Improving Inside Flanks: Step 1

   Yesterday Diva and I made it out to Hog Dog for what was day 1 of implementing our "homework" from the Terry Wofford clinic. This isn't going to be a terribly long post because frankly what we did was pretty boring and very basic. I am not saying that it wasn't insightful though!

    The set up was us in the round pen with three sheep. I like the round pen at Hog Dog for exercises like this because it is relatively small in diameter and well, it's round :-). This seems to naturally invite the smooth continuous motion I am looking for. On the down side if you aren't careful or you do to much in such a small round area your dog can quickly lose their nice square flanks. So with my back up against the fence and Diva at my side I sent her around on the away side flank and when she got to the top, before she turned in at balance, I gave her another flank command combined with an out to keep her going. As soon as she got past the stock I gave her the flank command again and called her in to me. Sometimes this went really well and other times my poor timing at calling her in had her coming in straight line by the stock. Not such a big deal on broke sheep in a tiny round pen with no where to go, but in a trial situation the sheep would have been long gone by my center obstacle :-/. I did this direction several more times until I had success getting what I felt was a more continuous circle and then changed direction to work on the go-bye side. This side was much harder as Diva isn't as wide and she really, really, wants to balance as soon as she is on the back side of the stock. I had to make more adjustments in my position to have success but in the end I got enough to call it a day.

   What I noticed about myself was that I say commands way to many times (Duct tape anyone?) and the tone of my voice escalates. I am a firm believer that tone makes much more sense to a dog that the actual words itself especially with a sensitive dog, which Diva is. The louder I am I can actually see her start to lose focus on the sheep because she is trying to figure out what I want. In a 30' diameter round pen there should be no space between us that Diva couldn't hear me whisper and so the next time I am out I plan on trying just that. I am going to whisper and be very careful of my tone of voice and we shall see if Diva *hears* me better.