Training Time and Happy Adoption Day

Today marks two years since Piper became a California girl. Thank you Laura. Happy Adoption Day Piper.

This time last year we were starting to get it together and have had a reasonably successful year trialing in Pro Novice. Now - against trainer advice - I am moving her up to Open at Zamora. A big challenge and so we need to get a lot accomplished. On her good days she will be OK. It's mainly getting consistency out of both of us.

Also - I now have a young dog we are semi-campaigning in Nursery. At this point with Rylee though it is mainly for training and while she has a great deal of promise we are not really ready to be competitive. At our first trial we did a planned retire after the outwork - although she was very good on that portion. At Zamora I am hoping we are ready to at least attempt the drive.

Anyway yesterday was a very good and fun training session. Rylee is getting a little more used to me each time we go out and if I can stay out of her way and let the drive get started she is actually pretty good. She is a very thoughtful dog and cautious not wanting to make a mistake. Unlike Piper where I have to keep tapping on the brakes with Rylee right now it is largely a matter of pushing on the gas. When she starts to feel comfortable she actually has a very nice pace but still requires a bit of encouragement. I am seeing improvement each time out and she is going to be a lot of fun to work. VERY DIFFERENT from Piper though.

With Piper we still need to keep applying the brakes. When I get on her from the beginning of the run it is much better than if she gets up a head of steam first. Yesterday we did a couple very interesting and challenging exercises and she did better than I had anticipated.

First, Jennifer set up a horseshoe cone pattern around the post to practice controlled turn of the post and good start of the drive. It was pretty narrow and somewhat difficult to get the sheep inside and complete the turn. Piper actually made slight adjustments and did a good turn leading to a nice start to the drive. And if the drive starts nice I can do a much better job just keeping her going in the right direction. She did pretty well on this exercise.

Then we practiced a dogleg fetch to force the dogs to come off pressure on the fetch. First attempt Piper stopped at the right spot but slid over onto balance for the fetch and did a pretty straight fetch - which we did not want. Second attempt she started to slip over and I stopped her. She took the off pressure flank and then walked on from the right spot. We made the dogleg fetch panels. I was very proud of her for this as it was clearly a difficult task and showed her willing to listen to me even when it did not seem natural.