Summer Herding Adventures

What a weird year for weather, so looking forward to Fall – it’s getting closer! Started my Summer Break earlier than planned when yet more 100+ degree weather showed up. I’m hoping to get some herding practice in this summer, but it needs to cool down a little! Naturally, once my summer break actually started, the weather has been lovely – no complaints.

We did head up to Brigands to have Carol try out the boys to see about taking them up to some AKC herding trials. Well, HOPEFULLY take them to some trials, assuming they both listen to her and aren’t super obnoxious. As proved from when Haku went with Carol, my dogs can apparently be very naughty. And Haku is my GOOD dog! So, yeah, we’ll see – as Carol is going to take BOTH Asher and Navarre the end of the month. Because she’s a brave woman. Just one day, we’ll see how it goes. But, surprisingly, Asher was very willing to work for her, if not super confident in her commands. And Navarre is Navarre, he’s pretty much the same no matter who runs him – pushy and fast. Which will make tiny arena trials VERY interesting, so he got to practice pretty much lying down constantly, Mr. Forward. So that will be an interesting experiment, I’d like to think they’ll behave themselves AND listen to her on course. That, uh, may not happen.

Up at Brigand’s I did actually work Bryn and she did just fine in the field with some very tame sheep, though she started with Carol in the round pen and was definitely trying to do her own thing. Sometimes I don’t think she’ll super hard, assuming we can come to an agreement on what she needs to do in herding. She’s a curious mixture of independent and opinionated – yet soft. Girls are definitely different than the boys, if you can make it Bryn’s idea, things go well – but if she’s decided she doesn’t want to do something, good luck changing her mind. So she will lie down … eventually, and she’ll call off … eventually. Though apparently what she actually thinks ‘that’ll do’ means is ‘go find some water to lay in’. She was really annoyed there was no stock tank at Brigands for her to sprawl in. I think she’s figured out this is a team activity though, as long as she feels in control of the stock.

Love that little thing, I don’t know how she does it, but she can really do no wrong. She could probably, uh, benefit from some more clear boundaries in life. But both me and the boys kind of spoil her. God she’s cute.

We went on a little roadtrip to the beach! Just Asher and Bryn and we went down to the coast with Maddy in her van. Had a fun couple days in Waldport with my folks and then headed down to Bandon for the OSDS Trialing Clinic with Amelia Smith. I had never spent any time in the area, so that was really fun – and we lived the hippie lifestyle in Maddy’s van for a couple days. That’s about the extent of how much time I want to live the hippie lifestyle in a van, but it was a really fun weekend. Just a lovely location where the ‘trial’ field was located, and we camped out next door. Perfect weather, low to mid 60s with a nice breeze – just a perfect location to hang out for a couple days.

I was excited about the concept of the trialing clinic, I felt like it was exactly what Asher and I needed, and would give us a chance to hopefully pull things together in a new location. What I did not anticipate is that Asher just sort of imploded, he couldn’t seem to do much of anything. I’m not entirely sure why, but I assume the sheep were a big part of it – they were sheep that had never been worked in small groups, much like the sheep at Asher’s last trial where he imploded. So, yeah, I went from fairly confident we could get around a very small course to feeling incredibly frustrated as Asher wasn’t responding at all. Though at least all the issues he had at his last trial he was doing here as well – so it’s helpful to know that the problem is easily duplicated. The second ‘coached’ run was not much better, then he lost his outrun as well! There wasn’t much left to lose at that point!

So, disappointing that things have fell apart with him, but we did have one VERY good aspect to all his runs – that boy was standing up to sheep! I was thrilled with the change in him, he never tried to squirt to the side or do anything else – he went right into the pressure every time. I was so proud of him, and really happy to see that he has realized he has that ability and was so confident. Despite the mess we made of the rest of it, that was totally worth it to see him so much more confident and relaxed with that pressure.

The second day he was … better. This is a relative term, I felt like he was trying as much as he was able at this point. It wasn’t pretty, but he wasn’t stalling out on his drives or avoiding pressure. He had no outrun whatsover – straight up the middle of the field, and we were all over the place, but it was a team effort. It was a good reminder that when working with Asher he will lose behaviors and I KNOW what I need to do to get them back – we have to go back to the beginning and build them up again. At one point he could do these things, and he will again – but we need practice and a plan. And we obviously need to get on new sheep and new locations and break it down to help him be successful in these new situations. We’ll see what we can do this summer, but we’ll be starting with going back and retraining his outruns, that’s for sure.

Bryn did great on the trip, took her out and about with Gromit in Waldport and Bandon, she wasn’t a big fan of lots of traffic – but neither am I. We both managed just fine. At one point when walking in Bandon she found a whole slice of pizza that had been tossed down – she was a BIG fan of that! Which was just kind of weird in general, she has NOT been eating at home – she ate like a horse the whole time we were on vacation. What’s up with that? She needs to gain some weight, but she can be curiously uninterested in food when she’s not in the mood for it. She did great being tethered all weekend with the other border collies, great traveler, great with the other dogs, no environmental issues – she’s just one solid little dog.

Now that we’re on vacation and started up trick classes for the summer, the goal is to catch up on Bryn’s tricks as well. She has a lot of tricks, but she’s definitely more confident and enthusiastic than when she was younger. Was very funny, I was working on Asher stacking bowls and the other dogs were SUPPOSED to be in a downstay in the other room, and she finally just breaks her stay, runs over, takes the bowl OUT OF ASHER’S MOUTH and proudly holds it for her reward. And I totally rewarded her for that. Did I mention that she may be a bit spoiled? She’s definitely ready to progress more with training more complex behaviors at this point – especially if it means the boys have to wait while she’s working. God she’s cute, spoiled little brat.

Oh, and we have achieved jumping into my arms. Neither of us are particularly graceful about it, and she is like catching a sack of potatoes – but we did it. Of course, after that she now jumps up on EVERYTHING. Troublemaker. Should be a fun summer of tricks with her and the other dogs, lots of fun concept training ideas that I’ve never looked at before – color discrimination, learning to read, big vs small, that kind of thing.

We are on agility break, but we did do a little bit of figure 8 work before we stopped for summer – getting those downstream blind crosses with Miss Flankypants was a bit of a challenge, but she’s starting to get the idea:

She also did a little on the full height dogwalk, which is pretty nutty. We have been playing with the raised platform for Kirstin O’Neill’s class and she recommends not spending much time on a low dogwalk, and as I had a tunnel under the dogwalk for a couple weeks, we played around with the down ramp with the full height dogwalk to her platform. Was not an issue, but when I tried to fade the raised platform down to the flatter boards it was a no-go, they move around like crazy, which is one of my big issues with targets on the dogwalk. But Bryn went ahead and just hit the bottom like she knew what she was doing without a target board … so we went with it. And then back chained, and then did some full dogwalks. So … does she really know what she’s doing? I’m not sure, but I like the method for at least getting the idea in there – because she definitely seems to get the idea! When we go back to it she’ll be almost a year old at that point and maybe ready to progress … or not, we’ll see what she does.

Oh, and Navarre went to a trial with Ian while I was at the beach – their first ever trial in a new location together. My expectations were REALLY low, but it sounds like Navarre didn’t do too bad. Seeing the video I can see why he couldn’t find his sheep the second day, it was pretty clear the first day he had no clue where they were when he started his outrun – he does NOT outrun that wide! But lots of good stuff for him, I’m proud of big blue guy. I don’t have anything on his calendar for USBCHA trials at the moment, but we’ll see what we can do to keep getting him down to Ian.

Navarre certainly is ridiculously obsessed with the outdoor cats here at home. I mean OBSESSED. I don’t get it, he LIVES with cats, and he sees the outdoor cats every day, and they are pretty unconcerned with him. They’ll just sit there as he vibrates staring at them so hard. I don’t know where this behavior came from, but it’s not very healthy. I don’t know what to DO about it, but the theory that he’ll chill out about the cats after he gets used to them has not come true. Border collies are weird …

Finally got all the dogs up to see Maddy for massage the other day. Asher has had a suspicious cow lick on the hair on his back, Navarre was off in the front recently and Haku has been really off in the rear (maybe from getting in and out of the stock tank?). They all needed it, and I’m hoping we can get into a monthly habit of having them worked on. COVID has made everything way too complicated these days. Bryn also got worked on, Maddy had never worked on her before. Bryn promptly peed all over her. Sigh, girls are weird. But once we went outside and on the ground she did better. Haku continues to look pretty off in the rear, but not sure what to do about it. He still hikes, he still runs, he still swims, still jumps into the car – so at least he can still do what he wants to do in life.

I do need to take Haku into the vet, his canines are so worn down they are now catching on his lips. I don’t know if there is anything they can DO about that, but he hasn’t been to the vet in years – and things are not improving with COVID and getting into the vet. Bryn needs a rabies vaccination, Dragon was supposed to get a dental two years ago – yeah, I don’t know when any of that is going to happen, vets here are crazy backed up. And I don’t want to make things worse for them, so I’ve just been trying not to take anyone into the vet in unless it’s REALLY important. Not great for preventative medicine though.

They have officially started excavating for the arena – so exciting to see where the building will be! Been really fun having Heidi here, she really enjoys working on all the outdoor projects. SO MANY PROJECTS around here, there is a never ending supply. Love it here though, excited to see what it becomes as we move forward.

The second litter of Dove/Rooster babies turned one year old! Bummer that they all went to California, but it’s fun to see Gladys, who is just a female Asher, really. She is a lot of dog, but she tries so hard. I love those big happy goobers – though Gladys turned out to be the smallest of all dogs from that cross – I think 20 inches.

Oh, and saw Asher’s brother Ravi for the first time since he was 7 months old! He’s definitely bigger than Asher, a lot more substance, probably closer to 50 lbs and, uh, a lot of dog! Those Dove x Rooster puppies are not for the faint of heart! He totally should get training in agility, he’s a fun happy guy.