Saturday Piper and I went to Canines N Ewe for our regular Saturday lesson. Sunday we went to Stockdog Ranch to visit Anna Guthrie at her new place almost across the street from the Pala Casino.
There was a lot going on at Canines N Ewe as there was a movie crew filming a biblical themed short subject at Jennifer’s last week and making use of her sheep and field. The film crew was working on Saturday and we had to stop a couple times to wait while they were filming a scene so they would not have whistles or shouts of “lie down. LIE DOWN!” captured on film for eternity. Also they were driving in and out in vehicles and it was necessary to keep an eye open for trucks and other moving vehicles when sending on outruns or driving sheep. At least one dog wisely altered its outrun to avoid being run over by the film crew.
There was most of the usual crew with Jennifer, Gayle, and Tricia along with special guest appearances by Sally Douglas and her FOUR dogs and new participant Dr. Bob (Schooley) and his dog Spike purchased at the November Norm Close Clinic. Tierney Graham also stopped by on her way back from Mexico to retrieve Briscoe from boarding. Tricia’s Tipper and Piper were the long outrunners for the day and everyone else was working a little shorter. Piper’s outruns were – as usual – good – although one of her aways was way away and around the film crew but she eventually came up behind the sheep. The steering on the fetches was not the best and she was banging her sheep down the fetchline a little harder than Tipper but not a wild chase. Main problem was the fetchline steering was not working.
We did a driving exercise driving in a rectangle and also a quarter flank drill. The flanks were a little sloppy at first but got better and she did a pretty good job on the rectangular drive. She still has a tendency to either drop her shoulder in at the beginning of the flank or to give an outrun size flank requiring a call in. When I insist on it and we drill she does a nice flank. I just need to insist on it every time.
Valuable insight from the day from Jennifer – we have a tendency to give a correction and not stick with it long enough. Example, “Get Out” and then resuming the flank as soon as we get the first give on the get out instead of either giving the correction again or waiting until we have a real get out.
Sunday we went to Anna Guthrie’s new place near the Pala Casino. My very first herding experience and start was with Anna about five years ago and while I do not train with her regularly at this point I still enjoy going by occasionally, visiting and working dogs. Plus she has a new place and I wanted to see it.
The new place is a nice upgrade with about ten different training areas ranging from small arena to big hill field. We worked mainly in a medium size field and then did some work on shedding in the cutting horse arena under roof cover and shade. Sally Douglas also went and we held sheep for her to work on outruns with her dogs. On our own outruns we ended up needing to fetch over the top of Sally’s dog as it wanted to try to head the sheep at set out. We were really working quarter flank drills and shedding in the covered arena today so it did not really matter. Piper was doing a nice job on the shed and coming in nicely and turning on the sheep that wanted badly to get back to their friends. We will work Anna’s new place into a rotation of different places to work.
The Cutting Horse Arena. Nice to get in under the shade and work.
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