Awesomesauce

Yesterday I went out to Walla Walla to work dogs with my good friend Mary, who owns Toss. We did agility and herding. Mary and I are kind of trading agility lessons for herding lessons. I help her with agility, she helps me with herding. Quite a good arrangement, if I do say so myself! We started off at Mary's house doing agility. She just got some new (to her) equipment, including contacts and a teeter, so we worked on some sequences and contact performance. Both Mary's dog Kitty and Cedar did really well! When I wasn't helping Mary, I worked on discriminations and some distance stuff with Cedar, as well as tightening up her 2o2o on the A-frame. She was on her best behavior :)

After we were done practicing agility, I loaded Moss into Mary's truck and we headed out to work sheep. The day before, Mary had sorted off four ewes that needed to be hauled to another farm. In order to get them in the trailer, we had to make sure that they wouldn't be able to run off and join the rest of the flock. Mary had me take Moss and drive the flock down to the other end of the pasture and hold them while she loaded the sorted ewes in the trailer. Moss was a very good boy, and it was fun working that many sheep. He almost lost them a few times when they bolted for home, but he always got them back. I need to figure out how to not let that happen so much. I think that Moss appreciates the more practical aspects of the job just as much or more than working "formally" out in the field. I know I do.

After Mary got the sheep loaded, we trailered out further into the countryside and worked in a big hay field. My goal for that training session was to focus on learning how to help him when things start to go "wrong," and to practice recognizing when he needs help and when he needs a correction. It's an ongoing battle ;). When I told Mary my goal, she told me to never start out thinking something is going to go wrong. Always believe it will go right. Ah, the power of positive thinking ;). Good advice, though!

Moss started off with a really gorgeous come-bye outrun, at a distance of probably about 100 yards. Not *that* far, but still pretty good for us at this point. I should have helped him more at the lift... I didn't say anything and he let them drift off line a bit. But still, not a bad first effort ;) For the next outrun, I sent him on the away side and it was not good. He started tight and tried to cross over. I think it's because Mary was standing on that side holding the sheep for me. I know that picking sheep up off a setout person is something we really need to work on, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it went awry. To help him, I moved closer to the sheep and pushed him out. With me closer, he was more confident and the lift was really nice. After fetching them back to where we were originally standing, Mary had me drive the sheep in a straight line back to her, around her, and fetch them back. We did this exercise a few times and it was REALLY helpful, both in teaching Moss how to hold a line and helping me improve my timing. It reminded me just how important it is to watch my sheep, not my dog :-P. We did a few more outruns of varying distances, a bit more driving, then Moss and I loaded them back in the trailer and we went home.

A most excellent day of training!