Navarre’s Not Really Herding Debut

Well, despite trying to do some last minute cramming, Navarre had no idea what to do with lifting the sheep off of the set out crew at the USBCHA trial. I didn’t have high expectations anyway, but I thought if he could get past that at least he could do a bit of the course. So that was a bit of a bust, but not unexpected. Putting the baby dog back on the shelf, I have plans to actually work with him this Fall, one way or another, which is really what he needs. And to calm the hell down. Good lord.

It really will be a shame if Asher has no interest in sheep, as I do some ideas I want to try with him. I feel like I finally have a picture of how herding training is supposed to go, and I’d like to try to get there my way this time. I don’t like arguing with my dogs, and I think it’s super bad habit to get into. So hopefully Asher will have a better start, we shall see. He still has no particular interest in sheep, but I don’t really expect much at this age either.

I did enjoy watching the double lift finals over the weekend at the trial. There were some really nice teams, including the MacRae’s that came out for the competition. Allistair won the competition – it was very impressive! So that’s always inspiring to watch something done well. And it helped that the weather was SO NICE all weekend – 60s and raining the day Navarre ran, which is just nuts. Mid-July!

The baby dog day at the trial was kind of a train wreck all around, which actually always makes me feel a bit better. Sometimes things just go really, really wrong in herding and the judge ends up moving sheep himself to the exhaust multiple times. I would really have loved to run Haku, though I know after working with them earlier in the week that he struggled to cover the trial sheep. Herding is fun with Haku though, and with Navarre … well, we will give it an honest try this Fall, that’s all I can say. Asher is the great red hope though.

Asher just keeps getting more ORANGE. Good lord, he’s getting called ‘blonde’ he’s bleaching out so much on his puppy coat (yet his face hair is still red, he looks like a monkey!). But I do feel like he’s really slowed down growing, at least, for now. He is 13 weeks now and officially three months old. He had a big weekend of socializing, first going out on a date with Heidi and she took him to the Lavender festival, the hospital and to the outlet mall – it was a lot! Maybe he was a bit overtired from that as he was acting all shy at the trial on Sunday, but he was being his normal friendly self by Monday.

Asher is a still a bit of dick to other dogs, was interesting to see him with both local siblings on a hike on Friday. Sister Flavia certainly had a lot to tell him, and he eventually seemed to chill out a bit. That was one very cute, but very chaotic hike. Despite multiple tries there was no way we were getting a group shot of those little heathens. They had a lot of fun though, such adorable puppies. And little sister Flavia weighs as much as Asher! I don’t think that will last, but her legs grew like crazy – she’s all stilts. Asher too has a lot of leg, but he lost his rosed ears. They started doing funky things and then fell back into ‘puppy ears’. Flavia ears were going way up at the hike, I’ll be curious if we end up with any aberrations from airplane in the end.

Asher is also feeling more confident with bigger adult dogs, and tried to hump an intact 2 year old at the trial – good lord! Asher is an interesting guy, cocky little bastard. Thankfully he doesn’t try to hump my dogs, as they already dislike him plenty. No thawing on that front, unfortunately. I think time is the answer here, maybe when he starts to lose those puppy teeth. We had yet another disaster trying to let him play with some new puppies, an aussie pup the same age that he made yelp just by pummeling her and an older boston that thought he was a dick too. Sigh. He wasn’t being MEAN, just obnoxious and way too rough. I am feeling a little bit discouraged about how much stress he’s continuing to bring into the household after a month, the dogs continue to be just as unhappy about him now as they did then (and, OMG, the Navarre drama!) – and while I’m hopeful it’s just a phase he’ll grow out of, I am also a little worried that maybe it won’t change. Once again, he’s just a pup, but I can’t keep a dog that doesn’t get along with everyone, that’s just not fair to the other dogs. Luckily I like Asher a lot, I’m hoping my dogs will learn to see his good side as well.

The flip side of this, I think he’s getting used to his cold reception from other dogs and doesn’t have a ton of interest in them assuming I’m working with him. So with those puppies he was terrorizing as soon as I decided that he needed to just stop he was more than happy to ignore them completely and work with me while they did their own thing. I was also hugely impressed, someone brought in their little adult papillon into the arena and I was really worried that Asher was going to pummel him – but Asher ignored that dog completely. To the point that Asher was sending around the papillon to get to his platform sends.

Training-wise we finally achieved paw crossing, to a ridiculous degree – it’s now his favorite thing. I don’t think hugging will be an issue, he’s now hugging himself all the time, in both ‘directions’. The power of free shaping, it took a lot longer to get there, but that behavior is STRONG. Asher continues to really enjoy training, though I’ve done a shit job at naming and stimulus control, he’s starting to get that frantic ‘offer anything’ when I ask for just one behavior. This week we have been trying to train ‘sit’, which he didn’t actually know. He is a very sloppy sitter, he can do well on a small elevated platform, but on the flat he’s all over the place. His down has also become very ‘pouncy’. We started with a nice foldback down, but he’s now pouncing FORWARD into position. Which I don’t know how much I care because it’s a fast, happy performance and one of my big goals for Asher is not have the same down issues I do with Navarre. Asher is a border collie through and through, he loves to down – he downs at a distance, he downs out of motion, he autodowns on the table. It’s very enthusiastic, but not exactly the precise behavior I want. So we’ve started positions with front feet on a platform, that’s a tough one!

Also mostly achieved sending, assuming he doesn’t randomly offer me other behaviors instead. We have three sends, send to table (or bed) with an auto-down; send to mark (two feet on a pedestal); and send to sit on a small platform. All of these he can send and hold until released, and send from obstacle to obstacle. He also some secondary behaviors I can ask for, his pivot on his mark and his 2o/2o off his sit platform. We have not achieved freely offered pivots in BOTH directions yet though, and his 2o/2o remains a little shaky. He finally mastered stretching out into his 2o/2o, but we’re still working on backing up into position. We haven’t been able to work on sit-pretty at all, Asher is not a very coordinated guy.

I am enjoying both the Silvia and Justine puppy classes, but have had zero time film and edit, so I haven’t actually sent much in. And by the time I do get a chance to edit video, that video seems so obsolete compared to what he can do now that it doesn’t seem worthwhile to spend the time. Still, it’s fun to have specific goals to work on, even if they’re not things I would normally train (like paw crossing!).

Asher is doing great with every day manners, his stay is really progressing fast for his age, his recall in most situations is strong (not so much around Heidi and Dove!). While the dogs don’t like him, he’s not overly obnoxious or loud, he mostly just wants to party. He can be destructive if you’re not watching, but that’s just a puppy. I keep WANTING him to sleep on the bed, but he’s too busy, so he continues to sleep in his crate by the bed (where he’s then perfectly fine to go sleep as soon as I put him in!). He loves his crate in the car, as we have little breaks throughout the day that end with him getting a handful of food in his crate at the end of the break he seeks out and jumps into his crate on his own. He’s got the routine down and is happy to chill when it’s time and happy to play when it’s time for that.

Things we’re hoping to work on this week:

• Pivot in his ‘bad direction’

• Back up to 2o/2o

• Positions changes (maybe with pedestal)

• Caveletti

• Close door/cupboard

• Pivot to heel

• Tug-sit-tug

• Building duration in a sit

• Circle work

• Barrier chase (without just bashing himself into the barrier!)

• Front cross intro

• Verbal sit/down/stand

• Recall to toy WITHOUT slamming into me or going behind

• Verbal release proofing

• Drive to dead toy

• Wobble board

Also want to work on more personal play, he’s been such a shark that we haven’t done much without toys. He enjoys playing with just about any toy, he likes to chase, tug and somewhat retrieves. He switches toys fairly easily at this point and can go from toy to food and back without an issue.