That's a shed

It somewhat happened by accident and it may not happen again for a while but . . .

Piper and I were working on at hand work and calm sheep movement last Saturday at K9z&Ewe when our group of sheep very kindly spread out in a nice line. Thinking it was the perfect opportunity to try something for the first time I flanked Piper so she was on the opposite side of the sheep from me and lied her down. Relatively soon a gap appeared between two groups of sheep so I asked Piper "in here" and then "these". Even though we had never tried this before and had not intended to work on it Piper came right in and turned on the right group of sheep. We did not drive them off but she did have control of the gap.

That's a shed.

Now hopefully we can do it again.

The other nice thing she did last week was during the same bit of work when a renegade ewe decided she wanted to leave her sorority sisters and make a break for it. Instead of chasing she took the away flank (amazingly I actually gave her the right flank) and covered the escaping ewe without any chasing involved.

Now that driving thing still seems to be on an S course with too many reversals of direction. I realized that I was having trouble judging her position relative to the sheep so I walked out to be a bit closer and was able to see when she was getting to far to the head. This helped somewhat and I was able to get more progress on straight lines when I was able to time the "down" better.

She also did a pretty good job keeping the lighter sheep straight with a bump and drift technique.

The problem seems to be when she gets close to the sheep to move them and I have trouble judging when she is too far to the head.