Ted Is Sick of Sheep

It's all our guard dog's fault.

First, they started coming over the (admittedly too short) fencing - first jumping, then getting lazy and stepping over it, squashing it.

Then the more athletic sheep started following. Not too much of a problem. There's plenty of grass right there to make them happy.

Then the late summer scorch hit this week. The grass is no longer yummy. It takes way more to satisfy them. We could set out hay, but it's hard to justify it when we've got 30 acres for them and it's only going to be a couple weeks until we start setting out feed for flushing (increasing condition for breeding).

My flower gardens are much yummier. Soon the whole flock was coming over the fence, and not just the squashed part, tally-ho.

The plan is to top all the fences with electric wire, and that will be just fine, but it won't happen until this weekend. Meanwhile my poor flowers!

Today I hit on a plan that worked! I am making the yard a place to avoid by training Ted there when I got "volunteers." Funny thing, I'm not getting many repeat customers! But I've got close to sixty sheep, and they only are coming half a dozen or so at a time.

This means Ted has worked, today, already, about eleven times, and each time we work the sheep for about ten minutes. The sheep just stand in one place the whole time, pretty much, so they are not stressed - except they don't get to do what they were hoping to do when they sneaked out of the fence. Most of them prefer not to come back, once they are finally put away.

The first four times, Ted leaped up the second I moved towards the back door, as usual.

The next five times, Ted leaped up when I said, "Look, volunteers!"

The next two times, Ted just rolled his eyes when I said, "Look, volunteers!" and waited for me to actually call him out the back door.

He's still working with enthusiasm and physically he's holding out just fine. He's not even breathing hard. It's no just longer a big deal.

The last time, only two sheep ventured out, and I tried something fun. I stood on the porch and asked him to push them as close to me as he could. He actually got one of them to step up on the bottom step, then one of the other dogs realized what was going on and barked in the window and the two sheep exploded in opposite directions. I sure wish I had had video of that. It's very encouraging for his future as a Useful Dog.

Tomorrow a friend is coming and I hope to get her to get some video.

I still can only get him to take that inside flank every so often but Robin has some ideas to share when we go over there Sunday. He's also still blowing me off when the pressure gets really tough, but his default behavior has gone from "grab and ride" to "dive and chase." And I realized today I can work on this weakness and break my sheep from running, now that he's listening better.

Harvest

The kids have been picking literally bushels of apples and pears this week. The first year we were here, we barely lived here so we missed that harvest. Last year a very late frost blighted the blossoms and actually killed two of the fruit trees here, sadly. One of them was our only peach tree, and one was one of the pears.

But this year we've had a bumper crop! The ducks kept the trees free of insects, I sprayed once in the winter and we actually pruned, and the trees are rewarding us with delicious fruit. I've never tasted a heirloom pear before. Wow what I've been missing. I dislike store pears very much, but these are so different - very tasty and interesting in texture. Not squishy and floury at all.

The apple trees bear small, very tart apples, probably suitable for various apple cookery. I'm bagging and freezing them. Some will be used for us, and some for the dogs. Next year I really want to learn how to can. Our kitchen is probably a "canning kitchen" as it's huge for an old small house, and has a large walk in pantry that is original to the house. This large country-style kitchen been wonderful for the weekly dog food preparation, but I'd like to utilize it more for us, too, as food prices go sky high.

The beginning of each school year is a "harvest" on the previous one, since it's the things that have been carried over the summer, that are the things that you know they've really learned. We've been off for six weeks, so I'm delighted that both boys have fallen right back into math and writing. We never really leave off reading and science (living on a farm is one long science project!). We are having to do some review on handwriting, but that was a new subject for both of them the last couple months of last year.

This year we'll be doing some serious current events, of course, with its being a Presidential election year. Today we talked about registering to vote, and some of the reasons wars start. I try to keep our lessons neutral, though you can never teach in a way that's completely free of a world view, since we are not machines. But, though we are very strong Conservatives, and the kids know it, I also want them to know why other people think like they do, and I also want them to know I don't think a hole will open up in the time/space continuum if they grow up to vote on the Liberal side of issues.

Ted and I have been putting in the time lately in all weathers, on sheep and ducks, and in various locations. I think we are finally reaping the fruits of that work, too. Ted's attitude has suddenly shifted to one that is workmanlike a lot more of the time. More importantly, I feel a lot more confident in trying one thing or another, and acting when necessary to correct him if he gets to fooling around. One really needs to be able to act almost without thinking many times, and the ability to do that and have it be the right thing (!), only comes with practice. One really can't buy it, or get it from books, or the internet, or even clinics or lessons.

We had a fantastic visit with Ted's breeders this Sunday, who came down for a visit at Robin's. I'll post more details about that later when I get some permissions to share some videos.

Mark Billadeau held sheep for us for a couple of outruns and Renee videoed them. I was sure that this would be a disaster if the camera were "rolling" but to my surprise Ted did well. This was also Ted's first time taking sheep off someone holding. Again, he was very sensible about it, only showing a moment of hesitation the first time.

This first one takes a little while to get to his actual outrun - Mark and his dog are the first ones you see at the top.

Contentment

It's natural, I think, for people to want to improve the things around them. And I believe that's a healthy instinct. The New Testament talks about "reaching for the goal." So I imagine that there are many things in our lives that could use improvement, and that it's important to discover those things and do our best to raise the standard.

But, there's lots of things that I'm learning fall into the category of "leave it." And some things do need improvement, but not in the way I think. I'm starting to see that almost always, the "leave it" things are the ones that are out of my hands anyway. And at other times I need to be cautious about my motives for wanting to "fiddle" with something, and my methods for doing so.

My brain hurts from all that abstractness. Let's get down to concretes.

The dogs have certain characteristics. I get into trouble trying to change things when sometimes these things are basic to their nature. Instead, what I should be looking for is how to shape these characteristics in a way that we are not clashing over what the dog wants versus what I want. When I do this, an amazing individual emerges - and if that dog doesn't fit here, there's most certainly somewhere that dog fits.

The more I focus on the dog, the fewer regrets I have for the choices I make. If I'm alert to the dog's personality and needs, and issue a correction in the wrong place, the dog will tell me and we can take that information and take a big leap forward next time!

I feel like I may have gone back over the bridge to the Land of Unicorns and Rainbows again.

I realized I've been making a somewhat major error in what I'm doing with Ted and really confusing him. But for the first time, maybe ever, I caught it myself and didn't spend time beating myself up about it.

It didn't feel like the end of the world and indeed we almost immediately got over it as it turned out. It's not that I care less about training than I used to, it's that I've finally learned how to enjoy the journey, I think. It's all about working with what's at your fingertips right now, and not comparing it to what "should be" at some future time. And that goes for my own progress, too.

The mistake, by the way, was that instead of a mild correction for taking the wrong flank, I was simply lying him down then reflanking. So, every time I stopped him, he was getting to where he'd automatically flank in the opposite direction. I was also using a bit too much drama to get him pushed back to where he'd cheat on me. Once I discover a level of drama that works, it's hard for me to let go of it and let the pressure off the dog!

Good Sheep Make Good Dogs . . .

I thought this was really cool. A friend and Open handler suggested on the Border Collie Boards this interesting way to help a dog learn the point of a nice, even paced fetch.

My sheep have drawn my dog into a cycle of fetch, push past me, and then circle around to head them off. This is so wonderful and reinforcing that each time it happens, if I'm not riding Ted's rear end with corrections, Ted will speed up even more so the sheep will go farther than the last time!

In this video you can see in the beginning where the sheep are galloping way down the field at the end of the fetch, forcing me to send Ted around. At the end I try to correct this with downs and scolding. This works okay but it does increase the tension.



In the next video, I'm following Denise's advice to try to settle the sheep and let Ted hold them quietly. Her idea is that if you reinforce the end behavior that you want, that's what will be strongest. It's good learning theory! And it fits well with Ted, my task-oriented dog. There's nothing he likes better than to be shown the job and then figure out his own way to do it.

In this video I'm not succeeding 100%, but it's hard to teach these sheep to stand still. The last time I got closest. I have been working hard at this and it's been an eye-opening lesson in itself! I use a different set of sheep every time so they are fresh. Gradually pretty much everyone will be broken, and they will be willing participants in training rather than nervous and looking to beat the dog all the time. Ted is teaching them to trust dogs, and in the future they will teach dogs to be good.



We're also continuing work on those off-balance flanks. Today I got Ted to confidently flank inside for the first time - that's more than half the battle on driving!

Obedience

Obedience is
The very best way
To show that you believe . . .

That's an old Sunday School song that's been running through my mind this week. In my mind, I want my dog training to be all about trust, the dog trusting me and me trusting the dog. Ironically this is probably the number one issue I have when I'm actually out with a dog. I don't trust my dogs, not really, truly, and they don't trust me.

If I ask a dog to do something, I'm instantly overcome with a wave of second guessing myself and the dog's ability to do it. Then the dog gets tense because that's a really strong vibe of indecision I give off at that point. It translates, for instance, into physical hesitation on my part.

Ted's a pretty eager to please kinda guy. He picks up on my signals really fast and he currently thinks it's his job to figure out everything himself. That's something we've been chipping away at, and now Robin thinks we are ready for the next step. I'm working him pretty much mechanically, giving him commands that don't feel "right" necessarily. He's still in control of the stock, but what happens with them all comes from me.

It's proven to be incredibly hard to make myself do this, until I thought of it in terms of allowing Ted to show me, one way or another, whether he trusts me. And it allows me,
to show him, that if he gives me a little I can give him a bunch back.

If he wants very badly to go one way, or the easy/correct way is in a particular direction, I send him the other way. And he's got to stop when I ask, not after or (more often) before. But, one thing I've noticed is that it's interesting trying to make this about just one difficult thing, not giving him a whole bunch of reasons to refuse in a row. Eventually (soon, I believe), he'll be ready for being sent where it's hard, and stopping off balance, and doing it in places that are scary, on sheep that are scary, but not now. When I get it right, I can see the tension melt out of Ted and he becomes "looser" - no hesitation about flanking or stopping or walking up when asked.

One time today, I was out working him and marveling that he'd gone so fast from very hard to move off balance, to seeming to enjoy swinging right around. In my usual way I was so busy thinking, "Wow, isn't my dog cool" and poor Ted was still executing my last command - "Come bye." I think he did two and a half complete revolutions before I came back to Planet Earth. So, that was good but a good example of too much of a good thing. We did some nice outruns and fetches and driving after that to cool things down. The ducks seemed very amused.

On that note, I quickly figured out one way to simplify this for Ted. Robin's sheep are, of course, lovely - mine, not so much. It's very difficult to translate something we are doing there to my sheep sometimes. But, I figured out my ducks are perfect for this sort of thing! They cooperate perfectly, since this is what they were raised to do, and they've never been significantly harassed.

I need to put a video up of one particular place where I feel I'm not quite getting it. It's when he's balancing them right to me - it's really hard to get him to flank off balance there. I accidentally got him going around a couple times but I'm not sure how or if it was right. I'll work with it some more and see whether it will just come out in the wash.