Today Ted earned his dog food. Pretty much all of it.
I was briefly tempted to call this "Ewesful Dog" but then I'd have to put out my eyes with forks. I'm very annoyed by sheep puns. Wether they are good or baaad.
Well anyway.
Today I looked out and in the "nursery" pen a storm had broken loose. One of the ewes who lambed first was trying to steal the lambs of the latest ewe to lamb. The two ewes were going at it hammer and tongs and not only their lambs, but also other lambs were getting knocked over and trampled in the melee.
The "nursery" pen is just getting too crowded. Normally I pasture lamb and the ewes are used to having plenty of space to give themselves a few days of privacy before rejoining the group. But, I also don't have the space here yet to jug more than one ewe at a time (jugging is putting the ewe in a small pen with her lambs).
I had a simple answer though. Just push them out in the house yard. No problem, right?
Well, I'm kinda slow sometimes. What I hadn't realized was that we'd changed the configuration of the area around the gate so that we forced the sheep to go right past where our neighbors' dog amuses herself by barking at the sheep through the fence. I love our new place and I really love our neighbors and the dog's okay, but she has a pretty sad boring life and this was a really exciting event for her.
So I'd get the ewes out the gate, past the dog, tough but not too bad - Ted handled it well. But then the lambs would see that dog and bounce back the way they came. Then the mamas would run back too.
Eventually we just sort of got the mamas going so fast that they left the lambs behind long before they got to the gate. That took some cowboying on Ted's part. I was really proud of the way he would gee up on them, but also turn it off just as quick as he turned it on, when I asked him.
We got everyone through but the oldest ewe, who stopped cold in the gate. She's a wise old thing - the saying about ewes not knowing that lambs fly doesn't apply to her - she always knows where her lambs are, whether up or down, under something, through a fence. She's been a real dog buster in the past but only if she thinks she can get away with it. As it happens, she was the single we worked the other day (Groucho).
So the most she did was make feints at Ted, who held her nicely and didn't break one way or another. Best of all, he didn't get drawn off balance - I only gave him a couple "hints" and he took them nicely. The more he worked the pressure point, the more he was liking it!
Finally he "broke" her and she turned and went through the gate. I shut it and started gathering lambs up and returning them to their frantic mothers.
This made me really glad I'd spent the time doing our "homework." There are people who scoff at "trial training" and certainly training without the natural power and instincts Ted has, wouldn't have fed the bulldog in that situation. But by the same token, Ted as he was just six months ago, with only a so-so stop and flanks that only happened if he agreed they should happen, Ted would have been a little flat black dog pancake in that nursery paddock before he got those ewes out of there.
Speaking of nursery, we are really close to taking the plunge, I think. We've just got to get out and practice my driving, which always was terribly rough and now I seem back to square one. We also need to get whistles on him (more than the stop, I mean). I think that would help both of us.
I was briefly tempted to call this "Ewesful Dog" but then I'd have to put out my eyes with forks. I'm very annoyed by sheep puns. Wether they are good or baaad.
Well anyway.
Today I looked out and in the "nursery" pen a storm had broken loose. One of the ewes who lambed first was trying to steal the lambs of the latest ewe to lamb. The two ewes were going at it hammer and tongs and not only their lambs, but also other lambs were getting knocked over and trampled in the melee.
The "nursery" pen is just getting too crowded. Normally I pasture lamb and the ewes are used to having plenty of space to give themselves a few days of privacy before rejoining the group. But, I also don't have the space here yet to jug more than one ewe at a time (jugging is putting the ewe in a small pen with her lambs).
I had a simple answer though. Just push them out in the house yard. No problem, right?
Well, I'm kinda slow sometimes. What I hadn't realized was that we'd changed the configuration of the area around the gate so that we forced the sheep to go right past where our neighbors' dog amuses herself by barking at the sheep through the fence. I love our new place and I really love our neighbors and the dog's okay, but she has a pretty sad boring life and this was a really exciting event for her.
So I'd get the ewes out the gate, past the dog, tough but not too bad - Ted handled it well. But then the lambs would see that dog and bounce back the way they came. Then the mamas would run back too.
Eventually we just sort of got the mamas going so fast that they left the lambs behind long before they got to the gate. That took some cowboying on Ted's part. I was really proud of the way he would gee up on them, but also turn it off just as quick as he turned it on, when I asked him.
We got everyone through but the oldest ewe, who stopped cold in the gate. She's a wise old thing - the saying about ewes not knowing that lambs fly doesn't apply to her - she always knows where her lambs are, whether up or down, under something, through a fence. She's been a real dog buster in the past but only if she thinks she can get away with it. As it happens, she was the single we worked the other day (Groucho).
So the most she did was make feints at Ted, who held her nicely and didn't break one way or another. Best of all, he didn't get drawn off balance - I only gave him a couple "hints" and he took them nicely. The more he worked the pressure point, the more he was liking it!
Finally he "broke" her and she turned and went through the gate. I shut it and started gathering lambs up and returning them to their frantic mothers.
This made me really glad I'd spent the time doing our "homework." There are people who scoff at "trial training" and certainly training without the natural power and instincts Ted has, wouldn't have fed the bulldog in that situation. But by the same token, Ted as he was just six months ago, with only a so-so stop and flanks that only happened if he agreed they should happen, Ted would have been a little flat black dog pancake in that nursery paddock before he got those ewes out of there.
Speaking of nursery, we are really close to taking the plunge, I think. We've just got to get out and practice my driving, which always was terribly rough and now I seem back to square one. We also need to get whistles on him (more than the stop, I mean). I think that would help both of us.
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