Herding Genius

With zero practice going into his second herding trial, I had low expectations for Asher in this new location up at Fidos. We entered Ranch this time, which had a little cross drive. I know Asher is not actually some sort of herding prodigy, but he is SO EASY compared to the other dogs I’ve worked with that he feels like a herding miracle to me. To actually be able to direct him and he’s actually listening! And he has such a nice feel for his sheep and we don’t argue and fight the whole time … it’s MAGICAL. Even with Haku, who is an incredibly good boy, it was still an argument. Very much enjoying working with Asher on sheep!

Nice outrun, pretty good lift, nice drive, got all the ‘panels’ (cones), did everything I asked and even had a perfect pen (which, to be fair, probably had more to do with the sheep than anything Asher or I did). I was a little less spastic than the first trial, I tried my best not to fling him all over the place. It was funny to watch the video after though, it didn’t FEEL like he was going that fast, but, uh, yeah, need to work on slowing things down a bit. I think you get 6-7 minutes, we did it in like 90 seconds.

It just feels so nice to actually feel confident in herding, though I know it’s just baby herding – but I’m super proud of my big red guy. There is a big learning curve in herding, and I finally feel like I can at least do the basics somewhat reliably. And that gives me hope that we’ll hopefully be able to do more eventually. Asher and I have many years to try to figure it all out, and I think he’s going to be a great teammate to do that with. He is going to be such a fun dog to learn with, so glad I ended up with him.

Current herding goal is to attempt the end of January Fido’s trial … in Nursery! I feel like Ranch is very doable for us, and while we certainly could get better at that, I’d like to focus on the bigger distances. I was super thrilled that working Asher in a new place on new sheep didn’t feel any different than at home, that makes things so much easier – and he was listening, because he’s such a good boy, he tries so hard. So it’s all about getting Asher on whistles so we can work the bigger distances. We have done the bigger distances, but at those distances shouting is hard – and I’m not a shouter.

We went up to Maddy’s and tried with the whistles again … it’s going to take some work. I’ll have to say, this is something Navarre is better at, I think! Asher is actually the worst at the lie down whistle, which is mostly what we’ve worked on – go figure. He can do the walk up, no problem, and he’s getting better at this flanks (and me too, with my whistles!), but the lie down, I think we may have finally started to get some consistent response with that one. And I’m not saying my whistles are good, or consistent, because they are most definitely not. But we will continue to work on it. While our big project during my winter break is moving to the property, hopefully we’ll have time to play with sheep too. Once we move we’ll be about an hour from Maddy’s, which could be worse. I’m really grateful for all the opportunities we’ve had to work sheep this year, herding is a tough activity to break into, that’s for sure. Hopefully we can keep at it, Asher certainly wants to!

Then there’s Navarre, who also had a great time up at Fidos – and didn’t listen at all. He has a new command, which is, “Navarre, seriously?” this seems to actually get him to lie down. His NFC Ranch run was just a total disaster. We quickly gave up attempting to actually do what should have been a very simple course (which, you’ll remember, Asher did in about 90 seconds). I was very tempted not to run him in Pro Novice, but I figured we already paid. Navarre did better in ProNovice, and actually got a score, but they were being generous. We just don’t work well together, and it’s a shame, as he probably could do well with someone else. He does know how to do a lot, but we can never do it reliably, unfortunately.

So I don’t know what to do with Navarre and herding. He’s still going to get to play, because he does love it – but Navarre and actual competitions … well, that’s another story. So nothing really new there, he’ll still get to play sometimes, but no big goals with Navarre (not that we ever had any!). Navarre has taught me a lot in herding, though, admittedly, it’s mostly what not to do and what makes herding hard.

Then there still could be a physical component going on with Navarre, I think it’s time to go ahead and neuter him. Maddy had talked about his case to another practitioner and his small balls could be causing some of the issues with his bladder and back. It’s time for the snip, I think, and we’ll see if it helps at all with his many weird things he’s had going on this year. We have tried a lot of things, but still has his mohawk and still has some long pees (but not as long as they were in the Spring). He doesn’t seem as spry to me either, though I haven’t seem him at all reluctant when he wants to to move out, but I don’t feel like he does it as often. He’s only 5, so it’s not like he’s getting old or anything. Big big sweet goober, I want him to be feeling 100%.

As for agility, Asher got to do an agliity roadtrip, and did some agility in a new location on new equipment! I was thrilled with how he did, needed a few repetitions on all the contact equipment to get his performance correct, but no hesitation or worry at all. We played around with some international drills as well and he was very confident (if not very successful!). So I’m feeling good about him being able to trial … someday. It’s a crazy world out there, we’ll see when we get back to doing things again. I’m thankful that it’s pretty easy to stay safe herding and doing agility though, dogs need a mental outlet. When we were out at the coast while the house sold and they did nothing but run on beach they were going nuts without that mental work.

We have really struggled to keep up with our Justine homework, and with the whole shutdown again and dealing with moving all my plans kind of fell by the wayside. We did manage to cram in some work this week. We definitely learn a lot with every exercise, and there is a LOT of stopping and working through issues. Step by step, it’s ever so slowly starting to feel easier though. Keeping the bars low, we’ve worked up to jumping 14 inches, but I’m in no rush for big dorky boy to contort himself with lots of backsides and threadles with a lot of height. We’ll work on the understanding and then work on getting the jumping effort solidified. As always, he’s trying really hard and is a lot of fun.

I bit the bullet and entered a couple trials with Asher the beginning of January, just jumpers and T2B one day each trial. This should give me a chance just to see what he thinks of it all. I have been weirded out by the Asher that shows up in agility when the other dogs aren’t around, Asher is entirely too thoughtful without them there. A funny time to enter a trial too, with the virus worse than ever – but I’ve heard nothing but good things about Lori’s trials, they are doing everything in a very controlled and safe way, we will be there just a couple hours, and mostly just out in the car waiting for our runs watching the gating app to let us know when to come in. Only a few people in the building at a time, masks and temperature taking and easy to stay spread out. I finally decided that since trials are going to be like this for quite some time, we might as well give it a try while the trials are still very small and super cautious. I have yet to practice running in a mask, so that’s on the list. I wear one all day while I’m teaching, but running around is different. We will have a chance to practice in some new locations between now and then, which should hopefully boost our confidence … we shall see.

Fauna is growing up so quickly, she’s become quite the load to carry around these days – and suddenly she’s 90% legs. How quickly puppies grow up! Though I’ve lost all perspective, I have no idea if she’s large or small for her age. I’ve certainly done the least with her than I have with any puppy I’ve had here, but she’s doing well regardless. We’ve been progressing with stays and she can now hold her stay while I release the other dogs to their dinner, stay while I leave the room, stay while I throw toys and treats – doing well. We also have finally achieved holding an object and retrieving to my hand. It took a LONG time for her to get past stage one of that, it probably took 5 sessions before we finally got her to think about opening her mouth – not a naturally mouthy dog, that’s for sure! But once we finally got past that she’s been progressing rapidly. She enjoys it, and can retrieve a variety of objects and textures to hand now .. though not with her toys, that girl has opinions! We’ve introduced other things too, rear feet targeting, backing up, leg weaving, pedestal work, left/right, down out of motion, sends to objects, hold position, sends around the bucket, multiwraps, wobbleboards, position changes, nail trims – and her table is adorable.

It’s always really fun to work with a new personality, they are all so different. We started off pretty slow with training as she had such opinions about everything there was a lot of, “WHY?” and sassing back. But once we finally got over all that she’s really enjoying the problem solving now, though she has a very low frustration threshold. At the moment, I would put her about middle of the road. She’s not a super intense dog, but not difficult motivate. She’s not fearless, but neither is she super worried about things. She’s pretty focused in work, but easily distracted. She’s sweet, but not overly cuddly as she’s pretty busy – she’s outgoing, but can be very submissive when greeting (submissive peeing – wheee!). She’s not soft, but at least does listen to people and dogs when they’re serious. Maybe that will change, we’ll see. She may flip you the bird, but she doesn’t pout.

She is QUITE the little bitch to other dogs, and to adult dogs – and they just take it! I don’t get it. Even Navarre will play with her now, and she’ll do the same crazy shit she does with Asher and Navarre also just looks bemused at this tiny dog savaging his neck and jumping on his head. I really wonder what she’s going to be like as an adult, that’s for sure. She did actually play very well with Gromit this week, who is the same age, she had been very stiff with him before. She started out bitchy and not wanting anything to do with him, but was soon getting happily pummeled into the dirt by him, so that was good to see. She loves all people, but she’s touchy with dogs. She’s pretty independent, but she’ll come right to you if she’s worried at all. Mostly things don’t worry her, but she’s shown some noise sensitivity (but not motion, she’s doing great with the wobbleboard after some initial suspicion).

They finally opened the road to our old hiking area! Yes, a lot of it is burnt, but some of it isn’t and it’s actually quite fascinating to hike through a forest you know really well that has been burnt. It’s like someone came and vacuumed up all the underbrush and ferns. I felt it was pretty safe, we’ve had our share of rain and wind since the fires so I felt like things that were going to fall have already done so. The trail was still mostly there, and already growing back. If there is one thing Oregon is good at, it’s growing things – so that will be fascinating to watch that process. We just went on the baby hike, so there are more areas I haven’t seen yet. We will definitely be back!

As for the baby, she did great, Fauna’s started trying to keep up with the big dogs, which doesn’t quite work with her little legs – so it makes her mad and she lets everyone know they should slow down. So many opinions with that puppy. But she did quite well running and jumping all the forest debris, very easy for her. Good to be back.

So, yeah, everything continues to go really smoothly with the house buying process, and no particular need to start packing yet. In fact I had to bring things BACK into the house. It was an interesting experiment going from 5 cat towers to none, the cats didn’t know what to do, and they started scratching up all sorts of weird things. Buy your cats towers, they need them! I did order some new ones for the house, and brought in the remaining one we had in the garage. I think I need to bring back in the rugs too, poor dogs. We don’t move for another month, so it’s a long time to live in limbo. Would have liked to decorate for Christmas too, but it seems silly to take all that out when I should be packing things.

I have really enjoyed living here, I will miss it. Well, mostly. Let it be said, I don’t find trains at all novel or charming, I’m going to be SO glad to be away from that. Just weird to be saying goodbye to things already, those four years went by fast. There were many things I love about Hubbard, but I don’t like having neighbors. So super excited to have my own space, the dogs are going to be so happy. So many things to get going on though, busy busy busy. Will be nice to be finished with classes so I can focus on that and get the dogs more action – hard this time of year.