I Love Fall!

It has really been cooling off at night (it's been in the mid 30s on my way home from work), but it's been beautiful during the day. We did have a couple days of rain, but given the lack of it that we had this summer, no one complains much. The trees right now are at about their peak of color and are so pretty... I love this time of year. It stinks the sun goes down so early, but such it is.

Ella was here yesterday to work Mary Jane. They are really becoming a nice team and MJ is really listening. They are about passed the "lie down" struggle. Ella now understands that she is to ask her to lie down, and only once. If she does not get a nice stop, then she is to go to MaryJane and make it known that not stopping when asked will not be tolerated. She used be a little unsure of how much correction to use. I said she needs to give you that "oh I'm sorry" body language. She only had to walk to her a couple times last night, and Mary was giving her the correct signals very easily. I hate listening to people yell their stop commands- especially since when they're yelled they are usually not being obeyed anyway... Sometimes it's good to help someone, as I'm now very aware of my own occasional habit of raising my voice instead of just calmly going to the dog and reminding him quietly (but with authority) that he must listen. (this is what I've been taught- but sometimes I forget...) This is something I especially have to remember with Toss, as he is a very intense dog who only gets more intense if I get verbally overbearing. Today I caught myself loudly saying his name (which did nothing) as he pushed thru his stop on a drive. I went to him about 3 different times during his session and after each time I did he would give many solid stops on the first, quiet stop command- much more effective.

Toss is really coming on and I think 2009 will be a good year to start hitting a good number of trials with him. He's becoming quite reliable. He's an awesome driving dog and typically has a nice outrun. He can slightly slice and rush the lift sometimes and rattle his sheep. He needs some long outruns where I can stop him right before the lift, let him relax for 3 seconds, and then re-direct. He rushes because he's insecure, so letting him take a breath and get his head helps him. He doesn't have enough eye that I worry he'll become sticky. We did something similar with Cruz a couple years ago. He would leave my feet just hell-bent and only thinking about getting them to my feet and would slice and rush the top. It was interesting because a few times we let him just "sneak" off to collect sheep and he was pretty as a picture because he was relaxed and thinking! But send him and all he could think about was how fast can I do this. So we started stopping him a couple times during the outrun. I'd stop him, let him take a breath and would usually tell him to get back. This is when he made the biggest improvements with his outrun.

I traded my woolie ewes for 6 Dorper ewe-lambs and they're just what Gwen needs IMO. Of course they are light, so there's not a lot pushing, more just steering (but they do stop if the dog gets too far off), but the steering has to be in little steps. Her and I went all the way back to fenceline fetches today. I had to use the fence to keep some sense of handler/sheep balance, as they are not at all drawn to me yet. It was a very good session for her. She started out zooming from 10:00 to 2:00 at a hundred miles an hour. (before we got to the fence) Rather than fussing at her, I just let her figure out that was foolish (and a lot of work) and sure enough in a couple minutes she settled down. She was doing quite well with small flanks followed by a stop and walk-up- she was getting back up and moving foward quite willingly. She has to figure out for herself that she has gears! She will and I think these lambs will help teach her how to be subtle. She has nice stock sense, so she should learn some things by simply working the quick, jerky moving lambs. She's young, keen, biddable, very natural and intense- she is a go-getter and no-quitter. :-) I have 3 more lambs on hold from another lady not too far from here, they're Dorpers as well. I won't have any lambs this spring. I'll have to take some pictures of my new girls tomorrow.

Deal was a good girl today after she settled down with the new group. She needed to be reminded that stop means stop and a drive flank means a flank, not 2 steps in first- but other than that she did very nicely. We penned the group she worked. She did a very good job holding her side and reading the situtation- thus doing quite a lot without commands. I personally see no harm in letting a dog use his own brain when he knows what the job is. That is what my "Ol' Man" (Cruz) does so amazingly. How quick he figures out what's going and then how well he does what's needed- it's mind blowing really. It's priceless and on a real farm I can only imagine how invaluable that would be! Cruz was good today too. We tried shedding and it was interesting to say the least! LOL! We also worked the free-standing chute which was fun. I love new sheep when they know zippo! They aren't crazy lambs, running like the wind and slamming into things- but they certainly don't know what's what yet. They're funny because sometimes they will let the dog get really close and sometimes they move quite quickly with the dog way off. They will never be worked roughly or unfairly, so they should grow up to be very nice ladies.

Ella let Wren go around the geese in the round pen when she was here on Sunday. She did fine, she looks as though she will be quite a nice dog. She reminds of Cruz when he first started even though he was an adult. We need to get the lambs more settled and handler drawn before the pups work them. It's good timing for me as I might be tempted to push too much on them over the winter. 11 months seems old enough, but it's really not. They just are not mentally mature enough. I'd rather wait a bit longer so they are mature enough to figure a lot of things out for themselves. Surely I want to see some natural ability by now (and they have it), but to actually expect them to handle training pressure is asking too much- I'm only recently coming to figure this out... (knowledgeable people have been telling me this for years...) I like finding little made up chores for them to do at this age. People with real farms always have plenty of little short tasks for new blood. I have to make up some little things most of the time- things that they can use their own young brains to figure out what they need to do, things that are always close at hand.

I almost pulled my entry from the Long Shot trial, but didn't. I really am looking forward to running at a new trial, and at one I've heard such good things about. I know a few people that are going to the Nov. trial so I'm looking forward to hearing how it went.