All by ourselves

So Dave is out of commission this month and that leaves his students to practice on our own. Kola and I worked some 2008-born sheep in the big field. I like these sheep. They are very small, and they think they're very hungry. They are just light enough that they'll stop and eat if Kola stops to sniff grass, or get drawn to the fence and their buddies if Kola is sufficiently out of position. They are not so light that Kola cant work her way up to the slowest one and sniff its butt. Sheep-butt sniffing is kindof Kola's reward for getting the sheep to trust her. Its not a policy of mine but thats just the way it worked out. When she's wild they skitter off before she can sniff them, and when she's calm she can sneak up to them without pushing them past me.

Something that really helped our training session today was replacing a generic "AH!" reprimand with "out!" correction. When she gets a generic reprimand she stops herding and comes over to seek my forgiveness. Thats not what I'm looking for. Since the thing she does wrong most frequently is cut in too close, "out!" plus pressure seems to be getting the message across. She doesn't quit working the sheep anyway. She doesn't always swing out very wide. Actually she never swings out very wide but often she'll get out a little and almost always she'll stop cutting in further. These are both valuable things, and things I think I can shape further into a proper "out."

Saying "out" really helped her swing all the way around to the balance point when she wanted to come in too early and push the sheep in a circle. The other thing that really helped her balance was that I started turning deliberately towards her so that her being off center was even more inconvenient. See, she likes to hang a little bit to one side (her left side I think.) If the sheep are between us this pushes the sheep into me and I often wind up turning to get away from the sheep. When I turn with the sheep she's automatically on balance and thus rewarded for being off balance in the first place. So today, since these were such little sheep, I just shoved my way past them turning about 60 to 90 degrees in Kola's direction, which threw her way further off balance than a comparable turn in the other direction. I did this so often she started anticipating this and moved more towards the center. Yay!

One little guy broke off from the group and I ran with Kola to go get it. (Kola tends to chase rather than herd in these situations.) I got her thoughts more towards herding and she brought the sheep back to me, O.K. Then she sprinted ahead of me and I couldn't figure out why. Duh! She was going back for the sheep we left behind. That wasn't my plan but she couldn't know that. On the one hand, her leaving caused me to lose the sheep we were fetching in the first place. On the other hand, I like the fact that she is seeing ALL of her sheep.

She was pretty tired today, and she tends to melt a little in the sun. It makes it easier for her to go "easy." All in all I was pleased.

Also, Jesse re-proposed to me in the middle of the field when we were done with our sheep and gave me the diamond ring that had (unbeknown to me) just come in the mail. That was nice too.

Finally, I'm looking forward to Monday the 22nd because we are signed up for our first agility lesson with Chris Primmer. Should be fun.