Posts from — March 2008

I believe I have been the lucky recipient of a rare breed of sheep: Mexican Jumping Bean Sheep.

About six months ago, Wally purchased five young black-headed Dorper ewe lambs from the auction. He got them when they were likely just weaned. They are cute as can be: little, round beasts with black heads. Can they jump though! They jump more than the black lamb who is part Barbado (Raisin), a breed that is known for its flighty nature.

Several times now while working them out in the front pasture, they’ve run to their fenced-in area and jumped (well, roll-jumped) over the four foot high field fencing. Once, when we were trying to load them, one jumped straight up into the air and kicked me in the head. The other night when moving them into a side pasture, all of the sheep but one slipped into my shabbily-fenced-in area (a/k/a my first fencing project) leaving a Mexican Jumping Bean Sheep out by herself. That is the kiss of death for a sheep, to be left by herself. She promptly jumped (really jumped this time) the four foot high fence. I’ll often see the group of lambs running and jumping playfully, especially when I’ve first let them out, and the Mexican Jumping Bean Sheep are the ones who are jumping straight up and down, usually a good four feet in the air.

Sheep can me extremely entertaining, well, they are not entertaining when they are giving you and your dog fits in a herding trial, but in general, they are funny. Several of the sheep are loosing their hair (these are hair sheep and they shed their hair [it isn't wool] when it warms up). One had a long hunk of hair hanging down her side and dragging on the ground as she moved. Soon, they’ll be sleek and shiny, especially given the amount of rain we’ve been getting. The grass is grow, growing, growing! I hope it grows three feet high! After the brown, crunchy stuff we had to look at most of last year, it’s wonderful to see lush green.

I probably should have stayed home, laid on the couch in front of the kerosene heater and watched movies, but no, I took advantage of a trial within reasonable driving distance to get mileage on the dogs, me and of course, the car.

The sheep were much worst on Sunday than they were on Saturday. To give you an idea of how rough they were, the highest Pro-Novice score was a 57 (out of a possible 100). Sheep were escaping everywhere. We were able to park along the end of the trial field, and many times, sheep were in between cars and had to be fished out. We got a score of 44: as was the case yesterday, most of our score came from Gel’s out-work. He didn’t loose any points on his outrun, lift or fetch.

After the post turn though, it went bad. The sheep kept drawing up to the exhaust. They completely escaped once and I sent Gel for them. I couldn’t see what was going on, but I found out afterwards the dog belonging to the person exhausting pushed the sheep away from the gate and into the cars. Gel got them out from behind the cars and back to me. Good boy. After several failed attempts to get them set for the first drive leg, we ran out of time. Oh well.

He stopped short on his outrun in Ranch. In retrospect, I should have flanked him around again which would have made the lift better, but I elected to walk him up knowing how strongly they were drawn to the left hand side of the field I thought it might improve my fetch line. Wrong move. It was another exercise in sheep trying to escape to the exhaust. I called the run after I saw it was going to go that way. No need to put Gel in the position of getting beat. I didn’t see the Ranch scores, but there were a few good runs so I expect the scores were higher.

It was cold all day and only spit rain a bit so at least the weather wasn’t quite as miserable as it was on Saturday.

I learned a tremendous amount at this trial from watching, talking to others and analyzing.

1. Don’t put your dog in the position where he is going to get beat by the sheep. It’s still going to take me a while to figure out how not to do this, but by splitting up my sheep and working them in small groups, I think I can recreate a lot of what went on in this trial. See my note below on working the whole flock.

2. Don’t put Gel where he can watch the runs (I need to take this note to my forehead so I’ll remember as I put him there again on Sunday and I think he didn’t have quite as much get-up-and-go as he should have had in his Ranch run).
3. I need to improve the quality of my whistles and I need to get Gel to respond quicker to my whistles. I need to work on flanking him in closer when necessary, which, I believe, is only going to be necessary when he’s working in close and in drives, but we’ll see how that goes.

That may be it, for now. I’m really quite proud of myself that I stuck out this trial even though our runs were rough. An earlier me would have left early and certainly would not have gone back on Sunday. I’m starting to care less about what people think about me and my dog. That, in and of itself, is going to help me to move forward.

Last night, while putting up the ducks and chickens, I realized something about Gel. He’s a “big flock” dog. He lives to go out into a huge field and round up all the sheep. He’s done it many times, not once has he not brought all the sheep back. When he was in a position of finding sheep lost in the woods, he didn’t leave the one that was stuck in the brush and kept the other two in the same location. Some of the problems that I’ve associated with Gel’s inability to deal with pressure, is related more to his desire to bring in all the stock, not just a select few.

All put one of the ducks went up. One was going around the pen and I was sending Gel around to put her up. He kept trying to go into the pen and get out all the ducks. I continued to insist that he focus on the single duck. Eventually he pushed all the ducks back out of the pen by his position behind the pen and the single duck went in with that group. The group headed out to the gate of their pasture and I flanked Gel around to bring them back. At that point, however, the sheep came up towards the pasture and Gel tried to go out to get them into the “group.” I didn’t let him do that and he tried to bag out on me, but I kept that from happening. We got all the ducks up, the pasture gate shut so the sheep couldn’t get in there to eat the duck grain and went to bed.

While the genes of both parents contribute to how a dog works, I think Gel is working more off the bottom half of his pedigree which is dogs from the U.K., all bred to work large flocks over long distances. I know very little about the dogs from the top half of his pedigree, but I am assuming many of them are ranch dogs, again, bred to work large flocks over large distances. This business of working three sheep is frustrating for a dog bred to work large flocks. Of course, there are times that a dog has to work just a couple of sheep and Gel needs to understand that.

It’s all a work in progress.

The weather forecast for yesterday said 30% chance of rain; it rained all day, sometimes downpours with thunder and lightning. All in all, pretty miserable weather for trialing, but I can’t get upset with rain, never again.

Our results were a mixed bag. For our Pro-Novice run, Gel lost no points on his outrun and lift. His fetch line was straight as an arrow, but on the wrong line (my fault, for the line business in USBCHA). We made the fetch panels (that’s success from the last times we ran USBCHA when we couldn’t make fetch panels). Just as we made the post turn, sheep that were in the adjoining field came to the fence and started talking to my sheep, who decided they were going to go over there and join in the conversation.

That was not a good thing. It was reminiscent of the issues we’ve had here where I had sheep on one side of the fence I was trying to pull away from other sheep. Too much pressure for Gel to handle. I finally left the post to help him, but it didn’t make much difference. I was not too happy with Gel at this time as I think he was being a jerk at that point. We had talk afterwards. A little while after our run, I pushed a large group of sheep down to the set-out point and that seemed to help Gel’s confidence.

Another thing that may have factored in there was the thunder and lightning. Gel is not thunder-phobic or even noise sensitive, but I think going through the storm at the last trial where the tornado was so close may have rattled him some. He was scared during that storm (I was too). Who knows.

Anyway, our Ranch run was better. Again, he lost no points on his outrun (300 yards), lift or fetch. This time we stayed on the right line. The draw to the left hand side of the field was rough, you essentially couldn’t send your dog to the right. In fact, in some runs, the setters lost the sheep they were so drawn to that section of the field. The sheep did not want to go down into the first drive panel either and the dogs really needed to lean into them there. There were very few straight lines down to the first drive panel. When you came out of that panel and headed up the cross drive, the sheep were pointed right where they wanted to go: the exhaust, so they picked up the pace, sometimes too much so.

We made the post turn and got the sheep going very nicely towards the first drive panel, but missed it … need to have my eyes checked or something here … Got them going into the cross drive, which again was pretty nice, but I flanked him too soon because I was nervous we were going to loose them towards the exhaust and we missed that panel too. I think making panels is so over-rated (smile).

Didn’t get the full pen either (got one sheep in). They switched out sheep for the Ranch run to younger sheep who were not at all pen broke (like the sheep that they ran in Novice and Pro-Novice were). I had one who kept breaking away from the group and during the pen she headed over to the fence where the other sheep were, a/k/a the “point of no return” for Gel, but he redeemed himself. After I called my run (the sheep were doing the ring-around-the-rosy routine around the pen and I didn’t want to play that game, once sheep start circling the pen, it’s often useless to continue to try to get them in), the judge came out of the car and asked me to flank Gel around to the left to bring her back before she went out into the road (the field is fenced, but the gate was open so people could come and go). Yea, right, I said to myself, Gel’s going to pull a frantic sheep off the fence in the exact same place he bombed out before, but he did! We picked up the other two further on up the fence and sent them to the exhaust. Two handlers came up to me afterwards and said he did a good job managing the group we drew and dealing with the situation after the run.

So, all in all, for our first time back in USBCHA for almost a year and our first Ranch course, we did okay. I know what I need to work on before the next trial. That’s the whole point of trialing (for me), not to win, but to see what you need to fix to prepare for the next trial.

I decided to go back down today (Sunday). There is even a higher percentage of rain forecast for today and it’s going to be a lot colder, but we need the mileage. This is a very low key trial, the lunch they served yesterday was excellent, the field is very nice and in general, the sheep are nice too. The sheep that they use in the Novice runs are tricky. They know the deal. They test the dog and if they figure out the dog isn’t going to make them stay on the course, then they are not going to stay on the course. This is one disadvantage of dog-broke sheep. The sheep they are using in Ranch are a bit easier for us to manage.

I learned something today: the trick is to not let the sheep beat your dog; know your dog, figure out the sheep and keep your dog where it needs to be to stay ahead of the sheep. Tricky creatures: sheep.

Off to put up the sheep, let out the ducks and load the car for the two and a half hour drive down to the trial.

On Friday, I talked to a guy I knew from trialing. I’ve tried to contact him over the past six months or so, but got no response. I hadn’t seen him listed in any running orders in some time now so I know he hasn’t been trialing.

He’s now selling all of his Border Collies and sheep because he doesn’t want to have to keep up with them. He never did train much, blamed it on lack of a place to train. He has a lot of dogs, some of which are not going to be able to be sold or placed due to age or temperament issues. I had talked to him about going up there on Sunday to look at his dogs and sheep, but he never called to set a time (no surprise there). Last year, because he was short on kennel space, I took a young bitch of his for a while to try to work her. She was very, very shy and didn’t have a lot of confidence. I had a nice pet home lined up for her, but he decided he wanted to keep her, why, I don’t know, except I think maybe he wanted to breed her at some point. He tried a few times to trial her, but she’s not and likely never will be a trial dog.

This is so reminiscent of my cat showing days. People with more animals than they have time or ability to care for. I always said while I was showing cats, if these people were limited to the number of cages they could keep in their household, then they’d have to limit the number of cats they kept. You cannot keep a large number of free-roaming cats in your house, especially intact cats, without fights and lots of breeding. So, their cats are kept in cages, some 24/7. Sometimes the cages are nice and roomy, some even have their own rooms, others, unfortunately, are kept in cages the size of a 36″ dog crate.

I still remember as vividly as it happened yesterday what I found when I first stepped into the household of the woman I stayed with when I first moved to Charlotte, a fellow cat breeder. She had a decent cattery set-up, but it was far (FAR!) less than clean. She had floor-to-ceiling stud cages, which would have been nice if they were clean. She also had smaller compartment-type cages that she called queening cages. These cages had no windows or other openings once the door was closed, they were essentially dark boxes. I opened one up thinking it was storage only to find two cats in there with filthy litter boxes. I won’t go much more into detail, but she had some 30-odd cats, many were sick and some had serious temperament issues. It was horrible. While I was there I helped her clean it up. After I left, I came back to find it back in the same state. After that I told her I could no longer associate with her, it was too upsetting for me.

My cats and dogs don’t know how good they have it; I care for them as they should be cared for.

Unfortunately, I worked a bit late last night and didn’t have as much time as I wanted to work my dogs. I have been working on a very complicated transaction at work since before Thanksgiving. I probably have about 300 hours into it at this point. It almost closed the beginning of December, then went belly up. It’s come back alive several times since, each time, there’s a change in the deal structure, but it hasn’t closed. Well, it’s alive again. They say it’s going to close next week. We’ll see. The partner that I’m working with on this deal doesn’t seem to get around to asking me for status and giving me more working until 4:30 each day. Oh well, they pay me well and I like my job.

I figured if I was worried about panels, I might as well take the sheep down in the field where I have panels set. Unfortunately, the wind had damaged two of the panels so I needed to fix them before I could work. That took a while. The game plan is on Sunday to make PVC frames for the panels, which are made from plastic lattice, so they will be more rigid and less likely to bend. Instead of plastic stick-in-the-ground posts supporting them, I’ll go with light-weight steel posts. These won’t be as easy to set, but they should hold up better. The plastic stick-in-the-ground poles tend to bend and eventually break at the base.

After I had the panels set, I tied Fern to the ATV so she’d stay out of the way and set the sheep. We didn’t do terribly, but we didn’t do great either. It’s harder getting 12 sheep through panels and darned, I can’t read where the sheep need to be in order to get them through the panels. It doesn’t help that the field I have the panels set in is very rolling. Of course, I’m going to one day trial on fields that are rolling as well so I might as well get used to it. Once my panels are in PVC frames, I’ll put them in the wagon that attaches to the ATV and move them to different fields for practice.

After we worked panels, I thought I’d try to get the sheep into the pen we made in the same field. It’s made out of two cattle panels hinged together and set in a semi-circle with two heavy steel T-posts holding them in place. I got half the sheep in, but the others bolted to one side. The ones that were left in the pen started looking for an escape. The cattle panels moved when they ran into them, which added to their panic (sheep!). I can see that type of pen isn’t going to work. I need something more rigid. I think I’ll make a basic square pen using heavy T-posts and field fence and put a good gate on it. I want to be able to separate my sheep so I can occasionally work smaller groups, but it’s hard to separate sheep without any kind of sorting apparatus. A better pen may be something I can do this weekend myself. We’ll see.

The running order is up. There are 17 people running in Pro-Novice. That’s a pretty good-sized class. Here’s hoping we can have a better run than the last time I trialed in USBCHA. I feel much more confident and Gel is running quite nicely. Gel is never going to be a super-star. He isn’t “oozing” stock sense or talent, but he’s a good solid dog that I know isn’t going to make a mess of things out in the field. As a younger dog I couldn’t say that, but now he’s very reliable. He’s a good dog.

I can’t believe I’m actually excited about going to a USBCHA trial. I am usually either terrified or dreading it, or both. For the first time I feel comfortable with our abilities to run in a USBCHA trial. I’m anxiously waiting for the running orders to be posted. Carol Anne told me this morning that the Pro-Novice class had the most entries. The great thing is that she’s going to run Pro-Novice after Beginning Novice, Novice/Novice and Nursery which will mean it won’t start until around 11. That’s great because it means I won’t have to leave so early in the morning to get there. As of right now, the weather forecast is sunny and a high of 60 degrees. It keeps changing back and forth between sunny and showers.

Now, making panels, not sure we’ll be able to do that so well. I have a horrible time “seeing” panels. My depth perception is horrible! I was told this was normal in women. I wish I could go to the post with binoculars so I could see better. The good thing is that Gel is what they call a “line dog” meaning once a line is set, he’ll hold it. That’s a good thing, but it can be a bad thing too. There was a time I couldn’t pull him off a line. That seems to have been straightened out. The other problem we may have is his tendency to over-flank. I’m working on teaching him half flank whistles. It will come. Gel is not even four years old yet. He’s been EXTREMELY slow maturing. I used to say I wouldn’t see the real Gel until he was four, but I’m thinking it may even be older than that. We’ve come so far in just a year.

The great thing is, Gel is used to working at Red Creek and the sheep are really, really nice. There are going to be strong draws given the sheep are being run at home, but hopefully I can figure out the draws prior to running. I don’t know what field she’s going to use for Pro-Novice and Open Ranch, forgot to ask that this morning. Carol Anne doesn’t allow her stock to be abused and it shows. I’m honored that she lets me come to her farm and work her sheep without her supervision. She knows I respect sheep and won’t abuse them.

There was a time that I didn’t care much for sheep. That has changed. I like them very much now.

When I wrote yesterday that I’d try to take some videos of Gel’s work in the side pasture, I forgot that I had to re-set my ElectroNet (see a photo of ElectroNet below). Normally, I wouldn’t need to move it so soon, but (1) it was blocking my Landlord’s access to their cabin and the pond (they are due home today); and (2) grass isn’t quite growing up enough to sustain the sheep for too long a period of time. The good thing is my agility area is now “mowed” so I don’t need to do it myself.

It didn’t help that I had to work late either. I work as a Commercial Real Estate Paralegal for the largest law firm in Charlotte. We close multi-million and billion dollar loans from major National and International banks. When a deal needs to close, I have to be here to take care of it. We have had some lulls in workload lately, but it looks like we are going to get busy again, which is a good thing.

It didn’t take too long to set the ElectroNet because I didn’t have to mow a path first. That will come soon enough. I need to figure out a way to measure where the net is going to be set, mow the path, then set the fence. One roll of ElectroNet is 160 feet long. I am not setting it where I can go in a straight line as there are many natural obstacles I need to go around. I think what I’ll try when I have to mow is to use a piece of clothesline rope that is 160 feet long. I’ll lay the rope on the ground in the configuration I want to set the fence, mow the path and then set the fence. Hopefully that will work. When I do have to mow, it always seems as though the path I mow doesn’t quite fit where the fence needs to go. I love my ElectroNet though. It allows me to rotationally graze my sheep which cuts down on parasites. I have not had to worm my lambs yet and they are over a year old now.

While I set the fence last night, Gel and Fern ran around, played in the pond and waited for me to do something with them. Because when I finished the fence it was getting dark, I decided to just take them for a run on the ATV. There was no reason why we couldn’t take a day off from training.

You may wonder why I’m so intent on finishing Gel’s WTCH (ASCA Working Trial Champion) title when he isn’t an Australian Shepherd.

About five years ago now, I researched what breed of dog I wanted to work with. While I considered Border Collies, I thought they’d be too much dog for me and settled with the Australian Shepherd. I knew I didn’t want a foo-foo show-bred Aussie and had been studying pedigrees and knew what lines I would be interested in.

I came across an advertisement for a six month old Aussie puppy who had a very nice pedigree so I contacted the breeder. She was from a mid-western state so we agreed to meet in Kentucky which was halfway for both of us. At that time, I had a five year old Aussie bitch from show lines that I had previously arranged a pet home for because it was quite apparent after several months of working her that she was not going to cut it as an agility or obedience dog and surely wasn’t going to be a herding dog. The home I had lined up for her wasn’t quite ready to take her at the time I was going to go to Kentucky to get the puppy so she went on the trip with me. We’ll call her “Red” to avoid naming real names.

Prior to my committing to the puppy, the breeder had taken him to sheep and wrote back enthusiastically that this puppy was “WTCH Material” which he may very well have been. My plans for this puppy were to show him towards his ASCA versatility championship which would have meant I would compete in agility, obedience and herding with him.

The “versatility” awards and showing are extremely contraversal in the working Border Collie World where they believe Border Collies should only be used for stock work. Border Collies are extremely versatile and I am of the opinion if you want to compete in agility, obedience, stock work, etc. then all the more power to you. I can understand where the opinions of the working Border Collie World are coming from, showing BCs to versatility awards may very well dilute the innate ability of the BC to work stock, but that would only happen in the wrong hands. There are people who compete in herding trials (not so much USBCHA-type herding events, AKC herding events are the primary culprit) who have no clue what real stock work is about. I am not one of those people. I strive for the highest level of stock work in my dogs.

Anyway, back to the story.

You know how you think back on things and you see the warning bells that went off that you failed to listen to at the time? Well, the warning bells went off and I ignored them. We met at a restaurant that had outside seating (picnic tables) and were having a discussion about dogs, etc. when I got up from the table and went to my car to get something. When I returned to the table, the breeder’s spayed bitch that she brought along came out from under the table and bit me on the leg! The breeder blamed me saying it was my fault for returning to the table too quickly! I probably should have got back into my car and went back home, but I didn’t, I took the puppy and headed home.

When I got into Tennessee, the major highway that I was traveling on had been shut down due to a severe accident and it was unknown when it would reopen. I elected to get a hotel room and would resume my trip home in the morning. Prior to checking in to the hotel room, I stopped at a grocery store to get some meat for the dogs’ supper. Red, being a typical bitch, was not happy sharing the back seat of the car (this was during my “pre-crate” days and the dogs were riding loose) with a puppy who had been cooped up in a car for most of the day.

I took the dogs for a long walk and then brought them into the hotel and fed them the meat that I had purchased for them. I then called the breeder to let her know that we were in a hotel and would not be arriving home that evening as planned.

Psycho Breeder then emerged. I told her the puppy had been fidgety in the car to which she replied “that’s a stressed puppy.” No, that’s a puppy who’s been cooped up in a car all day. I then told her that the “stressed” puppy had eaten his ground turkey dinner with gusto and was happily chewing on a beef bone.

Prior to my agreeing to purchase this puppy, I told the breeder that I fed a raw meat diet and vaccinated minimally. She agreed with all of this and thought it was a good idea, that if she didn’t have so many dogs, she’d feed raw too. She also thought dogs were over-vaccinated and that it was causing them health issues. However, now that I had the puppy in my possession, feeding him raw was “ruining all the time and effort she had put into him” (her exact words). She was screaming at me on the phone, I was tired and was trying to deal with an energetic puppy and a cranky female dog in a hotel room without crates so I hung up on her.

Then the onslaught began. I came home to find several threatening e-mail and voice mail messages from the breeder. I ignored them. As per the contract, I brought the puppy to the vet’s the next day for a check-up. He checked out fine, except he was growling at people in the waiting room. That was troubling.

The breeder continued to send threatening e-mail saying I was endangering the life of the puppy and that she was going to sue me. She also contacted the breeder of “Red” and told her the dog looked awful and that I was abusing her! I took digital photos of the dog and e-mailed them to her breeder. She looked better than she did when I got her! Unfortunately breeders seem to believe each other over outsiders and she started to carry on about this “heart dog” that she placed in my care that I was now abusing. This “heart dog” had previously been stuck in a crate and was one of about 16 other dogs that the woman kept. It was with this dog that I discovered that not all “holistic” breeders are truly holistic. While the dog may have been fed raw, it was not a properly balanced raw diet as it consisted primarily of chicken necks and backs, some chicken organ meat and alfalfa pellets to “keep them regular.” When I first got the dog she did not look like a raw fed dog at all. Her coat was dry and brittle, she was overweight and smelled awful.

I faxed the note from the vet saying I had taken the puppy in for a health check and he was fine. The breeder accused me of sending her a forged note and called the vet to see if I had indeed taken the puppy in. That was verified, but all I did was take the puppy in for a health check. I did not have any vaccinations or other medicines administered. The breeder said that she told me during our meeting that the puppy was due for his rabies shot (he was), a combo-canine vaccine booster and heartworm medicine. Well, she knew darned well that I wasn’t going to give the puppy any more vaccinations and while he was due for rabies, I wasn’t going to vaccinate a puppy who was still adjusting to a new environment. I would have done the rabies at a later date. Technically, the puppy was due for a rabies shot while in the breeder’s possession so by law, she should have done it. We never discussed heartworm medicine and given that it was still quite cold outside, I wasn’t going to start heartworm medicine.

The threats to sue me continued. Her contract was governed by the laws of the state she lived in so if she filed suit against me, which would have been very easy to do, I would have had to go to her state to defend myself. On Friday I brought the puppy back to the vet’s, had a rabies and canine-combo vaccine administered, started him on heartworm medicine, dewormed and de-fleaed him (just in case) (all of which cost me over $100) and called the breeder and told her I was shipping him back.

When she got him back, she said he had fleas, worms and explosive diarrhea (the diarrhea was no surprise given all the drugs he was given in one day). If he had worms, he had them when I got him given I only had him in my possession for four days. I did not receive his purchase price of $600 back. Between the vet bills, the trip down to get him and his purchase price, I was out over $800.

After things died down, I contacted the breeder of the puppy’s mother. The mother was placed with the breeder on a spay contact, which obviously wasn’t done given she got bred (accidentally) and delivered a litter of puppies. She was to be spayed because she carried a genetic eye defect. In addition, I found out that there were only two puppies in the litter and one had to be euthanized due to temperament issues.

To this day I don’t know what happened to that puppy after she got him back.

After that experience, I wasn’t going to come any where near another Aussie breeder.

Several months down the road, I saw an advertisement for Gel who was being sold because he didn’t have enough herding instinct for the woman who owned him at the time. Gel was “pick” puppy from the litter, but he wasn’t panning out so at six and a half months old, she was selling him as an agility prospect. I drove to Virginia to look at him and bought him. All the way to Virginia I was hyperventilating for fear of dealing with another psycho breeder, but the woman was (and has been) nothing but kind and helpful to me. I am so glad she decided to sell Gel because he’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

So, the drive towards the WTCH with Gel, who is not an Aussie, is because of what happened with that Aussie puppy. Who knows if that puppy was really WTCH material or not. Gel certainly is. At the ASCA trials a lot of the Aussie people tease me by saying Gel has a better “Aussie” head than a lot of the dogs you see at the trials, am I sure he’s not part Aussie? Well, maybe he is. Gel was the result of an accidental breeding. The woman who had Gel’s mother at the time she was bred was running a goose dog business. She may very well have had an intact Aussie running around who caught Gel’s mother. Then again, even though he has an Aussie head, he works like a Border Collie.

I am very much enjoying the ASCA trials. The people have been very nice and supportive. They don’t seem to mind that this lady with her “dog with a tail” (a Border Collie) was coming to their trials and kicking their Aussie’s tailless butts. They are there to have a good time with their dogs. The working Border Collie World looks down on titling events, but the atmosphere is much more relaxed at these trials because livelihoods and money is not at stake like they are at USBCHA trials where many of the handlers do this for a living.

Trialing in arena trials has done a lot to improve my timing and handling skills and it has made Gel more comfortable working close. It is all a very good thing.

An Aussie may be in the future for me one day. Time will tell.

This morning, I put my entries for the USBCHA cattle trial in April in our out-going mail bin at work; then after thinking about it for a few hours, went to retrieve the envelope and tore it up. I said earlier that I was going to trial Gel in USBCHA cattle trials and I’m going to stick to that. I will continue to trial him on cattle in ASCA arena trials until he finished his WTCH, but I’m not going to put him in an open field trial with cattle for the sake of glory.

I don’t work Gel on cattle on a frequent basis so we do not have the means to figure out the beasts. Cattle can kill or seriously injure a dog. In an arena trial, I am there to help Gel if necessary. Believe me, when that one calf at the trial in Georgia was running up over the top of Gel, I was right there with him to help back the crazy critter off. I called the run when it was apparent that calf was not going to quit no matter how many times Gel bit him. That’s much harder to do when the dog is 200 or 300 yards away and a cow or cattle are running up over him. Tough dog or not, cattle are much bigger than a dog and if they want to injure the dog, they are going to.

There are people in this World who use dogs to move cattle on a daily basis. Their dogs are a necessity to these people. Trialing on cattle is not a necessity for me. I don’t need to prove to anyone that my dog is tough or skilled enough to work cattle. Gel is much to precious to risk.

Since I’m not going to agility tonight, which is probably a good thing given that I need to move my ElectroNet, I thought I might set my video camera up on a tripod and do a video of Gel’s work out in the field. It’s supposed to be a beautiful day, 70 degrees and sunny. The forecast for the next few days is supposed to be just as nice. As of right now, the high on Friday is supposed to be 79 degrees. Then it cools off for the weekend and goes back up to the 70’s the beginning of the week. Rain is forecast for quite a few days in the ten day forecast. Even though there is rain scheduled for Saturday (the day of the trial) I really don’t care. I have rain gear. After last year’s drought, I’ll take rain any way we can get it.

The sheep finished “mowing” my agility field so when I move the ElectroNet, I plan to reset my jumps and do more work with Fern over the next few days. I mentioned in the post I wrote earlier that it’s amazing that Gel will still work after all I’ve done to him in my ignorance. Agility isn’t much better, well, it is better because I had more instruction for agility than I have in herding. One “hole” in Gel’s agility performance is that he’s not terribly tight in his turns, because I didn’t insist on that during training. Fern can turn on a dime and I plan to make sure that remains our criteria in agility training.

I enjoy training my dogs and am glad that I have such neat dogs to work with.