Posts from — January 2008

Gel is doing better. He’s been around other dogs, including bitches, and he’s essentially ignored them. It took me a while to remember, but last weekend while at my lesson, there was a bitch out on the field while he was there. Gel was more interested in the stock than he was in the bitch. That’s great improvement. He has been sound in the front end since I last gave the remedy. His appetite is good.

I should note that I can count the number of times Gel has been lame on one hand. I don’t think occasional lameness is anything to be too concerned about. I don’t think Gel uses his hind quarters as well as he should while working stock, although when doing agility, he does. I am not sure if it is a structural abnormality or if he is simply so focused on what’s in front of him (the stock) that he forgets he has a hind end. He’s not quite so focused on the equipment in agility, he splits his focus between me and the equipment. If the beast comes down too much more in the front end while on stock and keeps his big ol’ tongue hanging out like he usually does, he’s going to start stepping on it.

Yesterday I noticed Fern was limping on her right front leg. Great, I thought, like father, like daughter. I did not run her Wednesday night. This morning she’s perfectly sound. She had her nails taken down quite short on Saturday and she did get a good amount of exercise Saturday, Sunday and Monday and that coupled with shorter than normal nails could have attributed to the lameness I saw.

I pulled Gel from the agility trial the beginning of March. I expect we’ll drive down to Georgia again for a second ASCA stock trial the middle of March. My pocket book is not bottomless and the ASCA stock trials are expensive. Given that ASCA stock trials that I can get to within a reasonable driving distance are few and far between, I figure I’ll focus on them now, then come back to agility.

At some point I’ll likely decide between AKC and USDAA agility and my feeling is that I’ll start to focus solely on USDAA, at least with Gel. Given that he’s such a big jumping and striding dog, he’s going to have trouble with the tight Excellent-level courses in AKC. I like that USDAA is an agility-only organization. I really, really don’t care for AKC on any level. Eventually I’ll enter an AKC herding trial, but not until he’s ready to run at the highest level. I’m not going to waste my money and time with the lower levels. I wish you could do that in ASCA: start at the Advanced level, but you can’t. I’m looking at my time at these arena trials as foundation work, mileage for Gel and me. Arena or not, every time we are on stock, we have the chance to learn something new.

You’d think that someone who went through vet school would know that dogs are carnivores, not omnivores. A friend of mine lent me her copy of Your Cat. Simple new secrets to a longer, stronger life written by Elizabeth M. Hodgkins, D.V.M. Esq. All in all, it’s a good book, I particularly like that in her book, Hodgkins lets the reader know that, in general, commercial pet food sucks.

Hodgkins is practicing as a cat-only veterinarian and is an Ocicat breeder. I guess she considers that dogs are inferior creatures when compared to cats.

Dogs have more flexibility in their digestive processes than cats do. Cats are classified as obligate carnivores which means they must eat meat to survive. While a dog may be able to survive on an omnivorous diet, there is a big difference between “survive” and “thrive.”

I should introduce my sheep. At my house I have twelve lambs ranging in age from six months to over a year. There are five black-headed Dorpers, one almost black lamb who likely has Barbado in her named Raisin, there’s one mixed-up colored lamb named Band-aid, three ewe lambs from my original four Katahdin ewes, and two wethers (the term for a male sheep castrated before sexual maturity), one named Joey from one of the four Dorper sheep I bought last year and one from my original four Katahdins. Five of the lambs, the three Katahdin ewe lambs, Joey and the other wether are mine. The others are Wally’s. At Wally’s house I have my four original Katahdin ewes, one St. Croix ewe and the four Dorper ewes. Wally bought two adult black-headed ewes to add to his flock and they are running with my adult ewes. The adult ewes are running with a multi-colored ram named Rambo and one that we call the “botched wether” because we didn’t manage to casterate him correctly last spring. Eventually both Rambo and the botched wether will be butchered for meat for my cats and dogs.

Between the two of us, we have twenty-five sheep. Hopefully all of the adult ewes are bred and will lamb in March. When I bought the four Katahdins in October of 2006, they were all bred and between the four of them, delivered six lambs thus doubling my flock size. I bought the four Dorper ewes because I needed slower, more dog-broke sheep to work young dogs on. The arrangement between Wally and I is he keeps the adult sheep at his place and I keep the lambs at mine. I primarily work the lambs, but frequently go over to Wally’s to work the sheep over there. It’s a pretty nice arrangement because I have two different groups of sheep to work at two different locations. Wally doesn’t have the open pastures that I do, but he has some nice-sized fenced in areas to work.

Prior to meeting me, Wally was the “Goat Man,” but he recently sold all of his goats in order to keep just sheep. He says that sheep are a lot easier to care for and they hold their value better than goats. Funny how relationships start. I met Wally two years ago when I bought seven goat kids from him to train Gel on.

I intended to work with Gel on whistles this morning but when I went outside with him to where the sheep were a scant ten minutes before, they were not to be seen. We walked down into the back field where I have my panels set, but did not find them. I walked up to the front fields and still no sheep. At that point I decided to send Gel to find them. I did get a bit of whistle practice in redirecting him when he returned without the sheep and he took the correct flanks at a huge distance.

The temperature had dropped dramatically from our early morning walk and the wind had picked up and it was freezing! After about 15 to 20 minutes of searching without success I recalled Gel and started up the ATV. I donned my “Yankee coat,” added gloves to my attire and off we went.

On the ATV I found the rotten beasts quite easily and given where they were, I wouldn’t have expected Gel to find them. My neighbor has installed a few gates on his property and they were in a pasture behind a closed gate. I saw them before Gel did and sent him to the right on a blind fetch. He took the flank as requested and quickly brought the sheep to me on the ATV and then we headed back home and put the sheep up.

So much for planned training. That ATV has already more than paid for itself with its usefulness both as a means to provide extra exercise for my dogs and to enable quick search and rescue missions. Eventually, the individuals who own a good part of the acreage behind me will be fencing it in, which will be a good thing because it will prevent my sheep from wandering. Nine times out of ten, they stick around, but on those days that they decide to go exploring, I’m glad I have a dog who is willing to search and retrieve sheep at great distance. There is a good 100 acres of open pasture land and some wooded areas around where I live. The property I sit on is seven acres and I rent twelve acres of open pasture behind my house. I’m blessed to live in such a wonderful location.

Oh I hate whistles. When I am practicing on my own in the car, I can blow it quite reliably, but when I need to blow it when working Gel, the sounds often come out sounding like someone blowing on a busted flute, if they even come out at all. I had to buy several different brands of whistles before I found one that I could get any sound out of. The hardest whistle for me to blow was the stop whistle. At one point I decided, screw the stop whistle, who needs a stop anyway? Eventually I got though. Why does this USBCHA-style herding have to be so bloody hard?

I found out last night that Finn had been placed in a new home last week. I believe that is best for all concerned. Things were not going so well for him in the home I placed him in. That is unfortunate as I think that may have been an excellent home for him. His former caregiver seemed so happy with him. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.

I’m still recovering from that nasty head cold so I took it easy last night. I took the dogs for a run, but didn’t do any training other than normal house manners. It’s a nice morning, warmish with wind. I hope to be able to work Gel on his whistles some this morning, if I can blow it with a stuffed-up nose.

In an earlier post I spoke of the possibility of bringing up a puppy to do both agility and herding. I referenced a page written by a stock dog trainer detailing what a caregiver should be doing with the puppy prior to it coming in for stock training.

Here is a list of the behaviors an agility puppy should have mastered by the time it is a year old:

• Fast Sit
• Fast Down
• Stay
• Off-leash control
• Pop up into a sit from a down
• Their name
• Clicker-savvy
• Must have either food or toy drive – both is greatly preferred
• Touch their owner’s hand
• Touch a plexiglass plate (or other target) on the ground
• Line-up (sit in heel position next to owner) off BOTH sides
• Start-line stay (a stay in front of a piece of agility equipment)
• Jump-come-cookie (or tug) around jump on floor/low bar – both front-cross and post turn
• To stand on the table for measuring
• Greg Derrett circle groundwork – on the outside of the circle at a minimum (bonus points for outside of the circle
• Front-cross on the flat (”on the flat” means not over an obstacle)
• Rear-cross on the flat
• Through very low tire
• The chute
• The tunnel (depending on your training philosophy with tunnels)
• The table as a good place to be
• Walk over teeter board
• Able to bang teeter board or alternatively needs to be conditioned to teeter noise
• Exposed to board moving under feet – low teeter, boogie board, etc.
• Have a contact training plan for some form of two-on/two-off and be working on the basics
• Running over low contacts (depending on your training philosophy)
• Weave pole entries
• How to ride in the car
• How to be a good puppy at the agility trial (after 6 months old)
• Focus work under distracting conditions
• Tricks to use for focus/relaxation while waiting to go into ring
• A word or phrase that jazzes them up (“Ready, Steady, Go”, “Get the Squirrel”, etc.)
• How to stay in a crate quietly
• Right and left
• Be good socially with other dogs
• Tolerate or like children (they are often leash runners or bar setters)
• Be exposed to hats and clothes on all types of people
• Have crates and tents put up and taken down in close proximity of them
• Allow someone other than “Mom or Dad” hold them on a leash and by the collar and touch and play with them

I haven’t looked at this list in a while and I’m very pleased that Fern already knows most of the behaviors. That and a strong interest in stock at five months old, I’d say she’s doing darned good. Do I feel like I’m pushing her beyond what she can handle as a “puppy?” Heck no! Fern is like a sponge, the more she can learn and do, the happier she is. She can work on all of the above with me, go around sheep and ducks and still have time to be a puppy. I don’t think there’s any relevance in the term being “just a puppy.” There are plenty of plain old puppies running around, I don’t want a plain old puppy, I want a performance partner. That’s something that you need to foster, essentially, from day one.

Yesterday I put Fern on my group of lambs in an approximately 100 x 100 fenced-in area. These lambs are not terribly dog-broke and I wasn’t sure if (1) they’d challenge her (they didn’t) or (2) if she could cover them (she did). I was really impressed with how she worked them. Gel was not happy that he was on the outside looking in while I was in there with Fern. A little bit of jealousy is a very good thing for Gel.

I mentioned that when I took the Puppy Blog down I received numerous e-mails asking where the Blog went. Most were from people I didn’t know, and some, I know were from people I knew, but with fake e-mail addresses.

I found the Blog of one woman who wrote and she had this to say on Saturday:

“When these people drop off the radar, I always feel a peculiar sense of loss, and there have been several occasions in which I was so reluctant to let someone go that I sent e-mails to people I’ve never spoken to. I’ve always felt very ballsy, but I’ve learned that people tend to withdraw from the public eye for very specific reasons and are happy to let interested parties back into the fold.

I did it again today with a woman whose blog I’ve been following for some years, a woman who’s cranky and depressed and hyper-focused–you know, a real person–who I have happened to have learned a lot from over the years but have been too intimidated to initiate a conversation with. I’ve never spoken to her once, and her open blogs have insured that she’s never happened to come across even a user id of mine, but I sent the e-mail letting her know how much I’ve learned, and how much I’ve appreciated what she had to share, and wished her a good journey.”

“Cranky and depressed and hyper-focused,” yep, that’s me, well, maybe not so depressed these days … but what she goes on to say, “you know, a real person,” rings even more true. I am a real person. I don’t play the game to fit in. I play the game I am ethically comfortable with. If that means I cannot fit in with the “good ol’ boys” then so be it. I go home and am happy with myself and my life.

I’m still sick with that bloody cold. I feel better today than I did yesterday, but still not well. When I lived in Massachusetts, I’d get a cold like this once every winter and it would inevitably go into my chest and I’d suffer with a chest cold for weeks or months. I dread that happening so I’m staying home to rest and take it easy one more day.

I took several naps yesterday. During one, I got Fern to curl up next to me, and she stayed still. None of that puppy wiggling that she’s so prone to. Eventually she got too hot so I pushed her out on the ottoman that was next to the couch and she slept the entire time with me. In addition to Fern, I had several cats on the couch with me. They know when you are feeling ill.

It’s Sunday and I’m writing this with a horrible head cold. I haven’t had a cold in quite a while. I was driving to Sanford on Saturday and could feel it coming on. Luckily, it didn’t bother me during my lesson. On the way home, however, I thought I was going to die. I survived, but thought I was going to die today. I still may. I hate colds.

Luckily the dogs have been very easy to deal with. Wally came over and helped me make hay racks for the sheep. Not sure if they are going to work or not. He also delivered another 800 pound bale of hay. The last bale was awful! I threw away more than the darned sheep ate. Hopefully this bale will be consumed as it should be.

The lesson went really, really well. I’ve been trying to get this woman to give me lessons for a long time and we just have not been able to coordinate our schedules. I wish I had started to go to her in the very beginning. Things may have gone a lot differently for Gel and me. She said Gel was a nice dog and should make a good trial dog and that I’ve done a good job training him up. The cool thing is, our whistles are almost exactly alike which will be very helpful during our lessons. She was also very impressed with Fern. It was well worth the three hour ride there and back. I’ll be going back March 1.

My homework is to improve on my whistles and to work Gel with them a lot, particularly in his walk-up whistles. It was cool watching Gel work a flock of 30-40 sheep. He hasn’t work that large a flock before. They were a very nice group for driving practice because Gel had to push them to keep them moving.

More later, I really feel awful.

I took this Blog down on Friday and since then have received numerous e-mails from people I know and many more I don’t know asking why I took it down. Why? Because I thought I was becoming too much of an activist and it would alienate me too much. I have since discovered that is not true. In general, people could care less what I say or think, which is a good thing.

So, we are here, for now.

Since our melt down yesterday, Gel has been acting a bit odd. Part of me thinks I should back off stock work for a few days (or weeks) and let things settle down, but when I think about that, I realize backing off isn’t going to address the problem. I know there have been times when we’ve worked stock that I’ve let Gel down and to some extent, he has reason not to trust me.

Learning to train a stock dog, how to read stock, etc. is extremely difficult to do on your own. I never go about things the easy way; why should I think this is any different? I’m glad I have a lesson tomorrow while Gel and I are in this funk so that hopefully we can work through it on different stock in a fresh location.

I spoke to my agility instructor about the problem we had and asked if she had any suggestions. She said that most dogs do not like pressure so it is not surprising that Gel doesn’t like it. Also, his personality and training history also indicate that he is not comfortable with pressure. Unfortunately life is pressure. We use pressure in agility and herding and our dogs must learn to work with it. She told me that I needed to reward highly when I put Gel in a high pressure situation and off-set the pressure work with something that is rewarding for Gel such as fetching the sheep to me. I know this and try to keep it in mind when I’m working, but often I forget. I used to think that getting to work sheep was reward enough for the dog, and for some, it likely is, but Gel has previously been conditioned to get rewards from his environment, so getting to work sheep is not always reward enough for him. Is that a flaw in his character? Some would say so.

That Gel does not like to come into me while doing agility is evidence of his avoidance of pressure in that environment. Part of the reason he doesn’t like to come in is that he’s almost always been rewarded at a distance. That has given him great distance skills, but he needs to be tightened up to be competitive in agility, which means he needs to learn to both work independently at a distance and to come in to me when asked. I’ve got what my instructor calls the “Circle of Death” set up in my side yard for practice. The Circle of Death is a set of six (or more) jumps set in a tight circle. I am to practice serpentines and threadles in this pattern. It’s hard for both of us.

Hopefully I won’t make the same mistakes with Fern.

Gel and I have come a long way from when we first started working stock, almost two years ago now. I am confident that we’ll work through this and we’ll both learn from it.