Herding Puppy

It’s official, I’m not going to attempt to work Navarre in herding until at least next February. He really has been doing well with Ian, they have the three winter training trials coming up – and just working ONCE with me made him into a mess. I don’t know what it is about us together in herding, but it is just not a good mix. I really did try to do everything we have worked on to try to be successful, but it’s just a battle for EVERY LITTLE THING. And Ian is like, “You have to be absolutely consistent and correct every time with him”. And, OMG, that is so not going to happen for many reasons! I’m just not ready to work a dog like Navarre, I need a dog that can deal with a novice person and really be willing to try to work with me, as I’m most certainly not going to be ‘correct’ every time. I just can’t be the handler he needs me to be. At least, right now. Maybe never, and I’m okay with that. Navarre LOVES herding, more than anything, and he needs a handler that knows what they’re doing and actually LIKES his pushy nature. Ian is willing to run him for now, so we’re going to do that.

Look, some rare video of Navarre working:

Meanwhile, Haku is just perfect. Ian always likes to point out that Haku doesn’t do what I ask either, but I argue that when Haku does anything he’s doing what he THINKS I’m trying to say, as a team. We did the Pro-Novice drive again this week, complete with panels and a pen! Maybe it wasn’t super smooth, but I think I finally have an idea of what you’re supposed to look for with the crossdrive. To be fair, we did have to stop and regroup on the initial drive as Haku was making it up as we went along, but he was trying really hard after that. Love that boy so much!

And I worked Asher, and apparently part of his issue with only wanting to go to the away side is that I can’t seem to ASK him to do the comebye side – ha! It was interesting, this was the first time I had worked him at Ian’s in the round pen, his only experience was a couple times with Ian and he would run back to the gate where I was a lot when Ian was out there. Apparently that’s what he learned, as he did the same thing when I was IN the pen with him. He would randomly run over to the gate and lie down and look expectant, like that was all part of it. He so wants to be a good boy, but still really doesn’t know what the point of the sheep is, though he thinks it’s fun. So there was lots of just busting into sheep, some circling, but he doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of bringing them to me or balancing them. When he just pissed off the sheep I stopped when the tiny shetland sheep started to turn and challenge him, as I knew he’s definitely not ready for that! Such a good boy, he was very willing and tried very hard. Ian says we don’t know what kind of worker he’s going to be yet, but I just can already tell he’s going to be way more of a team player in herding than Navarre. Though that doesn’t take much …

Say what you will about the babydoll sheep at Heidi’s, they’re terrible to work on driving, but they are good for baby dogs! Attempt #2 of working with them with Asher went better! I started with Haku helping in the big field, who was being much more ‘helpful’ this time than the last time, so that kind of made a lot more chaos than there should have been. But Asher was changing direction and starting to think a little about balancing to me. So I put up Haku and got to see what Asher could do on his own – and he didn’t need Haku!

Attempt #3 on the babydoll sheep was a bit less successful. We had homework after working at Ian’s again. Asher continues very willing and excited about the whole thing, but also very close and not getting to balance. So our homework was for me to attempt to walk backwards QUICKLY once so he could get to balance to help give him somewhere to go. But, good lord, that field there is not a place you can walk backwards with any sort of safety, much less quickly. And Asher isn’t helping as he has inherited some definite push from Navarre’s side of family, so he’s running me over with sheep, I’m tripping over backwards and then Asher just circles around to catch the sheep he just pushed over me. So, yeah, not exactly what I was attempting to do. I tried also just walking FORWARD, but that wasn’t helpful. Still, he is responding nicely when I ask him to change direction and had some glimmers of balance and walking with me. Faint glimmers. He’s so young and soft I don’t want introduce any sort of prop to push him off the sheep a bit, but it’s probably in our future at some point.

Asher just has such a ‘soft’ feel on sheep, as opposed to Navarre’s never ending push and Haku’s ever helpful ‘try’. Asher seems to be actually LISTENING, which I don’t think actually has happened to me in herding yet, I don’t quite know what to do with a dog that is actually waiting for me to tell them what to do. Though to be fair, I don’t think I would really call him ‘turned on’ to sheep at this point. He definitely likes it, there is more instinct in there coming out, but I figure if I can still call him off of sheep, he’s not quite there yet. To be fair, it’s not EASY to call him off sheep though, and he definitely doesn’t think lying down when he’s working is a thing. I do feel like he’s uncertain what to do with pressure, you could feel him lose contact with the sheep when there was pressure.

So far Asher is really fun and responsive on sheep, I kind of assume that will change at some point. It’s novel to actually want to go practice, see if I can get those first glimmers of understanding what herding is all about. I should knock on wood, but, so far Asher seems like a really nice match for me and I don’t feel the slightest urge to yell whatsoever no matter what chaos is going on. It’s really, REALLY nice.

And more puppy love, I groomed the dogs and Asher was draping himself across me for his turn to be brushed! He’s officially now EASIER to groom than Navarre, who also loves being groomed but will not fricken sit still. Asher also got his first tiny foot groom, as suddenly he grew ridiculously long toe tufts. I’m hoping that doesn’t mean that he’s \ going to have tons of hair! Truly, I think he’s right on target to be my ‘Red Navarre’. It looks like Navarre was the same height as Asher about this age, so, yeah, he’ll probably be up near 22 inches with Navarre. Which is fine, just not OVER is my goal. I do think that Asher probably weighs more than Navarre did at this point, which is ominous. But his sisters continue to be even TALLER than him, so I continue to be hopeful that this litter is just getting all their growing out of the way sooner rather than later. I mean, how big can those girls get?

I am ridiculously in love with that puppy though, I just love his energy, he fits so well with me. But then, I love all my dogs so much. Such a very diverse group of personalities, but they are all amazing in their own way. I’ve been feeling a bit mushy about them lately, and the cats too. Which isn’t to say they can’t all annoy me to no end in one way or another, but I’m sure they say the same thing about me.

We played just a little bit of agility this week, working on proofing Asher’s commitment with motion – he did great! He seems tighter than Navarre at this age, but I don’t expect him to be a super tight turning dog. His commitment to tunnels is good, but I realized he doesn’t really understand the concept that I’m actually trying to get him to go to one entrance or another, he just kind of randomly chooses the one that seems more appealing, so we need to work on that. He can rear cross into tunnels, and we’ve done just a tiny bit of threadling into tunnels as well.

We’ve also attempted to introduce rear leg lifts, but as I used his rear end contact cue on an upright object to get the behavior, he won’t let the actual rear foot target part go, so it’s mostly just really taught him how to handstand on weird objects. So might need to approach that one a different way. His platform position changes look good now, he’s finally mastered the down without letting his feet slide from the platform, so working at adding more distance there. Trained standing on four paw pods this week, which was pretty easy for Asher as he’s not a frantic guy and already had strong front end and back end targeting behaviors. Also been working on some heeling, which seems to have totally fallen out of his head, he had such a cute little heel for a while. I don’t know, might put that one up for a while, I did such a poor job with Navarre’s heeling I’m a little gun shy about it.

I have been working on Navarre’s heeling, this time using a chin behavior when he forges. He CAN offer a non-forging heel position, but, yeah, it’s definitely not his default. I don’t expect any of our work to transfer to his obedience trial next weekend. He very much enjoys working on it! Bright has been working on catching a toy, which she CAN do, but not consistently. And Haku gets put away until it’s his turn, it’s funny how as he gets older he just gets worse, he doesn’t even try to pretend not to bite the other dogs if you leave him on a group stay while I’m working another dog, so I don’t even attempt it anymore. The other dogs are much more relaxed and it’s much quieter! Haku still gets to work a little something, of course, but it’s weird not to have him as part of the group.

Took Haku and Navarre down to a shedding/pen work clinic at Ian’s over the weekend. The boys had a great time, and I had a great time since I was only working Haku, and Ian worked Navarre. Haku and I had learned some shedding the beginning of the year, but really hadn’t looked at it since, so it was fun to go back to it and Haku had the basic idea. Today we looked at making the behavior more ‘automatic’, trying to get the dog to look for holes and hold and move on their own. Haku didn’t do the automatic thing, but we managed to change his flank cues to just ‘out’ to get him to move and he would choose which way to go (which is really helpful since I don’t have to remember flanks!).

Shedding is a relaxing event for all with Haku, the sheep are supremely unconcerned about him, so they’re literally grazing while we’re shedding. And they’re very happy to spread out, as Haku has such a gentle, non-threatening presence. The big news is that Haku was actually coming in easier than when we looked at this the beginning of the year, and I think he had a tiny glimmer of understanding what we were trying to do. He’s still not really looking for holes, but focusing on lead sheep until directed, so that needs work. And some sheep are definitely easier to shed than others! He’s such a good boy, and this was fun to play with him.

Haku did well with the penning exercises, but probably only because Ian’s sheep really like to go in the pen. But we did some stuff holding them to a corner outside the pen which I think made a lot of sense to Haku getting him to understand exactly what he’s supposed to be doing, and, once again, letting him figure out what he needed to do to cover.

This was new for Navarre, and hard for him. He’s so close, so pushy, and most definitely does not lie down immediately when asked (‘lie downLIEDOWN!). So all the pieces need work, square flanks, lying down immediately and NOT MOVING IN, looking for holes and moving with the handler. And, most importantly, he has no concept of coming in when Ian asks. So, yeah, lots to work on, he was doing sheep shit eating and other displacement activities as he wasn’t sure about this. But, naturally, still found it the best day ever, of course. Man though, especially Saturday night I thought there might be something wrong with him, he was EXHAUSTED. He just laid there all evening long and even the following morning I had to invite him off the couch to go outside. But he was rearing to go once we got back to Ian’s, and actually seems LESS mentally zonked tonight.

So much brain and control work, and as we were doing ‘stations’ of different skills it meant that the dogs worked A LOT throughout the weekend. Ian tended to work Navarre for longer periods of time with advanced exercises rather than multiple short sessions though, and seemed quite confident that he had the foundation pieces other than coming in for the shed. I don’t share Ian’s confidence, but shedding and penning required Navarre not to push, and that’s so hard for him. He did lots of good stuff though, and was trying so hard without getting too goofy, proud of my boy – he’s finally growing up. Four and a half now, it is a magical age. I think doing this kind of intensive work is good for him though, I think this will really help him in many aspects in herding. I did find it interesting that while he’s also 100% ready to go and focused out there, as soon as he’s done he comes straight to me and doesn’t mind putting his leash on – he’s ready for a break.

The big news of the weekend for me was Asher, Ian let me work him a bit during lunch so I went out to see if we could do our ‘backing up’ homework out in the arena where I could actually back up without falling down. But in the arena Asher couldn’t cover Ian’s sheep, as he hadn’t quite figured out coming to balance, he would just push on their shoulder and he’d lose them and he would look confused. Heidi’s sheep come to you no matter what, but these sheep were responding appropriately to what he was doing – so he lost them. So we went back to the round pen and it was like a little switch had flipped, I think losing the sheep made him think about what he was doing and how it affected the sheep. Suddenly in the round pen he figured out kicking out to balance and he was so excited about it. So we could do little walk abouts in the round pen. And he also seemed to recognize that sheep going everywhere didn’t feel good, and leaving sheep behind wasn’t right – it was funny that just in one session he kind of figured out what the point of this was.

So that was Saturday so I tried again on Sunday at lunch and started in the round pen. Once again, he did great (you know, relatively speaking for a baby dog) in the round pen. And he’s getting all stylish and serious walking up to them now, it’s freaking adorable. After we played in the round pen a bit we left that pen and he immediately just ran to the arena gate and lied down expectantly. So I figured we’d give it one more shot in the arena now that he seemed to get the idea better – and he could cover the squirrely Ian sheep in the arena! And could go fetch them and if one got left behind he would go fix it (or just stand there looking conflicted – but either way, he understood that they were ALL supposed to stay together). I just felt like he had the ‘lightbulb’ moment where he gets the basic concept of herding now, where before he really didn’t.

Asher is pushy, but nothing like Navarre. I’m not asking for any sort of distance from the sheep at this point, but he likes to be up there and he likes to move QUICKLY. He doesn’t seem to have much eye at this point, which I’m not complaining about. He CAN lie down around sheep, but it’s not something I want to ask too much of at this point. I use it when we come in the arena and to ‘reset’ so I can get closer to the sheep before starting again, but I don’t use it when working. He’s now been ‘hey’ed at it, and isn’t all super sensitive about it. So far I continue to feel like he’s working with me, but I recognize that by the end of this weekend I had a lot less of his mind when we were out there together. Still, so much fun and it’s nice to feel somewhat confident working him without worrying about ‘ruining’ him. It will be interesting to see getting to start Asher ‘right’ if it makes any difference in the amount of issues he has. We shall see, but, so far, he really likes it!

It was a lovely weekend, great weather, boys had fun … but then a dog attacked Haku. We were just sitting in the building, Haku was on leash laying next to me and an off leash dog came into the area and just went after Haku, grabbed him by the neck and started shaking him. It was just awful, and Haku was screaming and the owner had to run in and pull her off of him. I’m still looking for punctures, as she did puncture the collar around his neck. And it broke my heart to see my poor Haku like that, and that I wasn’t able to protect him. I think he’s okay, I calmed him down and checked him out, when he seemed okay I let him go out and work some sheep to distract him and he was happy to do that. But nothing like that has ever happened to him before, and just so out of blue – and Haku of all dogs, it’s still hard to believe it happened. The dog that attacked him has a history of this kind of thing, so it frustrates me that she was off leash at all, but I can’t fix what has already happened. Just hoping that he’s okay and that it doesn’t affect him mentally around other dogs. I didn’t work him after that as I figured he would be sore after the adrenaline wore off. I put his back on track jacket on and once we got home I put the other dogs outside and just hung out with him. He seems okay, and when the other dogs came in he was just his normal self with them – so, knock on wood, hopefully no long term damage. Sigh, my poor baby.