Progress with Rodeo

Rodeo has had a longstanding problem with keenness and hesitancy. He has a tendency to rely on me too much, stopping in his outrun and looking back at me for encouragement. Then, when I gave it to him, he would often “bust” the sheep, running frantically at them and sending them scattering before eventually rounding them up again.

In other words, he teetered between worrying about what he was doing, and going completely out of control and not thinking about what he was doing at all. There seemed to be no middle ground. After months of frustration, I reconsidered my approach.

Taking a cue from my former profession, I looked at things from what chemists call ‘first principles.’ What was really going on here? What could I infer from his behavior? He was hesitant. Or to put it another way, he lacked confidence in what he was doing.

That was my diagnosis anyway, for whatever that was worth. So I formulated a plan. I would do everything I could to build his confidence – putting him in a position to succeed wherever I could, and if he struggled with a situation, I would lay him down and run out to help him.

But it wasn’t all cheerleading and helping hands. If he lost his head and busted the sheep, I would run at him and give him a serious dressing down. I was going to make it absolutely clear that this was something You Do Not Do.

I initiated this strategy back in June or so, and pretty quickly I saw an improvement in that he had less of a tendency to bust the sheep (after a few times running out after him to make my point). I first noticed a change when, at the end of an outrun, he lowered his head and started to speed up, which I had come to recognize as the sign that he was about to go cuckoo. I started shouting and running out towards him to deliver a correction, but then I stopped short. His head had come up, he’d slowed down, and he was proceeding with a nice lift.

So that was good. But he still had a tendency to be hesitant on his outrun, stopping midway and looking back at me.

This week, something changed. Tuesday is normally lesson day with Brian, but I was picking up a friend from an outpatient medical procedure in Seattle, so I couldn’t make my usual lesson time. But I brought the dogs anyway and decided to stop and do some training on my own on the way back.

I started with Rodeo. When I sent him, he had to go through an open gate between two fields to get the sheep, which were in the far field. He got as far as the gate, then stopped and looked back at me. I gave him a few flanking commands to get him going again, and he finally brought them to me. It was typical of how he has been for awhile.

And then everything changed. I sent him again with the sheep closer, and he surprised me by zipping off at full speed. No hesitancy at all, and his stride and bearing just exuded confidence. I repeated the exercise, having him fetch the sheep out of corners of the field, where he often has trouble. He continued to zip around each time, not stopping once.

Then I noticed something else. To set up the outruns, I had him drive the sheep into the corner. Suddenly, he was a driving fool. He confidently walked up on them, covered when they deviated from a straight course, and didn’t look back at me once. He got them to the corner and seemed ready to just keep pushing them until I called him off.

He was a good 50 yards ahead of me on the drive at one point. It was the best driving I’d see him done in a year or more, possibly ever.

The whole session was a quantum leap for him. It was as if I were doing pushups and went from being able to do 15 one week, to 16 the next, to 17, and then suddenly to 50 the week after that.

It remains to be seen if this newfound confidence and keenness will continue, but I am certainly encouraged. Hopefully it’s a sign that my new strategy with him is paying off.

Progress with Rodeo

Rodeo has had a longstanding problem with keenness and hesitancy. He has a tendency to rely on me too much, stopping in his outrun and looking back at me for encouragement. Then, when I gave it to him, he would often “bust” the sheep, running frantically at them and sending them scattering before eventually rounding them up again.

In other words, he teetered between worrying about what he was doing, and going completely out of control. There seemed to be no middle ground. After months of frustration, I reconsidered my approach.

Taking a cue from my former profession, I looked at things from what chemists call ‘first principles.’ What could I infer from his behavior? He was hesitant. Or to put it another way, he lacked confidence in what he was doing.

That was my diagnosis anyway, for whatever that was worth. So I formulated a plan. I would do everything I could to build his confidence – putting him in a position to succeed wherever I could, and if he struggled with a situation, I would lay him down and run out to help him.

But it wasn’t all cheerleading and helping hands. If he lost his head and busted the sheep, I would run at him and give him a serious dressing down. I was going to make it absolutely clear that this was something You Do Not Do.

I initiated this strategy back in June or so, and pretty quickly I saw an improvement in that he had less of a tendency to bust the sheep (after a few time running out after him to make my point). In fact, I first noticed a change when, at the end of an outrun, he lowered his head and started to speed up. I started shouting and running out towards him to deliver a correction, but then I stopped short. His head had come up, he’d slowed down, and he was proceeding with a nice lift.

So that was good. But he still had a tendency to be hesitant on his outrun, stopping midway and looking back at me.

This week, something changed. Tuesday is normally lesson day with Brian, but I was picking up a friend from an outpatient medical procedure in Seattle, so I couldn’t make my usual lesson time. But I brought the dogs anyway and decided to stop and do some training on my own on the way back.

I started with Rodeo. When I sent him, he had to go through an open gate between two fields to get the sheep, which were in the far field. He got as far as the gate, then stopped and looked back at me. I gave him a few flanking commands to get him going again, and he finally brought them to me. It was typical of how he has been for awhile.

And then everything changed. I sent him again with the sheep closer, and he surprised me by zipping off at full speed. No hesitancy at all, and his stride and bearing just exuded confidence. I repeated the exercise, having him fetch the sheep out of corners of the field, where he often has trouble. He continued to zip around each time, not stopping once.

Then I noticed something else. To set up the outruns, I had him drive the sheep into the corner. Suddenly, he was a driving fool. He confidently walked up on them, covered when they deviated from a straight course, and didn’t look back at me once. He got them to the corner and seemed ready to just keep pushing them until I called him off.

He was a good 50 yards ahead of me on the drive at one point. It was the best driving I’d see him done in a year or more, possibly ever.

The whole session was a quantum leap for him. It was as if I were doing pushups and went from being able to do 15 one week, to 16 the next, to 17, and then suddenly to 50 the week after that.

It remains to be seen if this newfound confidence and keenness will continue, but I am certainly encouraged. Hopefully it’s a sign that my new strategy with him is paying off.

Fun Trial

Recently I've gotten to know Janet, who owns a ranch with her husband close to Bellingham. They have generously invited me and the dogs to come out and train on their yearling dorset lambs, which has been a great opportunity for myself and for Rodeo.

Bonny has been out of commission lately following minor surgery, but she'll get her chance next time.

Janet has five border collies and has worked with Jamie Van Rhyn. Janet's dog Babe was bred to one of Jamie's dogs, and she has three pups from the litter: Brody, Prim, and Bruce. I spent some time last week working Rodeo in her small pen and got a chance to see all three of her dogs work, and they have a nice way about them -- pretty easy on their sheep and nice flanks. And very keen.

On Saturday, Janet invited us over for a training trial. She set up some obstacles and a small pen in a recently-mown field. The size was maybe 3/4 acre, a nice approximation of the upcoming Highland Games arena trial in Mt. Vernon.

Janet's friend Marny also stopped by along with Liz and Matt, who live near by and have sheep as well.

Janet's daughter Tammy worked Brody and had an effortless pen:

Brody was quit pleased with himself: 

Janet had a nice session with Prim with a pretty looking pen:

and Rodeo did a great job handling some tough lambs. One named Clark was particularly ornery and didn't care to be moved, but Rodeo put enough  pressure to move them without ever losing his head:

And did a nice job penning:

Janet promises more such practice trials, and I'm really looking forward to heading out there.

Flippin'

Bonny has made steady progress over the past couple of months. I can call her off reliably, she has developed a nice pace behind the sheep, and I think we're starting to form a good partnership.

Last week, we moved to a different field, where the sheep are far less dog broke. That means that they'll tend to break and run more easily, so the dog must give out more on flanks.

Predictably, Bonny and I ran into trouble quickly. She is used to sheep that cling tightly to me, and as a result she flanked too closely and sent these flightier sheep moving past me. She wasn't feeling the bubble.

Brian had me do some walkabouts with her, lying her down behind the sheep as I backed up, letting the distance between her and the sheep widen so that she could begin to feel the bubble better. But she didn't want to take her lie downs. She would outright refuse to take them, or if she did, she hopped back up as soon as she could.

When we worked on outruns, she refused to take the flank I requested. I'd set her up to go on a come-by (clockwise) outrun by positioning myself between her and the sheep, offset a bit to the left as I faced her. The shortest route to the balance point (opposite the sheep from me) would therefore be on a clockwise flank. But she hopped up and went the opposite way, circling counter-clockwise.

Why? Because the sheep really wanted to move down the field, in her direction and past her, because there were other sheep that way. She knew that as soon as she vacated her spot, the sheep would be drawn her way. The clockwise flank took her out of position, unable to stop them. So she 'flipped,' moving counterclockwise to head them off before they could get anywhere.

This is a problem. We need her to take whatever flanks she is given, regardless of whether she thinks the sheep will get away. Otherwise, it's impossible to move the sheep in all possible directions, because there will always be a draw on any field. If this becomes a habit, she's likely to head off any sheep that I try to move towards the direction of a draw.

Her unwillingness to lie down on walkabouts is probably a similar problem. She's too anxious that the sheep will get away, so she doesn't want to lose contact with them. Bonny needs to learn that it's okay if the sheep get away, so she can be more relaxed. She also needs to trust me that the sheep won't get away if she follows my lead.

We worked on the problem by working the sheep up against the fence, which shortened the distance and allowed us to move close to the sheep to help her. Then we repeated the exercise, asking her to flank around the sheep in a direction that would release them in the direction of the draw. The first 5 or 6 times, she refused, flipping to reverse course and head off the sheep. But after some corrections and cajoling, she finally flanked around the sheep, passing between them and the fence, then circled around and brought them back around to us.

Lo and behold, the sheep did not escape as she had feared. Instead, as long as she flanked wide, they settled near me. We repeated the exercise until she would flank cleanly without flipping. Afterward, I sent her on an outrun in the center of the field, maybe 50 yards, in a clockwise direction that forced her to leave the draw open. This time she didn't flip. She completed a nice outrun, brought them to me, and we called it a day. It was clear she had learned quite a bit.

Trust

In the last session, Bonny began to lose her head more often, taking off after the sheep the moment I took my attention away from her. She seemed to be waiting for that moment when my attention was occupied and then off she went. I couldn’t trust her.  

This session, we decided to correct the problem because it had already begun to be a habit in Brian’s opinion.

We started in the field, but she quickly repeated the same behavior and I wasn’t able to gain control of her, even with a long line on her. It’s so slick in the mud that it’s very hard to grab, and if I do the reward tends to be rope burns. Given that it could get her tangled up with the sheep, I opted to remove it and we headed to the round pen instead.

There, she took off a couple of times, but because the space was more constrained, I could run at her and block her from the sheep. In previous exercises I used my flag to do this, but it lay forgotten in the backseat of my car, so I had to rely on my body positioning. Fortunately she responded to my pressure and stopped when she saw me – a sign in itself of progress because in previous sessions I think she would have kept running past me, knowing I couldn’t block her without the flag.

But she stopped and I walked past her and away from the sheep, calling her off, and she followed. This repeated a couple of times in the first few minutes, and then her attitude seemed to change a bit.

Brian had me stand with her on the opposite side of the pen from the sheep. He asked me to walk a few yards away from her, parallel to the sheep, and then call her to me. She responded and then I repeated the exercise, keeping her in a lie down until I asked her to me. Once or twice, she took off after the sheep again, but I ran to block her and began again.

Eventually, I could move 10 or 15 yards away, forming a big triangle between me, her, and the sheep. “Give her a come by,” Brian said. I occupied the left hand point of the triangle, making it natural for her to move in a clockwise fashion. I did and she ran into the sheep, busting them up.

“Call her off, and then shorten it up.” So I did, forming a smaller triangle, with the sheep against the fence. This time she moved better, but still came in too tight. I had been anticipating that so I moved towards her, shaking a water bottle filled with rocks to get her to bend out. But it didn’t work and Brian said, “don’t move into her, move away from her.”

This is a problem I’ve been having, tending to move towards her, thinking that I can put pressure on her to bend her out. But it confuses her and doesn’t give her any place for her to bring the sheep:

The top row of pictures is a time sequence, beginning from the left. I would send Bonny but be standing still, waiting for her to go incorrectly so that I could move towards her and correct. The second and third pictures show the result.

Brian insisted that I move directly away from the sheep simultaneously to sending her. It took me awhile to realize what he was saying, but when I did, the second row of pictures was the result. Bonny didn’t go into the sheep, she flanked nicely around them, and there was no need to correct her. Brian did point out that even if I had needed to correct her, I didn’t need to move towards her – I could flap a jacket or a flag. But I think because I had to run at her to keep her off the sheep, I was instinctively doing the same thing to correct her flank.

When I relaxed and trusted her, things were suddenly smooth.

Afterward, Brian was encouraging. “You were fair to her. The only thing you insisted on was that she not go to the sheep until you told her to. And you helped her.”

As he was talking, Bonny was lying down at my side in the round pen, relaxed and watching the sheep. “Look,” Brian said. “Now you’ve got a buddy.” 

Bonny continues to progress in the field, she is doing short outruns now of 20-30 yards. The routine is to send her, have her bring the sheep to me, then call her off, walk a little distance away with her, and send her again.

This has been complicated by her tendency to blow me off -- yesterday was particularly bad. So we still need to work on her recall and I have to get into her head more.

I've been putting flank commands on her when sending her, but she frequently takes the wrong flank, usually an away when I'm trying to make her take a come by. This may be a natural tendency to favor that side, or it may be that she's going to their heads when they happen to be pointed that way. When I'm positioned right, I'm between her and the sheep. And if I'm trying to get her to go one way or another, I'm looking at her and the sheep are behind me, so I can't tell which way the sheep are facing and whether or not she's going to the head.

I think this is largely a matter of inexperience. I'm too fixated on her to be aware of what the sheep are doing.