Training and Trialing

I went to Carol's yesterday with Cruz, Gwen, Deal, Kit, and Ivy. They all did a nice job. Cruz worked the cows and Carol cannot say enough times how awesome he is on cows! I wish there were more cattle trials around! There are always several at a beautiful facility in New Marshall OH, and a few in Townsville SC. But both of these cities are just a couple hours over my "doable distance" for the time begin. Breezy Hill Farm say they will have one before the end of the year. If going to Cattle Finals was something I could get away to do, I would make the SC and OH trials doable, but they aren't, so going that far right now isn't going to happen. I didn't realize that the VA Winter Trial had already opened on the 20th, so it's likely to late to get in now... darn. I need to send in the Dec. entry for Long Shot. I'm scared, because Carol says I should enter at least Cruz in Open... I shouldn't be, but I am. Here in the East there isn't much of an outrun difference between Ranch and Open, and we are well on our way with shedding, so I suppose I should enter. She says Cruz is a perfect dog to get my feet wet with in Open. I trust him 100% and we are a true team. Even if things go wrong, Cruz is never going to get us in trouble. I do have a couple dogs that would indeed get us in trouble if things went wrong well out in the field... Maybe I should enter Edgeworth- although that is a pretty intense trial. I have confidence in that field as long as I send him to the right.... Deal is right close behind Cruz, and in some sense maybe a bit ahead- because she has a natural outrun. Poor Cruz and the crap I created! He is not good at spotting sheep- however he is 100% responsive on the outrun, so I can always re-direct. Yesterday in Carol's bigger field I gave him a flying redirect (actually it was a stop command- but he knew what I wanted him to do- and kicked out a good 100' on the fly) that completely fixed the outrun. Carol said if I can give a flying redirect that's great, as it's fewer points off than a stop and redirect is. Deal also started a bit tight (I don't think she knew she could go around the fenced in cell-towers), she stopped on a dime and took the redirect wonderfully. I thought I needed work on long distance fetch line flanks with Deal, but she was perfect. Carol also had me flank her all the way around the sheep on the fetch- which she did well. I had to repeat the all-the-way-around flank whistle each time I could see she wanted to come to balance, but that's certainly normal at her stage of training. She did very nice this time on the shed work- she did not lock her eye on a group and hold them rather than coming in- she came right thru. We shed a group of only 5, so that was good.

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Gwen did very well, she has a 100% natural outrun and a quick fetch. Carol suggested I leave her fast fetch alone for the time being, since pushing forward on the drive can be a weakness right now. Let her know she push and move them quickly. She drove Carol's sheep very well. She said I need to let her fetch them and then drive them past me, (rather than having it set up so I'm already behind her) as she had some trouble lining up the drive away from the "post" originally. Gwen is young and in hind sight I put too much control on her too early, so it's fairly unknown right now what her true potential is. I adore her. I always have an awesome time working her and love her immensely off the field! Love goes a long ways! Gwen is a true go getter and a pleaser, and that's all I can ask of a dog! She only wants to do what's right and is the most responsive dog I have ever worked. She's talented no doubt, but her no-quit, try-hard work ethic makes her stellar in my eyes! Carol claims you either have a dog that naturally drives, or a dog that has a natural outrun. You don't get both; naturally anyway. She said some lines are pretty good at both, but no dog is naturally really good at both. Upon thinking about it, she is right. Toss and Kit are boring type drivers- drive and drive and drive. But they have a man-made outrun and will very easily get too tight and dicey, end up with a single and then game is on... Gwen has a perfect outrun that I have nothing to do with, but she is going to take time to get a confident drive on... Deal is middle of the road, having a fairly natural outrun and fairly natural desire to drive, Cruz is a nice driving dog (although not a borer like Toss and Kit) and Lord knows his outrun is man-made (albeit a LOT of that is early training full of holes). The dog I hardly ever do anything with on sheep; Edge, would have a huge outrun, but even with the little bit I've done with him, I can see he would be a bear to get to take stock away from me. Interesting. It's all about what you prefer. Carol says she'd rather teach a dog to drive. I agree. Man-made outruns take forever, and I don't think they are ever become 100% without handler help.

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Ivy worked in the middle field on 5 sheep and did very nice. Carol said she thinks I'll have the same "issues" with Ivy that I have with Gwen. I told I can see it too, but Ivy is not nearly as "bad" as Gwen was. Gwen would flank to their heads at full tilt, then hit the dirt and not want to move back. Ivy stays on her feet 100% and is very easy to keep behind the sheep. She does have a natural desire to come up to their heads, but she is not hard at all to keep at their butts. At Ivy's age I could not block Gwen- she would beat me and then fly into a down and stick there. I did not have to teach her a down- it was already there. So Ivy's not as hard-wired to come around the their heads to stop the motion as her mother. My biggest mistake with Gwen was putting too much control on her at too young of an age. I should have just let her flank and fetch with no verbal commands. This is ALL Ivy is doing. Her only command is "That'll Do Ivy".

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Kit did a pretty good job. She had to do a couple yee-ha's by getting in the mix, splitting one off and following in hot pursuit. She settled down nicely after a bit and did some very nice work. She's intense like her father. Like her father, she is the type that will indeed make a mess if too much distance is given to her. LOL! That will lessen with age. Toss does not make a lot of messes anymore. He is a good dog and I know he will do well, but my personal preference will always be the dog with a little more eye and sense of balance. She's a nice little dog who I like more and more as she ages. I do not believe I currently own any dogs I would sell. The ones that are here, are here.

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I need to call David today to ask him if I can go ahead and work in the field now that the cotton is picked. I need to go out there and see if it's going to be too hard on the dogs feet to use before it's turned over. I don't know how stiff the cotton plant stubs are. I also need to ask David about renting the field so it's mine year 'round... My little yard is no good (other than shed work) for my adult dogs. It's still beneficial to the pups, but not for the trained dogs.

It's back to work tonight, although I work half as many days before my next 2 days off- thank goodness!! Today needs to be toe-nail day- what's 20 x 13? LOL!! ;-)

Everything Happens For A Reason....

I'm a true believer in that. The latest confirmation of that is "ending up" with Sly rather than sending him to the lady that "bought" him and was waiting until he had some obedience skills and stock-work foundation. I also believe that you should trust your gut- I have to start remembering that. The lady that was going to take Sly has a goose business in OH. She had originally also agreed to buy Kit. She sent $250 towards each of them, set up a day to come and pick up Kit, pay for her, and see Sly. The morning of her planned arrival I got an email from (after I wrote to her to confirm her visit) her saying she wasn't coming and she could not buy Kit as she could not get the money from whoever... Crappy, but okay, crap happens. I allowed her to put Kit's $250 towards Sly, who I was selling for $1000- only $500 over the puppy price. I agreed to put the basics on him- recall, crate trained, sit, down, stay, walk on a leash, tie out, etc... All that was done. I also agreed that he would have a short send and the basic flank and stop commands before he went to her. At 10 months he is a very nice pup and showing wonderful potential, but is not ready for directional work- IMO. He balances perfectly, goes all the way around the sheep (and geese), and is showing very nice natural pace. As mentioned he has all the other off-stock foundation- he's well mannered, well socialized, has a 100% recall, has a call-off on stock, ties quietly, rides well, walks like an obedience star on a line, etc... I contacted the woman (who had not been returning phone calls for over a month) who informed me that she could not get here to get him this month, November, or even December.... oohhh okkkay, what the heck! Given her previous back-out history, this concerned me. (I had a dealing with her years ago with rescue dogs that were to stay at my house for one day and it turned into many, many days and only after many, many phone calls did someone finally come and get them! Hence the gut-feeling I should have heeded) I told her I thought it would be in Sly's best interest to go to her now and come back in the spring. I offered to send him with her now for $800 rather than the $1000, and the remaining $200 could be paid when his 20-30 days of stock training was completed. (or she could just take him as is for $200 less). She went nuts-o on me, claiming that would be "non-compliant" of our contract and wanted her $500 back. Non-compliant to me would be if I charged her the full price, or claimed he had what he didn't. I was simply trying to be reasonable and do what was best for the pup. Take him now for $200 less, bond with him over the winter and let him mature, then send him to me for several weeks in the spring and we'll all be happy... But no... So I wrote back and said that although I did not think he was mature enough for much "handler input", that I would complete his training by Nov 15th and she would have until Nov 20th to pay for him and pick him up- or she was "non-compliant" of our contract, and the pup would be kept or re-sold with no refund to her. Well she totally flipped out, sent me the name and address of her attorney/investigator, said I have until April 2009 to return her $500! I guess it's my own fault in two ways, #1 I let her put the $250 for Kit towards Sly and #2 I never stated how many days after the training was complete the person would have to pick up the dog. I did think about it, but really didn't think I would need to do that much ass-covering- apparently with this woman I did!! She is now hiding behind her investigator/attorney- I can no longer contact her. You really wonder why people just can't be reasonable and use common sense. This wasn't a big deal. I did tell her that I my own feelings were that she decided she couldn't afford another $500 and needed her other $500 back and was looking for a way out. Oh well, there is always a silver lining. Sucks I have return the $500- but to just end it, I suppose it's worth it. I have a wonderful pup showing great promise who has an awesome temperament and is "home grown" to boot. In the end, I will come out the "winner". The the more mature he gets, the more I enjoy him. (this is why it pays to only breed a litter you'd personally keep a pup from!) I have been in other situations with dogs and breeders where things don't go as planned, but both parties were reasonable and everything worked out. I guess when you sell a dog the only way you can guarantee you won't end up in this kind of situation, is to have an 8 page contract so your butt is covered from every angle- what sad fact! Oh well... lesson learned and a wonderful pup gained! :-) I will have some video of Sly put up by mid-week. Ella is coming on Sunday and she can get some video of all the pups.

One More Night

Tonight is my 8th night straight at work... I was supposed to be off T-W but I guess in order to get my certification on the power lift equipment I have to come in tonight- and work a full shift. I'll have Weds-Thurs off, which is fine, just that 8 days straight on nights is a little wear-some. I'm tired. Hopefully Carol will be available on Thursday. I have news about Sly and have made some pretty solid decisions about Jim. I'm seriously considering heading up to MD for the series of one day trials at Long Shot Farm. I wrote down the Dec and Jan dates to put them in the computer at work. We have to ask for days off no less than 3 weeks in advance, so I better do it now. I need to quit dragging my feet on trialing and just start going. They picked the cotton yesterday, so I should have the 20 acre field to use again soon so I can work on distance control and stretching out their outruns. I'm also vowing to getting back to once a week at Carol's. She was very happy with my shedding skills improvement when I was there last week. I was happy to hear that. I don't feel quite as awkward and I'm a lot more relaxed. Cruz has it down and Deal is really coming along.

Well, off to wash my face, throw on yet another blue shirt, turn the dogs out for their last pee, let the sheep out to eat grass, and head off to learn how to move 4 pallets at a time of bottled water or dogfood 20' above my head.... LOL!

Fitting It All In!

Wow, it's really hard to fit in all that life requires right now! When I started my job it was part time, now it is full time, full time. I suppose given the state of things I should be thankful! Our store manager had a meeting with the over-nighters last week. He assured us of our jobs. They are cutting both hours and positions on days. They cannot run the store if it is not stocked and zoned, and we are already pretty much working on what I would say is a "skeleton crew", so there's no way people will be cut, so we're in pretty good shape. He said some may see a few hours a week difference, or maybe one day less, but that is all. I've personally been guaranteed my 40 hours, and the schedule thru most of Nov. shows that. I sleep pretty well now during the day- it's my days off that kill me. I go right back to "normal" hours- sometimes without first sleeping. I had Sun-Mon off this week. Sunday morning I came home, took care of the animals, changed my shirt and washed my face and got in the car headed to Bush Gardens. We had a wonderful day and naturally we were not home until about 8:30pm. I went 32 hours with zero sleep, not one wink. Having Monday off meant I went to bed like a normal person and got up at 7:30am on Tuesday morning. I took care of the animals, loaded up 5 dogs and went to Carol's in NC. I got home in time to take a 2 hour "nap". It was payday grocery day on Tuesday, so it was about 9am when I got home Tuesday morning, so other than the 2 hour nap I went about 28 hours on no sleep. No big surprise that Thursday I woke up sick, sick, sick- worked anyway. Tonight I still had a terrible headache, but went to work. I had taken medicine and not eaten, so I felt terrible once my headache started to lighten. By lunch time (2:30am) I was much better and now I feel fine, but I'm still stuffy and have a slight cough. It's a wet gloomy day and I'm heading to bed here in a few minutes- oh how good a fireplace would feel on a day like today. Already did all the animal care, so I'm set for now. As long as it's not raining, it will actually be a good afternoon to work a couple dogs. I'm struggling with keeping up with the house, the animals, the kids, and all the other stuff I do along with being at work from 9:25pm-8:00am 5 days a week! Ben works very hard, but has the luxury of only having to do something at home (most of the time, as he is the on-call repairman for everything we own!) if he chooses! I don't get to choose. The laundry still has to get done, dinner has to be cooked and cleaned up, the animals have be fed and taken care of, full trash barrels need to be hauled to the dump, school projects always need help getting completed, groceries have to be bought and put away..... That (and more) all still falls 100% on me and some days I admit I'm over whelmed. And I didn't even include the things I only want to do, but don't have to do. It's those things that keep me up for 30 hours without sleep... I'm stubborn and I refuse to give up the things I enjoy doing- like going to Carol's to train dogs. I promised her I would be coming around once a week again- that I was going to take $50 from each paycheck to ensure I had gas money!

I do want to write about how the dogs are doing, but think I will do that after I get some sleep! LOL!

Trial Fields

Well we went to two trials last week. Last Sunday we went up to Hickory Hills in Palmyra. This is a pretty small field, with extremely intense draws with sheep that know how to beat even the best dogs. Keep the dog on and they run, back the dog off and they either run to a "safe" spot (they have so many) or they just stand there. They hate to drive up the hill to the panels, and do everything they can to squirt somewhere else. It's quite hard in a small field to fix lines when every which way is a direction they want to run. And dogs like Gwen have such a difficult time with that. She had a beautiful O/L/F. But almost to the drive panel we started getting beat. She hates to feel all that pressure and her eye and feel for pressure start to bog her down. She did get the panels. She will get less bogged down with confidence. When she's excited she gets sticker- and as she gets more field time, she will be less excited. Tom Lacy was judging and he liked her and said I would have a good time with her. I think Gwen placed 4th. Tom only took 7 points off her run. Toss did a very nice job, but once again did that goofy looking back at me on the outrun send for the first 50' or so. I imagine only field time will fix that. It's not something he does at home. Moving the sheep was not an issue for him, as he's very forward. I had to remind him a few times to keep his drive flanks square. He was 5th.

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Cruz won the Ranch class. He had a very nice O/L so I was very pleased with him. The Ranch drive was very difficult, as it was a right hand drive past the exhaust and then turning to the inside of the field and past the setout- where they use grain to hold them... You had to hold them on the outside to keep them from going to the exhaust- yet not let the dog get so far out of position that they couldn't make the turn to the left. Making the turn to the left required a huge counter clockwise flank for almost everyone- even setting them high and trying to let them drift back to make the panels didn't work very well. Then the next hurdle was how far to let that flank go. You had to flank 'away' far enough to make the turn and keep them from going further up the hill back to the food- but flank that way too far and they would RUN LIKE THE WIND back DOWN the field to the exhaust. And this is all on a small field- so it can go to hell in a hand basket in a heart beat. We missed our first panel by a hair- my dog had it all under control and I had to mess with it... We ended up with the sheep half way back to the post before Cruz was in position to turn them back up the field and back on line for the cross drive. We did a n/c run also, and even with everything going as nicely as we could do, the sheep still ended up part way up the field on the way to the cross drive panels. Put my hands up in the air in a question when I got to Tom and he agreed there was just nothing that could be done- aside from some good luck. Ella and Mary Jane won their Novice run. It's a hard field to see much of the run from the fenceline. During her n/c run I stood by the caboda with the judge so I could see. Mary did well for her, aside from not wanting to take her lie downs, but given the pressure of the field, that's understandable.

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Thursday was the State Fair and it's the last year in the horse arena! Yahoo on that! Again with all the pressure and little to no room to fix lines. They used Karen Lacy's nice sheep. Given the circumstances I thought the sheep were about as well behaved as they could possibly be. Ella let Mary Jane be pushy at the post. She didn't get her onto the better side to send her and then when MJ started to leave her, she just let her go. Ugh! So Ella and MJ were both unsure of what was going on. Mary has a very nice outrun, but because she knew she hadn't really been sent, she went pretty tight and then blew them apart at the top. They were heavy to lift because of the grain. So poor Ella didn't even get to give it a whirl... But she learned something- to NEVER let your dog just go. I told her even if she gets 30' away- get her back! Better to take the OR points hit and have the rest of the run! She shouldn't feel too bad though- 3 times out and they've been first twice! Gwen struggled with the pressure and heavy sheep. We got past the drive panels and when they ran to the exhaust, one of them actually went BEHIND the green banner that was hanging on the fence! I thought, we'll never get past this. We gave it a go, but she ended up gripping... Darn. Don't blame her though. She got further in the Nursery class, but again gripped out. Deal surprisingly did NOT grip out! I had to warn her a few times, but she did very nicely. She ended up 3rd in a very big, competitive ProNovice class- I think there were 19 dogs. I didn't take Toss because Kit is in heat and he's being a moron. Cruz was Cruz and his run was so fantastic. We missed our 2nd panels by a hair! Poop! But made the free standing chute. Cruz is so amazing about always just getting the job done- no matter the situation! He has such settled control over just about any kind of sheep in just about any type of field. He's such a gentleman, but does not let the stock take control. He's never too forward or too sticky, he's always just right- his feel for sheep and what they're feeling is simply amazing. I sure wish I could have him back as a pup so he could have developed a better outrun and from-the-post spotting skills.... Doug Brewer and one of his nice dogs beat us by 2 points, so we were 2nd. Ranch was a big class too. I took Kit along to send from the post in Nursery so whoever won would get the points. I decided I need to get serious with her. She's going to be nice- nice and forward like her father. I sent her, and stopped her to help with her outrun (she's never been sent from the post- or been anywhere else but Carol's). She listened and got around the sheep. I let her fetch them to me back to the exhaust. She was quite pleased with herself and was very well behaved along the fenceline while waiting for her turn.

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I need to talk to David about leasing the field across the driveway. I believe he said the current lease on the farm was till Oct. It sure would be wonderful if we could lease that field. My little area is much like the field at Hickory Hill- small and full of pressure. There's cotton in the field right now, but it's looking close to being ready. I'm anxious to have that 20 acres back! :-)

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Mt. Pleasant is already full, so I guess we're not going... There should be a winter trial at Tom's and the Wilson's usually have a Jan. trial too. And Roy and Debbie normally have a winter cattle trial. I'm not sure if I'm going to go to many more trials in Palmyra. I'd really rather drive to Carol's and get all the dogs well worked. It was more money in gas to go up there and back than it was in entries.... Think I'll save my pennies for some bigger field trials where we can really get some experience and learn. I'd like to get Cruz to Open in the spring...

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