Training a herding dog is such a roller coaster of successes and failures made all that more challenging when you have a dog that is sensitive, a one time learner, or needs to understand why you want it done a certain way. Diva tends to be on the sensitive side and once she learns why you want something done a certain way she has a hard time accepting that there are other possible alternatives. It's hard to get mad about it because most dogs are very literal but that doesn't always stop me from getting frustrated. What I have found is that now that I have convinced Diva that working sheep should be done slowly she is no longer covering as well as I would like and her flanks are painfully slow at times. In my mind it should be simple. Slow when fetching/driving but fast when the sheep are trying to get away and on your flanks. Of course while you are remembering those bits you should also remember to stay out wide and rate the stock. Easy peasy right?! ;-) Diva says, not so much.
This past weekend Diva and I went up to PA to work at Kelly's house. It was absolutely perfect weather and after a week of me not feeling my best it was good to get out. Kelly's sheep are always great to work and her farm offers lot's of training opportunities. My only training agenda for the day was to work on her watching the various draws and to speed her up on her flanks while maintaining some distance. We started out in a medium sized pen that had a strong draw back to the hold pen area. We have worked in this area before on watching the draw but for Diva this is something that is hard so each time we start over. On our first couple of attempts the sheep made it easily their friends and I was left feeling frustrated that I couldn't convey to Diva what I needed her to do. I had a bit of a revelation though that perhaps in our early training I had done to much halfmoon work on the fence. The reason I speculated about this is because once I get between Diva and the sheep with them on the fence I noticed she stops watching her livestock and starts looking at me for her next cue :/. Hmmm, perhaps I "guarded" my livestock to well? I think on a stronger more intense dog this wouldn't have been an issue. Ya live and you learn. so just add something else back onto our plate that I need to re-visit ;-).
After we worked the first group I moved on to the larger group that was still over in the take pens. In this group there was a Barb ram lamb that is very young and has a habit of not staying with the group and laying down when pressured. More than actual training this was an experiment. I wanted to see what Diva would do when presented with this problem and I was also curious as to how the lamb would react to Diva since he had only been worked by a much stronger dog. Things didn't start out well for the little ram when right out of the take pen his buddies knocked him over in their haste to get out of the gate. I was actually stunned to see that after he fell down he just laid there and refused to even try to get up. Suffice it to say if Kelly had not warned me this was how he acted I would have been really worried that he was hurt. Once I picked him up and put him back on his feet he leisurely went out and joined the group in the barnyard area and we started moving them around. The draw in this area is around the side of the barn and back to the take pen. Diva was thinking more in here and did a nice job covering. The Barb lamb never did lay down on her but I also didn't work them until they were tired. One thing I know for sure though is that a sheep that lays down and won't move doesn't have a very long future in a training setting.
The last group that we worked was a small group of 4 that were supposed to be out in the alley way area off of the large field. Of course sheep being sheep one of the ewes figured out she could get through a spot near the gate and proceeded to do so while taking the little barb ewe lamb with her. I liked the work we had to do out there to get the ewe and lamb back into the alley way because there were 2 strong draws and a lot of space to escape. Diva had to work at it and once she was at balance and had them coming to me she had to really slow down and stay back or they would squirt by her. Once we had them back in the alley way I worked on a little holding pressure and then lifting out of the tight corners. We ended our work day by taking this group back out in to the large field and me really enforcing nice wide flanks and encouraging Diva to get some speed while doing this. Her outs are very nice and by the time we were finished I was pleased with what we had accomplished.
