when he gets to the edge of the sheep’s bubble his behavior changes.  He will drop his head, start to eat poop, sniff the ground, etc.  Handlers think their dog is suddenly blowing them off, I know I did.  Jerry believes they have hit the edge of the bubble and it’s here he lies them down before the prey drive kicks in.  He explains it much better, with demos and film clips of wolves & elk, so I’ll let you watch the video yourself to get a better idea what I’m trying to relay.

What was really cool was that we got to see his theory come to life on Sunday.  I was working Quinn on a line doing some steady walk-ups and trying to get him to think about things and not turn it into a rodeo.  He would walk-up so far and suddenly lower his head slightly, avert his eyes and turn sideways.  I encouraged him to keep going and he resisted and, after a few more words from me, pushed too hard and the sheep took off.  We got things back where I wanted and tried the walk-up again.  At the exact same distance from the sheep Quinn repeated the behavior and Jerry’s video popped into my head.  Had he hit the edge of the bubble?  I downed him, broke him off and we did it a third time.  Same result.

We repeated a similar exercise with Tija and Scully.  It was a little more difficult to see but you could still spot that moment when Scully hit the edge of that bubble.  And here, all along, we thought our dogs were just being idiots.  I’m going to try to get photos of it, or film if I get my hands on a new camcorder.  Hopefully I will get the details finalized soon for Jerry to come up for a three-day clinic in August.

With Rowan I am working on teaching her to gather.  As I’ve mentioned before, she is my natural driver and my right hand chore dog.  She is happiest working the pens, sorting, loading, pushing stubborn stock or when both of us are behind the sheep moving them along.  However, if I need the sheep brought in from the field she just doesn’t get it.  The whole gather-balance-fetch thing eludes her.  So I’ve been working on outruns with her, pushing her to get to the balance point and downing her.  We’ve been working in the small arena and will move into bigger spaces when she consistently gets it.  Her modus operandi is to take the flank, cut in a bit too close, then fall in next to the sheep as soon as they move or get behind and start moving them way too fast and not necessarily towards me.  I got her to do a couple of excellent flanks with a down at the balance point and quit.  It was exciting to see her finally getting it.

All in all I’m pleased with what both dogs are doing this spring.  Grady is coming slowly and I’m going to haul Murphy out one of these days to see if the old man can finish up a title or two this year.  Steve Shope’s clinic here is only a month away and I’m really looking forward to it.  Hopefully I’ll have lots to share afterward.

Dogs