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.

Yucatan Peninsula trip

This post has nothing to do with sheepherding, it's just a compilation of my Facebook posts during my trip to Cancun and the Yucatan Peninsula. I left November 30 and returned December 8. I was there to cover the World Allergy Conference in Cancun for Medscape, but I carved out 4 days ahead of time to travel a bit.

Read at your own peril!

November 30 at 7:35pm
after a long flight, relaxing on a rooftop terrace bar at the Mundo Joven hostel in Cancun, sipping Corona and gobbling down fajitas.

November 30 at 7:56pm
So on the flight from Dallas to Cancun, I finished reading The Ruins by Scott Smith. It's set in the Yucatan so I got it thinking, hey, some fiction set where I'm going. Only, it's the literary equivalent of the move Se7en. Good book, but I never want to read anything by that author again.


November 30 at 7:56pm
And now the question is, do I get a rental car and drive to Tulum tomorrow as per the original plan, or do I stay where I am, save the money and spend it on a couple of day tours instead? Tough decisions. Maybe another Corona will help?


November 30 at 8:20pm
A look at the map reminds me that the Chixculub crater is here in the Yucatan (think, dinosaurs). Sadly it's too far a drive.


December 1 at 5:34pm
In a hostel in Tulum. Drove the rental car along the beach this afternoon and spotted a tropical espresso stand, so of course I had to stop. Good coffee, and the barista was from Mexico City and in the coffee export business. Had a long, interesting conversation with him about the coffee biz.


December 2 at 2:46pm
Sipping coconut milk. Drove 1/2 hours through the Yucatan interior to Chiquila, then caught a boat to Isla Holbox. The next two nights I'm staying in a little hut on the island. Tomorrow I'll rent a bike and explore.


December 2 at 8:31pm
I know I'm tired when I keep telling the store attendant. No hablo ingles! No hablo ingles! I think she thought I was insane.


December 2 at 8:38pm
Lunch today was in a little village in northern Quintana Roo, in one of the buildings that fronted themain street of the pueblo. It had an open kitchen and it was clear that the family that operated also lived on the premises. It advertised adobo. I saw the sign and had to turn back. Ivy makes adobo from time to time and we've eaten it in the Philippines, so I always want to compare. This was pork and very different, but delicious. The proprietor said it cooks so long that he gets up in the middle of the night to tend to it.


December 2 at 8:42pm
Left the rental car in the coastal village of Chiquila, then boarded a motor boat with 5 other people bound for Isla Holbox. 30 minute ride cost us 70 pesos (about $5). Sat down next to an Australian named Mark. He quit his job at a travel agency in Toronto to, wait for it... travel. We wound up going to dinner afterwards and I told him about my experiences hiking in New Zealand. Do you hike? I asked. "Well, I went to Nepal and trekked to Everest base camp." Yeah, I guess he hikes.


December 2 at 8:52pm
After adobo for lunch, I stopped at another little village to poke through it's market. Found quite an extensive confectioner stand. Bought some candied fruit, possibly plums, and candied limes stuffed with coconut. Mmm...


December 3 at 3:37pm
Rented a bike in el centro for 80 pesos, rode west to one end of the island and spent some time gazing at Bird Island, just offshore. Then I returned to the village and headed east, but the chain broke so I had to wheel it back. With the replacement I made it as far as an inlet that blocked further progress, but it was beautiful. The couple who rents the bicycles also own a Spanish restaurant, where I had an American afterwards. They've been renting bikes for 4 months, but she's not sure it's a good business because so much maintenance is required due to sea salt and the sun. "Do you rent golf carts?" I asked, referring to the ubiquitous mode of transportation on the island. "No, we hate them. They drive past our house every day and it's noisy. That's why we rent bikes."


December 3 at 3:41pm

Best moment today: a close competition between sitting in the sun, sketching Bird Island, and sitting in a hammock in the afternoon, resting after my bike ride, listening to John Denver's Sing Australia. Of course, there's the evening yet, so maybe there will be a new contender. I'm off for dinner in a few minutes, then to peruse the shops (which stay open very late) and watch the kids play basketball and soccer in the park.

December 3 at 8:26pm
Wound up meeting up with Mark the Australian again for dinner (a quesadilla-like dish made with Arabic bread, served with 4 widely varying sauces and a bean stew. All scrumptious. Then we found an Italian restaurant and drank Bohemia Obscura, a dark Vienna beer brewed in Mexico by a company now owned, alas, by Heineken. But they apparently haven't ruined the beer, as it was quite good. Mark and I talked mainly about movies -- Die Hard turns out to be a favorite of both of ours. We quoted lines and laughed quite loudly and drunkenly, I'm afraid.


December 3 at 8:51pm
On the way back to the cabana, I stopped at a little store to pick up a Corona, then added some mole sauce and horchata mix for souvenirs.


December 4 at 6:21am
time to say goodbye to Isla Holbox. Time for breakfast then a ferry back to Chiquila, then a drive to Cancun with a possible lengthy detour to Chichen Itza, depending on time and energy.


December 4 at 9:12pm
Arrived late at the Gran Melia here in Cancun after touring the ruins at Ek Balam. The hotel lost my reservation, and the woman at the reservation desk was singularly unhelpful. I thought I'd rely on my cell phone to pull up the confirmation email, but first I had to find a place to plug it in because it had run down. Reservation woman was unhelpful with that as well, but finally, grudgingly, allowed me to use a plug behind the counter. But silly T-mobile wouldn't give me a data connection for some reason. So when I swore softly in frustration, a (helpful!) staff member overheard and offered to let me use the hotel's internet, where I found the reservation and talked the unhelpful reservation woman into giving me a room after all. A request for couple of drink vouchers for my (45 minutes of) trouble fell on deaf ears naturally. 

But finally I arrived in my room, which is on the 5th floor of a building shaped like a pyramid.

Which has a hot tub on the balcony.

All is forgiven.


December 5 at 1:37pm
Yesterday on the advice of Palle Hoffstein and Dawna Read, I toured the ruins of Ek Balam. Very impressive, though apparently later period and not as architecturally sophisticated as earlier periods such as Chichen Itza. I climbed to the top of the biggest structure and had a look around, then walked around the base and followed a little path into the jungle, far from where the tourists who were intended to be. After several hundred yards, it led to a little thatch hut with a large pile of corn cobs next to it. Closer inspection revealed a stash of corn beneath the hut and a nearby roasting pit. Then I noticed that the open space nearby was filled with dried up, harvested corn. I hadn't noticed it before, and me an Iowa boy.


December 5 at 1:43pm
Near the convention center I saw an Argentine Steak House. I won't be dining there. Driving around the peninsula I saw recent, extensive deforestation and cows wandering around in the leftover rubble. It was quite depressing.


December 5 at 5:49pm
So, one of the... benefits?... of traveling alone is the weird offers you sometimes receive. This afternoon I stood outside the convention center and was hailed by a guy running a tour operation from a nearby stand. "You want to see the jungle? Maybe swim with dolphins?" I shook my head. "Or maybe... have some fun?" He flashed a brochure for an adult day spa. I shook my head and said "I'm not intothat." But then my curiosity got the better of me and I asked to see it. It contained pictures of semi-naked women, with he visa and mastercard logo at the bottom. "It's legit! They pay taxes," the guy told me. "$150 for a half hour massage with happy ending. $300 for one hour all you can do." 

So now I know the going rates in Cancun. And I have a name and phone number.

The bidding will begin at $50.


December 5 at 6:48pm
Marc Wisniak (the Australian) and I met on the motorboat to Isla Holbox and discovered that we were both staying at the Ida y Vuelta hostel, which I already knew was about 1 1/2 km from the dock. I was prepared to walk the distance because I'd been driving all afternoon, but Marc inquired with one of the golf cart taxis (yes, you read that correctly), and they said, "oh, it's not that far. You can walk." It was indeed 1 1/2 km, and we wondered that taxi drivers would turn down an easy fare. Later, Marc talked to the owner of the hostel, who told him that he refuses to pay the taxi drivers the 100 pesos (about $8) per passenger commission, so the taxi drivers often subtly refuse to bring guests to the hostel, or sometimes even claim that it's closed. Wow. Budding mobsters on Isla Holbox!






And last, but not least, here's a link to the news articles I wrote from the conference (incomplete as of this post, there will eventually be 10)


http://www.medscape.com/viewcollection/32258

Bonny progressing in the round pen

We spent quite a bit of time in the round pen with Bonny this week, and she improved quite a lot from last week, as did I. I'm moving better and she is flanking and balancing nicely on both her come by and away. Last week she pretty much only wanted to flank on the away (counterclockwise). She's also quite willing to come between the sheep and the fence.



The next challenge is to get a recall or 'that'll do' command on her. She's quite good at coming on command in the house, but if she's playing with other dogs or working sheep, she ignores me.

I think I have a training strategy for this now. She enjoys playing soccer (what border collie doesn't, I wonder?) and as with any other game, she ignores my repeated attempts to call her off. So now I'm playing the game with her, but keeping her on a ten-foot lead. Now when I tell her 'that'll do,' I can grab the lead and force her to come to me. After two sessions, she's showed quite a bit of improvement.

Today during the second session I told her lay down and then walked to the ball, telling her repeatedly to stay. Then I nudged the ball a bit. She couldn't help herself and got up to chase, but I gave her an 'ah! ah!' correction and she lay back down again, though she would leap to her feet again each time I pushed the ball. Still, a dramatic improvement from before.

Bonny in the round pen

Bonny is progressing. She heavily favors the away flank, in fact will hardly take a come by flank, so I spent some time trying to encourage her to go to the come by side. Mostly that involved trying to block her from going on the away flank and trying to follow her round the sheep moved in the come by direction.

As you can see from the video below, I had limited success, and I wound up sprawled against the fence at one point.

But Bonny seems to have a nice feel for her sheep and is thoughtful.

Stirling Acres Pro-Novice

Last weekend, we piled into my friend Jack's RV and drove over the Cascades to Stirling Acres ranch in Coldstream, BC, where Lee Lumb and her husband Dan hosted an intimate one-day trial.

It was a beautiful location, dry and cold, and Rodeo and I ran in Pro-Novice and a couple of times in novice.D

Jack videotaped our Pro-Novice run, which wasn't ideal, but he did some nice things. He didn't hesitate on his outrun, but sliced in on the top. As you can see from the video below, we missed our fetch panels but as per the rules of the course, we had to try again to make the fetch panels before moving on to the next obstacle. Rodeo did a nice job pushing them back in the direction of the setout, and turned them back through the fetch panels. It wasn't graceful, but it worked.

Then we brought them around the post and out to the drive panels. In P-N we were allowed to leave the post during the drive and walk part way out into the field, which I did. He made the first panel and then the cross-drive panels, and we eventually timed out on the Maltese Cross. The next obstacle would have been loading the sheep into a trailer, had we made it that far.

Overall, I was pleased. His flanks were very good and he had good control over the sheep after the initial chaos at the end of the outrun.

"You better not screw her up!"

This week,we worked some more on Rodeo’s outrun, and he struggled a bit after some improvements last week. Brian set the sheep using his dog Bell on the opposite side of the field, a distance of about 200 yards, and Rodeo hesitated a bit on his outruns, but took a fairly moderate correction followed by a flank command to get going again.

He had quite a bit of trouble with his lift. He hasn’t had to lift off people and dogs much of late, and it’s a challenge for him. I couldn’t quite see what was happening from my vantage point – he would disappear behind the sheep and I could see them rustling a bit, and then they would start to move towards me and the next thing I knew he was circling them and busting them up.

Brian said later that he wasn’t using his eye on the lift. Instead he walked up into them, and when they moved away, he panicked and tried to head them off.

So Brian instructed me to move in closer, to a distance of about 30 yards, and repeated the exercise. This time I laid him down behind the sheep so that he couldn’t use his body, and after a couple of attempts he started using his eye more and managed to lift them without much fuss.

I had also noticed that he was using his body more while driving, wearing the sheep rather than keeping his distance. So this is clearly something to work on.

It was just one more example of the whack-a-mole nature of sheepherding. You work on certain things to improve them, and they get better, but other skills lag due to lack of work. This is where having a working sheep operation would be a tremendous benefit, I suspect, because daily work would sharpen all of the basic skills. Since training is inherently just an approximation of farm work, it will always be a challenge to keep ourselves primed.

Bonny is progressing nicely in her round pen work. She’s showing very nice balance and appears thoughtful in her work. When the sheep split, she’ll stand in place, turning her head from one group to the other, clearly pondering what to do next.

Initially, round pen work consisted of simply getting her to move around the sheep rather than chasing and gripping them, which was all she wanted to do at first. But by moving appropriately, Brian showed me how to help her get balance. It started with a session in the pen with Brian last week, during which he shook a water bottle with rocks in it to get her attention.

It almost worked too well, startling her to the point that for the first time ever she moved off the sheep and exited the round pen. Then she spotted the sheep in the open field and decided they would be much more fun to herd and there would be no big, bad man with a bottle. After a few minutes we rounded her back up again and put her back in the round pen.

She was much improved then, far more thoughtful and careful. Brian showed me how to encourage her to circle the sheep by standing near the sheep and moving them a bit. She would start circling to my opposite side, and to keep her going, he had me follow her so that the sheep would in turn follow me and she could keep going. After a few moments I changed directions, turning into her and blocking her path with the wand to get her to change directions, and then once again following her.

We quickly learned that she prefers to go on an away (counter-clockwise) flank. Given a choice, she would go that way endlessly. It takes a fair effort to get her to switch to a come by, and when she does she’s much tighter and more prone to busting in on them. But with some repetition she began to flare out a little wider on her come by flanks, and her away flanks were quite nice indeed.

On this particular day I was feeling a bit sluggish, probably because the session was at 11 am, earlier than usual for me, and I hadn’t eaten lunch yet. Whatever the reason, Brian had to keep shouting “Move! Move!” at me, and I never did quite feel as energetic as usual.

Brian was quite pleased. “She could get better in a hurry,” he said.

On the way out, he had one more thing to say: “You better not screw her up, Kling!”

Souls Old and New

I've often heard the term 'old soul,' without really knowing what it meant. But I think of Rodeo as an old soul. He has such a gentle demeanor and calmness about him (at least most of the time). And his piercing blue eyes make him seem far older than his years.

Bonny, on the other hand, is definitely a new soul. And I mean that in a positive way. She's full of boundless energy and enthusiasm, and everything in the world is new and exciting to her. For her, life seems all about possibilities.