Obstacles (not the metaphorical kind)

Wooo! Kola learned something from our terrible time last week. After a lesson of trying really hard to bring me the sheep and failing, this week was awesome. For one thing, I sent Kola a different direction. Usually I send her away from the fence so she has a chance to bend out. This week I sent her along the fence to make it easier for her to cover the draw from the fence. Kola looked at me like I was nuts, but she crept up the fence line and voila! I had some sheep. That was my shining moment of being the brains of the operation. After that I was just the target/oppose-able thumbs. We went through the Y-chute and Dave explained to me the error of my ways trying to approach it dead on. Then we did a blind chute? A blind something or other. its like a U chute. The sheep go in one way and one direction and follow the chute around a U turn and come out again right next to where they come in. I'm not describing it very well, but, no matter.
Kola did not want the sheep to go into either of these obstacles. Sheep going through obstacle != sheep balanced on handler. I cant really say I find this attitude displeasing. She is trying to do well. Now its my job to explain to her that we're re-defining a little bit what it means to do well. Dave thinks we might teach her some driving soon and I think that will help clarify things for her a lot.
We also tried penning for the first time. Kola tried her little heart out, and got super sick of having the sheep run around the pen every time. Eventually, between Dave coaching me and Kola getting tired of watching the sheep run around the pen, we got 3 out of 4 sheep into the pen. It was pretty cool! Call me crazy but I think Kola might wind up being a really good penning dog. I hope so anyway because I'm not going to shape up to be a very good penning handler so I need a good dog. My project for myself is to work on remembering that "uhhh, other way!" is not a flanking command.
In conclusion, squeeee!