Enough Already

What a week, we’re falling apart over here. Last Friday Bright ended up with a deep gash on her stop pad, blood everywhere and it’s going to be a pain to heal. ‘Luckily’ she’s already broken anyway, but she is looking better with that injury but still not right in the rear. Monday Haku ran off all his pads, so he could barely walk that night – no idea what that was about. So all week long he had to stay at home and heal those. He’s finally looking more normal, but we still had to postpone our big herding adventure this week. Then today I just brought Navarre, my one remaining non-broken dog with me classes – and somehow he has a huge gash under his eye! Enough with the broken dogs, this is ridiculous!

I did make an appointment for Navarre at the vet initially, but I badgered several folks into checking him out and no one seems to think he’s going to need sutures, so he’s probably good to go. You know, as long as things aren’t brushing up against his face – like weavepoles, like at the the trial he’s supposed to go to this weekend. Why does EVERY class in AKC have weavepoles? But I did run him through a few sets after classes and he didn’t seem to notice – but he’s not much a face weaver anyway. As of now, we’re going to give it a go – it doesn’t seem to be bothering him. No idea how he did it – dork.

I’d like to do the things with my dogs, please! They are also really getting antsy as we haven’t been following our normal routine, they need more action. With Navarre I’ve been going back to working heeling again he’s so desperate. We also have continued with our silent handling experiment, and we’re getting much better. He’s still not super drivey about it, but he’s not nearly as questioning as he was. We worked three different types of agility this week, lots of wraps and threadles went well, but the weavepole exercises, even open channels, he’ll still just halt midway sometimes. And today we looked at international style drills, but that turned out not to be too hard at all, much easier than wide open stuff when you really need the verbal support. A fun experiment, good for both of us, I think.

Marvin seems to be finally feeling more himself after his rabies shot. I was beginning to think it had given him autism. After the shot he didn’t feel well, wasn’t eating, and then he just wasn’t his sweet cuddly self. And that was like, 2 weeks ago? The last couple days he’s seems more friendly and sweet again, but still not the same as he was – and he still doesn’t seem very hungry (he used to be ravenous all the time). He did sit in my lap for a bit yesterday, but I want my kitten back. Stupid vaccines, you try to be a responsible pet owner …

We did go herding today, I’m so dreading summer and trying to soak in all the good days we’re having in May. Have I mentioned how much I love May? It has been an exceptionally dry May, I’ve had to turn on the sprinklers, which seems crazy. We’ll see what June brings … Still, the original plan was to hiking early morning and then go to our lesson – but with everyone broken no hiking this week. Hrrumph.

So no big field for Haku, while he’s looking good as pads do heal quickly, the terrain in the big fields is much rougher with rocks and things, didn’t want to break him. So back to the smaller fields, where I got some clarity about fences in general. Part of the reason I wanted to go to the big field where we could just drive and drive and drive is I’m not entirely sure what I should be telling Haku at corners and fences. The correct answer is he should continue to drive them on the same line, regardless of the fence. So okay.

Feeling much better about just bellowing like a fishwife at my dog after watching the herding trial last weekend, we actually did much better this week. Or, at least, I felt better about it. “Go bye. Go bye, GO-bye, GO-BYE – I SAID GO-BYE!” We still run into the issue of me giving Haku way too much benefit of the doubt, actually. I do assume he knows better than me, but even if he does, it’s not helpful if he just ignores what I ask and does what he thinks I mean.

Much lighter sheep this week which made Haku look like a total boss. He was ‘getting behind their eye’ better this week (whatever that means, I still don’t grasp the concept of that one), probably because he didn’t have to actually push so hard to get them to move. So we got to play around with driving with purpose, since we can drive all around the outside of the field (mostly, unless I start over correcting everything) we would do out and away, across, come halfway up, turn and go through gates – good boy! And it wasn’t perfect, but we could do it (in our own way) and it was fun and I think both Haku and I felt like we were working together today. Fun stuff!

I even kind of understand our homework, which I think he tried to give me before but I didn’t understand (not unusual). So the issue we had with our little baby driving exercise today was when we were trying to get Haku to turn the sheep through the gates. If he gets behind the sheep I was having a hard time with him at that point going beyond balance to me to turn the sheep correctly to go through the gates. Look, I made a diagram!

So once I gave him the go bye, he’s behind the sheep and and he wants to bring them to me, but I keep trying to flank him so he can turn them (blue line), and that was really hard for him. And basically what I had to do was get him behind, lie him down and then re-flank him – that he understood. And physically I wanted to ‘help’ him by stepping to my left, but I needed to step to my right. And, once again, the fences make this way harder than it needs to be.

So the exercise with the heavy sheep is to, without moving myself, have him flank, stand and then I’ll step into balance with him. So he learns that being out of balance will bring him into balance. And listens to me. 😉

Anyway, it was nice not feel like Haku and I were working at cross purposes today, that was fun to actually do things without being a total trainwreck. We are enjoying our herding adventure. And then there’s Navarre – OMG, what a dork. Let Dave work him again, Navarre was just awful. Dave continues to attempt to get Navarre to give to pressure, Navarre was having none of that. He’d give some distance, but only if he thought it would let him get around Dave to get the sheep. Not sure why he was being such a total dork today, but he was just exhausted with just the little that we did with him. He was basically almost never correct. So next time we go I’l go ahead and work him and see if that helps, and hopefully we can practice between now and then – he hasn’t been that bad for a while.