Hit it

Just back from a day of training at K9Z&Ewe.

Piper had a difficult day. She probably needs to be reintroduced to Jesus.

Her driving on the driving drill portion of the day was actually reasonably good as we went back and forth on the cross drives. Not as serpentine as usual and kept sheep moving at a reasonable pace.

Outruns - usually her strong suit - but she was having some trouble flattening out at the top. So we set her up to do an extra deep outrun trying to get her up a road. It did not make sense to her as the sheep were more forward and she fought me all the way round. Finally got her to go where we wanted and she went on a tour of the neighboring ranch as if to say - you want wide - I'll show you wide. Eventually we got to a semblance of what we wanted but it was working.

Near the end we did some beginning shedding work. It is getting better - we have not done this in a couple months. She will come into the hole but getting her to turn on the sheep we want to take away without overrunning the hole was a bit tricky. Eventually she seemed to get it a little better and we got her coming through AND turning properly. The last two times - 1 shed and 1 single - she seemed to understand the job and moved on her own to prevent 1 sheep from regrouping. On the single she finally came in on the head and backed the single off facing the head down challenge. A big step for her.

Also while we were working on shedding and getting sheep back into the ring we had opportunity to work on our new "Hit it" command from 2 weeks ago. Sure could have used it at the trial last week. Anyway - several times she had sheep refusing to move and I gave her a "hit it" which resulted in her promptly and appropriately hitting the sheep. We even got some proper face hits and the sheep moved off her. Hopefully this will help with her confidence when we need to move some sheep that have dropped anchor.

We used the hit it again when putting the rambouilett's away. They had moved over near a trailer and appeared they would refuse to budge and were facing her down. I gave her a "walk up" and "hit it" and lo and behold Piper went for the nose and a very surprised rambouillet popped its head and front up, turned and went where Piper wanted her to go.

So a rough day but a good finish.