Warmer

Finally had a break in the weather and got the dogs out to play with some sheep at Maddy’s. ALL the dogs, though Haku just supervises. Carol even came out to work with Navarre, and I was pretty shocked to see him trying his hardest to behave himself. He still has no concept of slowing down, but that’s nothing new. It was so nice he finally got to play, poor guy, he only is comfortable being handled by other people. Hopefully he’ll get to do some herding this year, we shall see. Would help if the weather was nicer, as I’m not feeling ambitious to get out there in the mud, wind and rain this winter.

Asher continues to progress, at least in practice. I’m much happier with his outruns and lifts in the big upper field at Maddy’s. We can KIND of drive, but we do better if we just sort of let the sheep drift and only bump them a bit, otherwise things get way too flanky. Still, he’s trying and his flanks at a distance have improved, not so slicey. Today, at least, I feel somewhat confident we can make our herding goal this year. We shall see, but, yeah, practice is important.

Bryn did very well, but Maddy’s sheep just want to bolt to the draw, and that makes it really hard to set up honest outruns for her. I continue to be happy with her outruns and lifts, assuming she is not worried about losing the sheep. Going to try NOT lying her down, which I’m happy she responds to, but may not really need. We started our first baby drives, which look like she has no idea what I’m asking – which is true. But it’s the first steps, need to work on getting her to come into me, yet again. And be more consistent or her holding that fetch line, which is what she needs to do for her drives. She remains super fun to work with, looking forward to seeing what she can do this year.

We went back later in the week and tried to do some more driving with Bryn, but I think because I couldn’t get her to consistently hold the line on a fetch or walking with me (she’ll wear back and forth for no reason sometimes), I think that reflects on our baby drives. She DID do a few nice ones, but a whole lot of confusion, so I think I need to go back to just working on getting her to know exactly what ‘walk up’ should be first, she was getting frustrated not getting what I was wanting.

Asher and I took our own sweet time sorting sheep, which is not something that I volunteer for since it takes me a LONG time to do it. I actually find it a somewhat fun thing to do, as long as no one is actually waiting for me to do it. So we eventually split off all the cluns by both gate sorting and then shedding. The shedding was easier! Asher is such a good boy and so willing to come in (unlike some little tri girls that definitely do NOT want to come in!). Shedding with Asher is easy, even though he doesn’t really understand what the objective is yet. I think he’ll be an excellent shedding dog once he really knows what the task is supposed to be.

We continue to struggle with being able to do small flanks on the drive, and it’s killing us. I waffle from just letting things be a little wonky to actually trying to fix lines and then just constantly trying to correct the over correct. Not sure how to get him to understand just a LITTLE bit, especially when I’m trying to correct HIS issue from stealthily trying to sneak around and fetch them to me. He’s so USEFUL though, and fun – love that boy.

Took Asher and Bryn to a friend’s house to work on new sheep in a new location, that was very helpful. These were very flighty cluns that are not used to be worked by anyone except the home dogs. But really, the answer to sheep that run around like maniacs is to SLOW DOWN. Both Asher and I figured this out … eventually. Still, even in a new place he wasn’t doing any of his big stress behaviors, like running straight at the sheep, scattering them, not responding to cues and getting fixated on losing them. But, yeah, he was fast and trying to ‘catch’ them when they ran, when what he really needed to do was SLOW DOWN and let them see he was not a threat. This should not be news to either one of us. But it was. By the end he was MOSTLY making good decisions and was able to calmly keep the sheep at a walk. Still needed reminders on the lift though. I was happy to see when we set the sheep up back in the woods where he couldn’t see them when I set them he had no issues going into the trees and lifting them completely independent. I see progress, and he remains super useful and trying really hard.

Also worked these sheep with Bryn in a smaller area, and she did pretty well. The sheep did make some dumb decisions to try to bolt to gates, so she got rushy – but ALMOST never out of control, she can definitely catch and turn those sheep. We did one last outrun on her ‘bad’ side (comebye) and she was ‘sticky’, stalled out and then ran straight into them, blew them up and grabbed some wool. Not sure where THAT came from, but something about that set up definitely wasn’t comfortable for her. She had done some fairly nice outruns before that, so not sure. Mostly just wanted her to feel confident on the sheep, get a feel for them and be confident moving them around the space. Worked on getting her to walk up right on balance and did a tiny baby drive too. Good girlie!

I continue to enjoy all the wonderful agility competitions that are happening, lots of fun videos from overseas. I really missed it the last couple years. Ironically, we actually have quite a few more international trials and opportunities around here right now … but I don’t have a dog to take to them. Ha! Sticking to straightforward with Navarre, and we’ll see if Asher ever does more complex skills. It’s harder on the big dogs to do those twisty moves and backsides. I never worried about Bright, she was so light and bendy. AKC is where we are right now, and I’m fine with that, I’ve yet to get back to feeling confident really handling things again (AKC doesn’t count). Once the arena is up and running I’m hoping to look at more challenging courses again.

In the meantime, I entered Bryn in her first agility trials! There are a couple trials the end of the month/beginning of February. So I entered one day of each. It’s possible I may end up pulling her from the second day depending on how things go, but it’s just a bit of a toe dip, nothing serious, it’s not she’s actually trained and obviously we haven’t done anything for 6 weeks at that point. We’ll do FEO T2B and FAST, and if that goes well, try jumpers for real. No expectations, but she’s at least confident with the equipment at home. You never know what a baby dog will do at a trial, but as long as I’m going we’re going to treat it as a fun match and see what she thinks of it all.

Meanwhile, our obedience experiment has been progressing, taking advantage of my break trying to get out and about to new places with distractions, which is what makes obedience more difficult. Navarre and Carol look REALLY cute together, and I’m shocked how trained he looks sometimes. When did he actually learn to do obedience like a real dog? He’s definitely more excited about it all this time around, though I can still some of the stress and displacement when there is more pressure and distractions with new places/dogs/people. And Navarre, unlike Haku, is SO easily distracted. So he really struggled with signals with distractions today, which is one of the reasons he missed qualifying at trials back in the day. Still, the second time Carol worked him in and around other dogs at the proofing class he seemed more relaxed about it – so instead of stressed he was just distracted.

We have set a date for another try at finishing his CDX, which is at the Sherwood trials in April, which is a really lovely trial. It’s entirely possible he may be unhappy about it like he was the last time showed, even with someone else in the ring. But he’s definitely enjoying the training, so I’m happy to just give it a go and see what he thinks. He doesn’t have do anything he doesn’t enjoy. Right now his behaviors look good, a bit rusty for things like retrieve over the high jump where the dumbbell lands really far off the jump, and things like that. Mostly he just needs distraction training, so we’ll try to do at least a couple more training opportunities while I’m on break.

Meanwhile, the goal is also set to get Asher a ‘dirty CD’ at the Sherwood trials. I have no grand ambitions on obedience greatness, but this is a fun little goal without worrying about the precision. We still have three months and he’s squeakable probably already at this point. His heeling is hilariously clumsy looking, but I don’t think that will change much. He crowds, he bumps, he wraps and then gets left behind on the fast, which cracks me up. His slow looks surprisingly the best at the moment. We attempted a figure 8 today for the first time – HA! If nothing else, I’m good at teaching my dogs to forge. We worked on some stand for exam with some new people, and then with Carol (it was far harder with Carol!). He SHOULD know how to do that, so he has no excuse for jumping up to say hello. Dork. Still, he figured it out. Finishes look a bit better too. I think we’ll be passable by April.

Asher is enjoying the training, and I think getting the dogs out to the group training is SO helpful for all of them – especially Bryn and Asher, who never got any of this. And obedience being so nice and low key, it’s easy for them to be successful and just learn to hang out quietly, ignore other dogs when working and then wait their turns in new crates. They definitely come home tired, this is a type of self control they don’t have to do very often.

Bryn doesn’t do much, we just do really simple things like come to heel, hand touches, jump into my arms, sit pretty – that kind of thing. She’s so low energy training with food it freaks me out. She enjoys it, but there is no zip or push. I’m always just amazed how calm and grounded she is, even being in this very new environment with all sorts of different dogs and mostly just sitting in a crate watching. Very good experience for her.

Even Haku got to train a bit, though everything is hard because sitting is difficult for him now. He loved getting retrieve a dumbbell though – he thinks that’s the BEST. And guess who remembered his go-outs perfectly? We spent SO much time on those, so hard for him. He hadn’t done one in, what, 4-5 years? I can’t remember when stopped doing obedience and moved to herding. Now that was a dog that LOVED his obedience, so different than the other dogs. They all had a good time though!

With the weather being nicer again we are back to hiking and romping outside again, so less training indoors. We went to the beach and had some LOVELY weather. The dogs had a great time, though Haku did get a little sore. We’re going to see a new chiropractor next week, if all goes well hopefully we can get a regular schedule with her like we do with Maddy. The dogs all had their massages this week, mostly it was the usual suspects of soreness. Maddy did feel Haku felt much looser than he has, so I think the Galipant is helping. But, yeah, old dog, dog with chronic weird back inflammation, dog with no self preservation and then the tiny brick puppy that keeps running into other dogs and LOSING. They are a full time job to keep in good condition.

Arena is SO CLOSE to getting done. The surface is in and, knock on wood, I like it so far. The big question is how it works in the long run and what we’ll need to add – but it will be an ongoing project. Right now they’re finishing the viewing area. The concrete went in this week, next week they put in the ‘Quiet Room’ (with upstairs balcony) and then finally the separating wall. We should be able to move in then! Crazy to think. We still need to finish the irrigation, and I have other things to work on like getting everything insured and figuring out the best way to drag the arena. And then, of course, how exactly I want to USE the arena. Right now I am looking at teaching half in Sherwood and half in Hopewell, we’ll see when I end up moving everything down here. But also what presenters I want to bring in, workshops, enrichment classes, small events … going to ease into it. I’m sure it will be never ending project, but I’m so excited to actually USE it!

Doing a 52 week pet photography thing this week, this week it was ‘Eyes’ and I wanted to do one of those side by side eye pictures of owner and dog. My dogs were not very cooperative, but it was fun.