Wednesday, December 26, 2012

First Try at Herding!

Coby went home last night, and things are a bit quiet around here. Sookie initially reverted to some old behaviors, like constantly pawing me while I'm working at the computer. So, I reverted to the old response: stand up and walk away. It didn't take very many times for her to get the message.

She unwittingly gave herself a good lesson on manners with guests this morning. A friend with a darling, sweet old chihuahua, Chalupa, visited us this morning. Sookie decided the visiting dog could not come in the living room, and Chalupa decided to play her "age card"..."I'm an old lady and I can go in the living room if I want to". Sookie flew into a tizzy at Chalupa, using some pretty nasty dog language...but in doing so, she accidentally knocked into a big empty popcorn tin that was sitting nearby with the lid partly on. The lid flew off with a clatter, the can made a huge crash, the sky fell, Sookie decided that her crate was plenty 'nuff territory to defend, and beat a hasty retreat before the rest of Armageddon happened. We humans just sat back and watched karma step in and handle the situation better than we could ever have done. Natural consequences are the best training device! After that, she was polite to the little dog.

This afternoon, Sookie had her first actual off-leash try at the sheep! We'd ventured into the sheep pen earlier, on-leash, but Sookie's whole attention was on sheep poop. So I decided that a better environment would be to let the sheep out on pasture where the sheep poop would be further apart and the sheep would be moving a lot. Instead of going in through the pen, we walked from the pasture to the pen, then let the sheep out. The sheep were overjoyed!

I mostly just watched, assessing her behavior with the sheep while being ready to intervene if a sheep decided to stand her down. At this stage, an attack by a big sheep could sour her to herding for a long time.

One of the runts was lagging behind, and I was pleased to see that Sookie was reluctant to pass it in order to keep up with the rest of the flock as they joyfully ran out to the pasture. Some dogs aren't careful to stay out of the middle of a group, and then things go really wonky as sheep move away from the dog in all directions. Sookie's reluctance to pass by the laggard kept the whole flock moving as a unit.

Once we were all out in the wide open space of the pasture, I waved at Sookie to go out around the flock, and she did...a very nice outrun at an adequate distance away from the greedily grazing sheep to keep the sheep calm, but still keeping a light contact with them, watching them all the time. She wasn't sure what to do when she got out there, though, and since the sheep aren't dog broke (trained to come to the handler when they see a dog), they didn't help us out. So at that point she shifted her attention back to me: "Mom......????? Now what?????"

I went to her and encouraged the sheep to move away from her, but by then she'd glued her attention back to me. So we went back around the sheep a bit to my starting point, and I waved her off around them in the other direction. Out she went again on a nice outrun, good as gold...just still not sure what to do when she got out there.

I don't want to call her to walk up on them until I know they won't stomp at her when I can't protect her. I don't want them to bully her and make her afraid to work. I'll be trying to find someone nearby with a good herding dog to come "dog break" the sheep, before we can make too much progress. But it was a good start.

She did sort of accidentally get the sheep moving again, by her presence; they decided to all run back to the sheep pen. Again, she was reluctant to pass the slow lamb, and looked like a pro "wearing" back and forth behind it, trying to get it to go faster. It didn't (spoiled bottle baby). So the flock got to the pen and "bounced" at the gate (even though it was open) and came back at us while we were approaching a wide intermediary gate. It was pretty comical because they all stopped right along the line of the open gate, as if there was an invisible wall, when they saw me and Sookie coming at them!

Then they headed for the pen again, and this time Sookie and I made them all go in. Sookie's "wearing" was actually very helpful in effecting this, and she got lots of praise!

She is pretty much a dream dog...at least if I can gradually wean her away from looking at me and get her to keep her attention on the sheep. She works on her feet, and doesn't "stick" in one spot, laying down eyeing the sheep. She is a natural at "wearing"--small dodging moves to the left and right that keep her on the sheep's radar and "steer" the sheep. She doesn't bark at them and go nuts, she doesn't run in too close and scatter them, she doesn't attack them, they seem calm around her. I'm very optimistic about training her to be a great working dog!

Afterwards, we went to the Romping Grounds for a reward. We're playing with three balls now, and she'll get them one at a time and put them in the bucket, sometimes even on the first try!



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