Happy St. Paddy's!

'tis a good day to have a wee bit o' the Irish.  We'll be wearin' the green, tellin' stories at Turner's annual 'friendamily' dinner, enjoyin' a touch of the whiskey or beer, soda bread and corned beef....and laughter!  laughter!  laughter! 

The red-headed Rifflet o' Hob Nob posed with a shamrock for me.  What a good young lad! 

The Morning Paper

These days, after I let the dogs out for their early morning business in the backyard, we all go back to bed.  Not too long ago, we'd be too eager for an early morning walk to go back to bed.   We'd get dressed and walk briskly around the neighborhood for a couple of miles...then start the day.

What happened?

a) The time change (am not a big fan of walking in the dark). 
b) Winter warmth (cozy comforters are impossible to resist). 
c) Back-aches (my back loves being horizontal). 
d) Good dreams (maybe we can get back into them).    
e) Good books (have been staying up way too late).   

But you know what REALLY happened.  A Pool of Gravity moved into our house, and lives under our bed.  If you get too close, you get sucked in...Thwoop!   


[Perhaps the best chance I have of fighting that big sucker is to lose weight.  Like....maybe I should take a brisk, lo-o-ng walk....first thing, every morning....like we used to do.  Hahaha!  The dogs would love it.  Right?] 

{Aargh!}

The big surprise, to me, is that the dogs always go back to bed first.

You'd think they'd want out for their walkies...but, no.  After they're finished in the backyard, they high-tail it back down the hallway.... 

....while I slip out the front door and pick up the morning paper.  I unwrap the paper and set it out on the kitchen table.  And I make sure the coffee pot is ready.  Sometimes I'm so curious about what's going on in the world (according to the local yokels) that I'll stand by the table and use my little flashlight to read a couple of articles.  It's all part of preparing for our morning Coffee-and-Paper ritual.  Do the dogs keep me company?  NO!  By the time I get back to the bedroom, my sweet dogs are curled up in bed, and snoring.

What does this mean?

a)  We're getting up way too early.
b)  The dogs don't care about our daily newspaper.
c)  The Pool of Gravity is stronger than we thought.
d)  All of the above.
 
One of these Fine Spring Days (coming soon to a neighborhood near you!) we'll get back into our early morning walk routine.  Then the dogs will be able to enjoy their own version of a morning paper, by sniffing their way around the block....

Oh, the stories they could tell!

Singing in the...

Rain!  DAYS of rain!  My garden is excited.  Rain, glorious rain! 

What about the dogs?  We usually keep them happy by jogging laps around the backyard.  Keeper sticks to the porch more often than usual.  She'll "sit out" a lap here and there, now that she's older.  Riff ducks his head in the rain, and blinks his eyes in a goofy way, but is totally willing to do as many laps as we can around the yard.  We play a hide-and-seek game with the toys.   I jog on the little flat section of our trail, and across the patio...but I'm pretty careful going up and down the steps.  Riff runs as fast as he can everywhere he goes. The rain feels fresh and wonderful. 

Since the round pen at the sheep ranch is a lake, and the agility fields are bogged down, we run around the backyard instead.  Sometimes we'll put on rain gear and hike with the dogs through almost-empty regional parks.  You have to be ready for the 'wet dog' aura that will grace your vehicle on the way home.  Doggy smiles make it worth it. 

We wash a heckalotta muddy towels, these days....

My favorite rainy day activity?  Once the oatmeal cookies are baked, I like to sit in front of the fireplace with a good book, and with a couple of tired, fluffy dogs at my feet.
:-)

RXing

Well, poodinky. 

After our practice yesterday morning must admit that Riff and I are still having trouble with rear crosses.  Our discriminations were working really well...YAY!....but he did a loop-de-loop the wrong way during several rear crosses from right to left.  I wish I could say our trouble is one-sided...that we're fine going left to right...   (I can almost say that...but not 100%.)

Riff corrects himself very quickly...but we definitely need to get rid of that spin, and tighten up the line. 

Am I crossing too late?  Maybe I'm adding an extra half-step, waiting for Riff to go by ("After you, Sir!") and, since he has such a long, ground-eating stride, that half-step is costly.  And/or maybe I'm decelerating just after the first jump, and he reads it as a possible wrap? 

So I did my best to get through the sequence with a correct, smooth and timely cue.  Hmmm.  Why didn't that work?

I added a verbal, "Riff!"  Was my verbal too late?   Shoot. 

SO...You'd think I'd know this by now:      Those questions marks would disappear if I'd had my video camera out there with me!!!

Ah, well.  Next time.  Hopefully...

Blooming

Shifting Gears

Friday morning Riff and I worked on contacts. He needed a little help with his 2-on, 2-off.    He was totally ready to play!  What a sweet dog. 

The agility dogs out at LeapDog Ranch get used to geese flying low overhead. 

The weather has been fabulous!  But I still wish it would rain. 

******

Saturday morning I was invited to the sheep ranch to watch members of RESDA (Redwood Empire SheepDog Association) practice working their novice dogs.   

Still not sure how easy it might be for Riff and I to shift gears between agility and sheep. 

One of the handlers at the practice (er...do I mean 'shepherds'?) is an "Open" level competitor in the USBCHA.  (United States Border Collie Handlers Association)   The other folks there said that B had been working sheep for twenty years...because "that's how long it takes to get to that level"...and they laughed and scuffled their feet. 

As it happens, B was a fellow student in one of my agility classes, years ago.  She was very friendly, and carefully described what some of the sheperds were trying to get done, out in the big field.  She was also a bit discouraging.  

B said that for a beginner to try to train a beginner dog that was already three years old (old for getting on sheep) and trained for agility (used to 'being told what to do every step of the way') - is "really, really, really hard."  Apparently a lot of people that are serious about the game buy an older "finished" (completely trained) dog first, in order to learn how to work with a beginner dog.   And when they buy a beginner dog, they closely study the dog's bloodlines, trying to get a dog that is a "natural" (inherently talented and easy to train).  They also buy sheep. 

It wasn't a good time to get into my dog's whole story (he has a working dog background, but was scared of sheep...at least at first) but I did tell her that I won't be buying a dog any time soon.  I have two dogs and that's it for me.  She was a little more encouraging after learning I'd spent quite a few years around cattle and horses.  "Well, at least you'll be able to read the livestock..."

I liked that most of the folks were "of an age"....and that none of them were doing sit-ups, hamstring stretches, or running in place.  I liked that they all wore blue jeans, and I loved their casual footwear  - old boots and "mudders."  Plus they were funny and friendly.

The fancy lanyards and whistles are totally cool.  Although since Riff doesn't know any verbal commands yet, I imagine it would be quite a while (years?) before we'd get a whistle...

And, of course, the dogs.  MARVELOUS dogs.  The best dogs....!

Being out on a roomy ranch was lovely, too.  And...(drum roll)....someone brought DONUTS!  And offered me one!!



Sheeped!!!

As of yesterday afternoon, I can
a-a-lmost say that Riff really IS a sheepdog.  Yeah!!  But of all the days to leave my camera home, I picked yesterday.  So you might want to drag out your Colander of Imagination, put it upside down on your head, and picture this:

About 15 head of sheep were in the pen this time, more or less.  Definitely more than we had in the pen the last two times.

ML brought out a "stick" to use with Riff, since he ended last week's session by enthusiastically (but respectfully) chasing her sheep.  She thought he might be scared of her stick (he gets so nervous sometimes), so she left the flag off the end, and quietly introduced him to it.  The stick is about four or five feet long, semi-flexible, plain white...some kind of plastic, I think.  See, Riff?  Nothing to be afraid of.  It goes "tap, tap" on the ground, that's all.  She described the stick as an extension of her arm and a way to turn the sheepdog back the other way.  It helps the dog learn how to gather and herd the sheep instead of just chase them.   Riff was so happy to jump all over poor ML that he barely paid any attention to the stick.  So, okay...into the pen they go.

And Riff stays by the gate, looking at me.  I'm standing about 10 feet away from the pen, holdling ML's little terrier in my arms.  Her BC Pete, finished with bringing in the herd, is sitting on my feet.  I can imagine how this looks to Riff.  Is he thinking that maybe he should be in my arms or sitting on my feet?  I hate to do it, but I turn my back on him.  I sneak little peaks over my shoulder after he finally gives up and crosses the pen to check out the sheep situation.  Of course ML has been calling him the whole while....

It didn't take too long for ML to decide that Riff would not work sheep for her.  She came out of the pen and introduced me to the stick.  I was a little afraid of it (hahah!), but I let her hand it to me anyway, and she told me to go on into the pen. 

Riff stood there, looking at me.  I called him over to the sheep, they scattered, and I tapped the stick on the ground to turn the dog.  I was trying to act like a shepherd, and get into the right position for the sheep to quietly come up to me, and gather around me.  Then I could either walk through the standing herd, or back up and let them slowly follow me.  Riff went over to the gate.  Riff and I both looked around for ML.  She was across the pasture, checking on a fence.  We were alone.   So Riff came back and we took a couple of comparatively quiet little passes by the sheep.  I held out the stick and pretended to know what I was doing.  I wasn't sure I was holding it correctly.  I wondered....do you switch hands, or just point the stick the other way?  Riff looked at me like, "What the heck are you doing?!"  I started feeling even more confused than usual.

At that point Riff decided to chase the sheep.  FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN!!!  I tried to use the stick as an extension of my arm, tap the ground, turn the dog the other way...and help him learn how to control the herd.  Riff jumped over the stick, gave me a quick dirty look (jeezus, lady!) from the apex of his jump, and continued running after various individual sheep.  He obviously didn't want to get close enough to bite them, but he was definitely getting closer than he ever had before.  He came to within inches of their heels.  He was showing them his teeth, his head held low while his tail was high, and he looked happy.     I held the stick further out and tapped the ground harder, and then held out my other hand...trying to tell him "this way, Riff!" and Riff jumped the stick again.  And again and again.  Pretty soon sheep were RUN-running all over the pen.  They seemed to be running straight at me, from all directions.  I started to feel like a bowling pin in the middle of a swarm of giant furry bowling balls.  "Down!"  Aren't you supposed to say Down when the sheep get too wild?  "Down!"  "Down!"  "Down!"  "Down!"  Did I sound hysterical?  I hope not.  But goshdarn it, it worked!  And ML was back by then, too...I could suddenly hear her voice, telling me that it's okay for Riff to get closer to the sheep, and warning me not to shut down Riff's fledgling enthusiasm. 

Riff was laying down in the middle of the pen, listening to our conversation with his tongue lolling sideways and a smirky little grin on his face.  The sheep had had me running me in crazy little backwards circles, knees akimbo, completely unmoored.  And while I was trying to keep track of the dog [man, is he quick!] and all those sheep, I didn't even know where I was in relation to the fence.  Or, for that matter, in relation to the rest of the world.  Pretty much all I could see were the sheep that were right in front of me.  And I could feel sheep all around behind me, too.  I could hear them running and panting.  During those panicky moments I even forgot I had a stick in my hand.  What was I doing with my stick during that half-hour (read: moment or two) of absolute chaos?  I have no idea. 



Everything started out okay.  I felt foxy!
ML let me be in a pen with a stick, a young sheepdog, and some sheep.

 

Then I noticed how much bigger the sheep were getting.
What happened to those cute little woolies I was petting?
The more my dog chased them, the bigger they got.


 

And they multiplied.
I knew there were only a dozen or so sheep in the pen, but...
....the more my dog chased them, the more sheep there were.
Hundreds.  Thousands.


We have a lot to learn.

The rest of yesterday's lesson went something like this:

Riff took a break, and I went into the pen with ML and Pete.  My instructions were to stay with ML and get a feel for where to be and what to do.  Somehow I couldn't stay with her...she changed directions often, I had no idea where she was headed next, and the sheep were coming right at me.  I think I'd have to hold onto her arm to actually stay next to her. 

We decided I'd leave the pen and just watch.  When I reached the gate and opened it slightly, suddenly the sheep badly wanted through that gate.  Too many sheep heads were in the way and I couldn't close it...I found myself being pushed slowly through the gate - those sheep can press pretty hard - even though I was holding it as shut as possible, and pushing and swatting at sheep noses.  I may have even been yelling at them.  See, here's where you need a camera.  What actually happened?  That's the way I remember it.  Happily, ML sent Pete to my side and he rescued me from the sheep.  A good dog makes all the difference.

My next effort was to try to work Pete by myself.  We tried, but he wasn't too keen on the idea.  I was too far into Stumbling Bumpkin mode by then. 

Then Riff and I went back into the pen alone.  This time things seemed a tiny bit more under control.  I even heard ML yell "Good! Good!" a couple of times.  Cool.  On that happy note, my story ends.