Some comic relief in the middle of today's Ted training video. A sheep steps on my flip-flop and then walks off wearing it. Otherwise it's more of the same. I do see in this one, that Robin is right, I'm behind him and need to get in the right place. Significantly, after the flip-flop incident, Ted goes very nicely and guess where I was when he went?
I set out some markers to help me see when Ted "leaned" - and to make it more of a job than a drill. I think that helped us both be a bit more relaxed.
Cord loves ducks. But he doesn't like working them on water and I will need him to do this later when we release these ducks on the pond. Ted will work them on water but I'll need both dogs to push them right up on land, most likely.
So, I'm starting from scratch with Cord. Cord doesn't like to "mess things up" on ducks. His eye is telling him to seek equilibrium. I want him to enjoy pushing the ducks past his Happy Place. So all I'm doing is asking for him to move them as he wishes, as long as he keeps moving. He's fully trained, but I'm using few commands so he associates the various pitched shushing sounds I'm using, with Fun and Frivolity. I hope this will increase his confidence as we go.
I was a bit disappointed when I had to reschedule Ted's much-anticipated trip to "college" but I very much understand that his future trainer wants to make sure she does well at the Finals in September. Heck, for selfish reasons I'm very interested in her doing well - not to mention my best wishes for a friend and one of this year's few representatives from the East Coast. Now Ted will probably go in November instead.
But, I should know better than to have regrets over things that are not in my control. First, if everything goes as planned, he'll get a ride there instead of our having to take time away from the farm. That's a small thing.
But, the exciting thing. Since we are not driving to his trainer the first weekend in August, we might be able to do something I've wanted to do for a long time - participate in a Habitat home raising! Our credit union is supporting their latest push and supplying workers from their employees and any members that want to volunteer, too.
Meanwhile, I continue to grow and learn from Ted's training. After my week away we were both really rough this afternoon. It was hot, this exercise was a bit intense, and so I only worked him a few minutes. The idea is to discourage him from pushing all the time on the sheep - on flanks especially he's got a really lovely leeeeeeeeeaaaaaan in that drives the sheep a bit batty.
It's difficult to work this on sheep that are not dog broke, as I'm also working with his tension about "losing" them. I believe next time I'll work in this in the round pen. There's no dishonor in returning a dog to the pen to fix something, I believe - especially if we can make a major breakthrough on this!
An interesting fact is that there is a direct relationship between this problem (which I don't have the understanding or terminology to describe yet), and the fact that Ted doesn't really look for sheep when he runs out. Once he's got a set of sheep he keeps them together till death, et cetera, but he will blithely ignore sheep that are inconvenient for whatever reason. It's a maturity thing and I'm not worried about it. I sense that it's one of those "problems" that has a positive flip side.
I am using (well, attempting to use) two different approaches to helping Ted correct his "lean." In the first, I've placed the sheep so the fence and me keep them stationary. This "makes the right easy." As Ted begins to lean, I simply scold him, but also step back a bit wider (or try to do this - amazing how a week off will throw one's timing all off! We'll see whether I can get better at this.
The next phase, which was our assigned homework, was a bit of a disaster. I wish I had had time to practice this when I got home last weekend, before I hit the road for the week, so it would be fresh, but it was just impossible. My failure to execute this, I think, has to do with the difference between the lovely sheep at Robin's, and my knuckleheads (actually they are fine sheep, they just aren't hip to the whole "dog broke" thing).
What I'm supposed to do is create distance by, well, it's hard to describe but I need to keep him moving while at the same time make him think twice about "claiming" the space I've designated as "mine." Problem is, I am in this video, at no time, very clear about that message, and Ted finally breaks the tension with some tomfoolery. That's actually fine too as he needs to learn that he gets nowhere doing that, and also how to recover when things go badly (reducing his tension more - he gets scared that things "might" happen).
Enough yammering (nothing worse than novice yammering, probably - I'm sure there's much wince worthy in this but it will be helpful to me later to see how I perceived Ted's progress).
Friday, we took Bet up to Northern Virginia to begin what I hope will be her new career. We took the opportunity to make it a much needed break from both the farm and the kids. This was to be our anniversary trip also - our fifteenth!
I am grateful for the help of good friends like our neighbors, who watched the boys, and Laura, who came and watched the farm for us. she did a bang up job and I really hope we can talk her into doing it again sometime. I.e., that she was not too traumatized by the experience. I promise next time that we will not booby trap the swing and the water hose!
It was a lovely ride up the Shenandoah Valley and we arrived an hour or so from sunset. We had a wonderful time after we dropped off Bet, in breathtaking Prince William County, including a tour of the Manassass battleground. Well, just a small part of it around Henry House as we had forgotten to bring sunscreen for Patrick.
As usual, I took some "Graduation Day" pictures of Bet before we left.
Is this my good side?
Hey, what's that? People who have seen Bet in person are probably amazed that I've gotten so many pictures of her holding still. It's the magic of multiple frames, my friends . . . Hey there! Got sheep? Geese? Ducks?
So, I got a bunch of pictures because, really, how cute is this dog?
It's really her main "fault" because she knows she's so adorable and oh, how she can work it!
Seriously, how could you even think anything this dog did could ever be wrong?
See, if you had her you'd want to talk like a chicken too. You know you would.
Bet's been here since, I believe, March. Ish. She and I are really starting to come to an understanding, I think. She's now almost done with her training and in fact is going next week for her "on the job" training and, I hope, her forever home!
Bet lost her last three homes because she has a bossy personality and way too much energy to burn, and it's a little hard to get her to focus on anything for more than 2.7 seconds. Training her has been all about walking the line between a serious "my way or the highway" attitude, and trying to show her the rules of the game. Every dog teaches me something and Bet's lesson to me has been how to play this balance.
The idea here is to show her the trick that these farm geese do, that I call "lame duck." One goose from the group lures the dog away while the family group heads for safe water. Finally at the end Bet gets that she's supposed to stay with the big group! Yay for Bet!
I'm going to try to embed this thing.
Holy moley, it worked, another milestone in my blogging life! There's more where that came from, mostly Tedlet videos, so I hope I'll have some time later to post those.
