01/09/2023 A Mid-winter Break

Lookit me. Posting again. What an overachiever. ? I decided I've been struggling with blogging off and on because I'm really not a 'heart on my sleeve, need validation, share with strangers' type of gal. And though I could blog about something else entirely, we all know my muses are not the 'let's just keep it in and ignore it' type of beings. So there you have it. Compromises must be made. I'm rather wishing Mother Nature subscribed to that theory. It's been a bit hard to get any training in for the past month and a half or more. One of the drawbacks to living in the upper midwest. When it wasn't cold, it was wet. So we had a lot of this

02/07/2022 After a Break

According to the Chinese New Year, 2022 is the Year of the Tiger which sounds a whole lot better than the past couple years -- you know, the Year of the Unmitigated Shit Show and the Year of the Disillusioned Quokka. A quick Google search suggests that for those who celebrate the Chinese lunar year, the tiger symbolizes hope amid challenges. In Chinese mythology the tiger is called upon by the Jade Emperor, the ruler of heaven, to exorcise demons. A purging of evil, as it were. Well, let's hope it works. Go Tiger! Around here, 2022 is going to be the Year of Training. Not that I won't do any trialing--I'd like to get Dillon's WTCH and Finn's started cattle as well as a couple Farm Trial titles for them both. Dillon's WTCH and Finn's started titles, however, will require more consistent exposure to cattle and I'm not sure if

08/09/2021 Coming Up For Air

I've gone through lulls on the blog before, but I find it hard to believe I haven't posted since February, especially given my 'restructured' schedule. Though, admittedly, I've been rather preoccupied with navigating the changes we've experienced over the past seven months. A great deal of time and energy went into developing and launching my new venture Journey Impressions (if you need any Stockdogs Rule items or other embroidery or screen printing that's the place to go). Not enough of that time and energy went into the launch of my latest fantasy novel Bound in Shadow (available wherever e-books are sold with signed paperbacks available here). Whatever remained was taken up with the dogs, dog events, everyday stuff, and the general stress exacerbated by all of the above. Needless to say, most of my days have felt like this

11/26/2019 Teamwork & Communication

More teamwork. Due to circumstances we were forced to keep the cattle longer than we wanted (BTW, we still have beef quarters or halves available for any of you local folks who might be interested – message me for info). Anyhow, keeping the cattle over winter meant dividing the barn so they could be fed inside. Not something that thrilled me since four large beef cattle make a mess in a hurry. Thankfully, they prefer to spend the majority of their time outside, even in inclement weather, and only come in to eat. They're a pretty mellow group but still… large and pushy. The silver lining? Moving them off the feed bunker has become one of Jig's regular jobs now. It's one she thoroughly enjoys and I'm seeing vast improvement on how she handles them. No rodeoing, very matter of fact. She'll walk in on noses, hit if necessary, release pressure

08/24/2018

I have a tendency to mention the problems I'm facing during training, but the video clips accompanying those posts are usually ones in which things are going fairly well. Today I'm going to step out of my comfort zone and really put me and my dog out there with a few clips that illustrate our problem areas. Apologies in advance for the quality of the video. I had my cell phone strapped to the fence post. Also, if you're thinking this group of sheep was a bit light, you'd be right. They're light on purpose. And one more side note, I feel the need to point out that I'm not picking on Dillon. He just happens to be the 'problem child' at the moment. That's not to say we're not making progress. A session or so after this video was shot, he took a Go Bye from about 60' off the

08/04/2018

So much for weekly updates, right? What's the excuse this time? Let's see

07/09/2018 The Year of Training – Another Piece of the Puzzle

Between the 4th of July falling in the middle of the week, and another blast of heat and humidity, I didn't get a whole lot of training in since my last post. I got in one very short session with Jig and Dillon on Tuesday evening, but the weather got the better of us. The weather and the damn bugs. They're the only ones who seem to enjoy these hot, muggy days. I have a tendency to get a bit cranky after too long a stretch, and that's not very conducive to training, or much of anything else. One of the things I was watching for when I worked Dill, was whether or not his chiro adjustment affected his Away. It didn't. Not yet, anyhow. I'm thinking that if he has been physically uncomfortable going in that direction, it has become a habit of necessity to move a certain way. That's

06/21/2018 A Slight Reboot

Life has been busy of late. That's my explanation for the lapse in posting

05/14/2018 Dillon’s Day ~ Slow, But Steady

One of the pitfalls of training alone is that it's sometimes hard to see improvement which, in turn, can lead to frustration and discouragement when we get to feeling like we're spinning our wheels. Thankfully, I have friends who turn up from time-to-time and aren't afraid to tell me what they're seeing. Such was the case over the past weekend. My original plan was to have one of them work Dillon because it's so much easier to see what's going on when you aren't in the thick of it. Yes, I could just video our session, which I have done in the past, but I really wanted to know if I'm the source of our problems. The only way to do that was have someone else handle him. Dillon, however, is apparently a bit of a momma's boy. No way was he working for anyone else. So much for that

05/07/2018 Expectations and Perspective

As babies who could barely manage to sit up, we must have looked at the kid already crawling and thought she was the most awesomely talented baby around. We wanted to be able to crawl just like her. So we worked at it until the day we finally made it to our hands and knees. Suddenly we were booking all over the place. Then we saw the toddler walking! Whoa! Are you kidding me?!!? Walking? Here was something new to aspire to, and so our perspective changed. Crawling was no longer good enough. We wanted more. We pulled ourselves up on the couch, grasped adult fingers, stumbled, fell, landed on our diaper-padded asses, finally took those first few steps and then