Training Notes for the Week

Yet another busy week.  The poor dogs had three very boring days (Tue-Thur) while I worked 10-12 hours at a stretch.  But I think I made it up to them.  On Monday I trained all four dogs at agility, and then the three girls in herding immediately afterwards.  Today they had plenty of entertainment running with Hannah’s family pack, which I was caring for for a few days.  Plus they got to spend a fair bit of time hiking, and Hannah got a solid hour of work and training in.  All four have been sound asleep since 7pm, and the house has been very quiet as I’ve caught up on some paperwork.

It’s been such a tiring week that I can barely remember what we did on Monday, but I’ll try to record at least the highlights.  I got to the agility arena late – I was scheduled for 10:30am but had some work to take care of in the morning and didn’t arrive until 11:05.  As I had to be out of there by 11:30, that meant spending 5 minutes with each dog.  Doing 5 minute training sessions is actually a very good way to train.  Ideally I would rotate through all four dogs several times, each doing 5 minutes. But that day I only worked each dog once.  Still, I think we accomplished a lot.

With Ross I am just getting him to focus on me in an arena environment.  I would like to someday do some Rally-O with him, so I did a bunch of obedience exercises with him around the equipment.  He’s not used to arenas or equipment, and gets highly distracted in environments that smell a lot like other dogs (especially if there are other dogs there, but even the scent of dogs past is enough to take his mind off of work). I’ve been keeping him on a leash in order to prevent him from blowing me off (and from peeing on the equipment, which is totally not cool in the agility world) and carrying yummy treats.  The first time I did this I had a hard time keeping his focus, but this week was better.  Ross and I have done these drills so many times that he falls into step pretty quickly, even with the distracting scents around him.  We worked on heeling on both sides, flying downs, recalls, pivots and figure-8’s in heel, and heeling while we walk backwards.  He did very well.

I next worked Kess.  She continues to amaze me with how quickly she picks things up.  This was our third time working in the arena, and the 5th or 6th time I’ve done any agility with her.  Yet she was easily sequencing 4-5 jumps at a time.  I merely pointed at a jump and she’d kick out and take it.  Truly astounding. She can be a rather excitable and easily over-stimulated dog, but despite her hyperactivity, her brain works really, really well.  She obviously totally gets the idea of agility.  So cool.

Mira also did well, although I continue to struggle with getting her to both enjoy, and understand the point of this sport.  She does fly over jumps, but still turns in to me after every obstacle to get her rewards (the tug).  I’ve done agility with her – off and on – for about two years now, and we still struggle to sequence more than 3 or 4 obstacles.  I really think she just sees agility as doing tasks for the reward of playing tug.  She is not transferring the joy of tugging to the joy of jumping, which is what is supposed to happen.  The idea is that if the dog gets a great reward for doing the jump, soon the jump itself becomes rewarding.  Mira is not being fooled by this psychological manipulation.  As much as she enjoys jumping while flying through the forest, jumping plastic bars remains a duty only made bearable because of the fun game of tug she gets to play after each one. Or two.  Or three… which is really pushing it.

Mira did do a nice sequence of jumps that ended with a tire.  She managed the jumps but didn’t know what to do with the tire.  I couldn’t remember if she’d done one before, so spent some time teaching her the tire.  She picked it up pretty quickly (ie. she’s to jump through the tire, not dodge under or around it) and did it over and over and over successfully.  However, for some reason she refused to jump through the tire after a jump. So while she would do it without any problem when we just worked on that one obstacle, as soon as I elongated the sequence to “jump – tire”, she just went under the tire.  When I dropped the tire to 6 inches off the ground, she dodged around it.  I tried a dozen times at least and she would not, or could not, do it.  We’ll try again next time.

Hannah was as brilliant as she always is at agility.  That dog can read my mind.  She has absolutely no trouble taking any jump, in any sequence I ask, regardless if I do a front cross, a rear cross or if I fall flat on my face and point with my foot.  I really should sign her up for the next agility trial and get going with her. She’s been more than ready to compete in a jumpers course for well over a year now.  I am also starting to work her on full contact equipment.  She has been doing her contacts for three years, but has never actually done full contact equipment (i.e. she can hop on the the bottom of the A-frame and target a piece of plastic on the ground put there to stop the dog from flying off the A-frame without touching the bottom portion, but she has never actually gone over an A-frame before last week). Our original instructor, who is very talented and brilliant and super wonderful to train with, is also very, very, very careful and precise in her training.  So Hannah has really great technique, but at nearly 4 years of age, she still can’t run a full course.  Time to change that.

Next we drove to the farm where I took all four dogs for a short hike in the hay-field before training.  I started with Hannah and worked on pace on the fetch.  I sent her on progressively longer outruns, but nothing too big. I really want to make sure that she listens well and takes her time bringing sheep to me before trying to work her too far away.  Hannah is capable of putting in open outruns (450 yard or longer) with no trouble. She runs fast and she runs big.  Her challenge is bringing the sheep to me calmly and in a straight line at that distance.  When she’s that far away I think she feels like she’s totally on her own and she doesn’t listen to a thing I ask.  So I have cut her outruns down to 100yards or so and am very, very gradually stretching them out.  Today (Friday) I let her do bigger outruns at the end of our training session, mostly because the sheep kept trying to dash back to the barn.  I noticed that while she did gallop them a bit, as soon as I said “Take your time!!” she went from a gallop to a trot, something that she would not have done even a couple of weeks ago.  This is a big improvement.

We have also been working on shedding.  I’m not sure if I’m doing it well, but we have been successfully splitting sheep and holding them apart.  I still can’t get thing set up very well to have her shed specific sheep, but she’s getting pretty good at coming in through any gaps I call her through, and driving off the sheep I point to.  Today we had plenty of opportunity to do so as the sheep were were working on seemed more than happy to split and form gaps.  What they didn’t want to do was flock!  That was a new challenge for Hannah, and it was interesting to see her bring back a single ewe who had run 50 feet away from the others, who were wanting to blast off in a different direction.  Hannah stood between them, trying to move the wayward ewe with her eye. I said very little figuring Hannah knew better than I how to handle this situation.  I was right and she put them back together after a good minute of staring.  The ewe kept turning her head left and and right, clearly trying to decide which way to go.  Hannah similarly shifted her gaze, each time turning the ewe’s head back towards the small group she had left (in hopes of making it back to the larger group).  Eventually, Hannah won.

Today I only worked Hannah because we were training on my old trainer’s sheep, and she has only given me permission to work Hannah.  She does not know Mira and Kess on sheep, and she obviously doesn’t trust my ability to start and train a dog.  I was caring for her dogs and her sheep for a few days while she was away, and I could have trained all three without her ever knowing.  But I would have felt guilty so I respected her wishes that I only train Hannah. Poor Hannah got her tailed worked off, however.  We spent a good hour on the field, practicing shedding, outruns, driving, and pace. Hannah’s not keen on drill training and I don’t think it’s ideal to train this way either. But I couldn’t help it. I love training and since I couldn’t switch her up for one of the others, we just kept going.  And being the devoted working girl that she is, Hannah just kept working.  The sheep were very light and flighty and didn’t flock well, which was a pain.  But this was also very good for practice as the sheep we’ve been training on are pretty cooperative.  It’s good to try different sheep and put our training to the test.

Mira and Kestrel did well on Monday.  I think the homeopathic remedy I gave Mira has helped clear her mind because she’s been thinking more clearly this week.  Both dogs have a tendency to be rather wild on sheep, and I decided it was time to put an end to that.  Mira will be three in December and is showing herself capable of taking pressure.  Kestrel also can take a fair bit of pressure from me, so I cracked down on both of them.  Mostly I wanted to stop them from running the sheep over me.  I can’t get over these damn sheep that have no trouble slamming into me at top speed.  The sheep I trained on today (Scottish Blackface) will do no such thing, being nearly as afraid of me as of the dogs.  I prefer this and hope to get this breed when I own my own sheep.  The fact that they are such pretty animals (wooly white sheep with curved horns, black socks and faces) doesn’t hurt!

I worked each of the young dogs in the round pen first to make sure I had a measure of control.  Since there is no gate on the field I had to use each dog to gather sheep to train on and bring them out of the barnyard and into the field. This is quite challenging and required me keeping them on a leash. Mira is almost ready to listen, but she still blows me off a bit too much. The barnyard is very tricky, and full of stuff that an animal could bet injured on (piles of wood etc.) so I have to keep things calm and quiet.  As such, I kept both young dogs on leashes until we were out in the field

Once working I insisted on some pace and obedience.  It was a challenge at first, but as they shook out their beans, they settled down and started working well.  Mira is definitely developing some new talents and ideas, which is great.  She’s now doing big outruns and coming in slowly at the top, even though I’ve never taught her that.  Most people teach the dog to lie down at the top, and then bring them on slowly to the sheep.  Mira is naturally coming in slowly, so I am so far skipping this step in training.  I lay her down once the sheep get moving and ask her to bring them to me at a quiet pace.  This is not quite happening, but I’m pretty happy with what she’s doing.

Kestrel was frustrating me by refusing to wear smoothly.  She is happy to hold sheep to me in a straight line but when I start to turn, she ricochets around the sheep to get to their heads.  Or, she just pushes them past me and tries to drive them away.  I wasn’t sure what to do but started to really get after her whenever she’s set a toe out of line with respect to holding sheep to me. I  was pleased to see that she figured things quickly (really, no surprise there) and within 10 minutes was holding sheep to me nicely while I walked figure-8’s and s-curves around the field.

I have signed Hannah and Kestrel up to a training clinic next weekend.  I’m hoping it will be fun.  I am allowed to run two dogs a day, for both days.  There are several levels of dogs at this clinic, but most are either “puppy” or Pro-Novice/Ranch.  I wanted to work Mira but she’s more advanced than a puppy, but not advanced enough for the other group.  Kestrel could probably still benefit from the puppy group, so I decided to put her and Hannah into the clinic, and Mira and I will continue to muddle along.  While I’d like some professional guidance with Mira, I don’t want to put her in a situation where we will be under too much pressure. We still have a lot to figure out, but it seems our path continues to be one that only the two of us can follow.

On Barking and Thunderphobia

This morning I took Ross and Mira out for a hike together.  These are the two that I have to keep an eye on if we run into other dogs, and so I was hoping to run them early enough in the day that we simply wouldn’t encounter anyone.  However, being an unseasonably warm and sunny day in November, others had the same idea.  We only encountered two groups of people, one with a dog, and one without.  Each time I either saw, or intuited that someone was coming (I have this uncanny “spidey” sense around when to leash my dogs) before we actually ran into them.  I leashed up both dogs and then proceeded to pass the other hikers.  Each time Mira barked her little head off the instant she saw the others approaching.  While Ross only barks when up close to another dog, Mira sets off the alarm the second she discovers we’re not alone in the woods.  It doesn’t matter if they have a dog or not, although she almost turns herself inside out if there is one.

Mira reacts the same way whether or not she’s on a leash.  Yesterday I had her out with Hannah, and we ran into two beautiful Irish Water Spaniels.  The other dogs were off leash so I  left mine free too.  Mira charged up, barking her little head off, hackles raised and pranced around the other dogs.

She gets over it pretty quickly, and settles down and interacts more or less appropriately after the initial 1-2 minutes.  Interestingly, she doesn’t react at all when meeting other border collies.  All my dogs behave differently when we meet other border collies; they are much more relaxed, as if meeting a long lost friend.  But Mira is downright fearful of non-border collie dogs.

After our walk, I came home to a very quiet house.  Hannah and Kestrel were up in my bedroom, locked in with bones to keep them busy while we were gone.  As I came in the house, I heard their footsteps, but not a sounds emerged from that room. Not a yip, not a bark.  Normally when I come home, it’s pandemonium.  There’s so much barking I can’t hear myself think.  But with Mira (and Ross) out of the equation, the other two are quite silent.

This evening I took Hannah and Kestrel for a run just before sundown (I can’t believe it’s pitch black at 6pm, thanks to the time change!). We also encountered two new dogs, a Malamute and a black Shepherd mix.  Both intimidating dogs.  All dogs were off-leash, and when they met there was not a sounds.  No one barked, no one fussed.  The other owners started calling their dogs back, so I whistled once and my two came flying back without hesitation.

The difference between how Mira reacts and how the other two do (Ross is not included here because he is not all border collie) is night and day.  Border collies should be quiet dogs; they are not supposed to bark and fuss and make all sorts of noise.  This is something I quite like about the breed.  I was very dismayed when Mira turned out to be such a noisy thing.  It’s really irritating.  She barks at everything and anything.  A squirrel running by, a strange sound, the cat she lives with, my roommate coming out of the bathroom with a towel on her head.  If Mira was a human, she would be labeled “extrovert” as everything that passes through her head comes out her mouth.  It’s as if she is announcing everything, all the time.  ”Alert, alert!!  Terrifying Monster…. oh, it’s just a squirrel…”  ”Alert, alert!!!  Terrifying Monster… oh, it’s just the cat…”  ”Alert, alert!!!  Terrifying Monster… oh, it’s just our roommate…”

I really wonder what’s going on in her wee head.  Then again, maybe I don’t want to know.  The world seems like such a scary place to her.

On a positive note, the homeopathic remedy I gave her two days ago seems like it might be helping with one aspect of her fear. Since the day I first moved to this house and left her outside during some fireworks while we ate supper, and she subsequently escaped the yard and got lost, she has become thunderphobic.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, given how sensitive she is to external stimuli, but I am not happy to see this develop.  In a dog as naturally reared as she is, I really shouldn’t see any of these behaviours, and especially not this one.  It’s been an interesting learning experience for me to observe behaviours, and age of onset of these behaviours, which I had previously blamed on environmental factors such as vaccines and kibble, still rearing their ugly heads in their absence.  I do believe these factors are at least partially to blame, having damaged previous generations.  Certainly I wouldn’t want to see what Mira would turn out like if she were fed Old Roy and repeatedly vaccinated!  But perhaps there’s something else going on too.

Why the onset of thunderphobia at age 2.5, which is common in conventionally reared dogs?  Is there something that happens at that age?  Is it just a coincidence, with the phobia being linked to the experience of being lost?  Or is there some physiological change causing over-sensitivity?  I don’t have an answer for that, or even a speculation.  Except perhaps that there definitely is some change in a dog when it reaches this age of maturity.  Mira has in many other ways settled down nicely since turning two, and Hannah changed even more at age three. All in good ways.  Hannah became more confident, calm, relaxed.  Mira has also calmed down, no longer constantly pacing and getting into stuff, and otherwise being a puppish (that’s Kestrel’s job now).  But she’s also become more insecure.  She’s clingy, jealous and a bit bitchy with the other dogs, and now somewhat thunderphobic.  I don’t like seeing a progression in this direction, especially after two years of steady improvement before that.  I really hope it doesn’t continue.

I decided to give Mira a dose of a homeopathic remedy indicated for anxiety and also sound sensitivity, particularly thunderphobia.  The next day she was quirkier than usual, suggesting a possible aggravation. Aggravations are not idea, indicating that you probably gave too strong a dose, but they can also mean that you are at least giving a remedy that is having impact on the vital force along the lines of the symptoms I am hoping to improve.  Seeing them get worse is often what happens before they get better (although ideally you give a gentle enough dose that you only see improvement, without the aggravation.  Aggravations can be miserable).  I didn’t bother working her that day, having learned the hard way that if I see signs of an aggravation in the dogs, it’s best to let them be quiet and not to ask for anything until it passes.

That was two days ago.  During this morning’s hike, we heard a lot of gunfire.  The last time we heard gunfire Mira glued herself to my leg for the rest of our walk, and then hovered about me during subsquent walks even when guns were  not going off.  Today she flinched when the guns fired, and even trotted back to me for a second or two, but then she went back to running about.  There were at least a dozen gun blasts during our time in the woods (all coming from the far side of the river so I hoped we were safe), and – other than checking in with me after each bang – Mira stayed calm and continued to enjoy herself the entire time.  That is a nice change and I hope it holds.  Time will tell.

Healing Power of The Inner Wolf

Another busy week.  But it wasn’t that bad.  I worked only two days away from home – Tuesday and Thursday.  Thursday I was even home a bit early, at 6pm.  So the dogs haven’t been too neglected.  I had them out to the farm Monday and Friday, and Wednesday we went hiking and then to agility, followed by a trip to the chiropractor. They seem pretty content – relatively mellow around the house, and not too clingy with me.  This seems to be a good balance.

Wednesday afternoon I loaded all four dogs into the car and took them to the conservation area for a run.  I usually only take one or two at a time, but lately it has been so deserted that I figured there’d be a strong likelihood that I’d have the place to myself and could let all four run as much as they wanted.  I was right.  What a wonderful option this is for me.  I’m not good at estimating distances, but based on farms I know, I’d say this conservation are is a good 200 acres of forest, meadows, streams and a marsh.  When I explore the back paths, it takes about 1.5 hours to do a full loop of the perimeter.  And much of the time, I have the whole place to myself.  This is the sort of area I need to live near, until I have property of my own.  It’s amazing to let the dogs run free in such wilderness.  It does something to them; it brings out their inner wolf – a magical, healing state of being.  They can express their wildness to their heart’s content.  They run, they stock, they chase.  They mouse, they hunt.  And then they return gentle, quiet, relaxed; once again domestic beasts.

I discovered the healing power of the inner wolf when I first brought Ross home.  He was such a broken soul, physically and mentally.  I used to call him my puddle dog – he would lie like a black puddle of fur at my feet, moving only to get up and follow me, settling in a fresh puddle wherever I stopped.  I never knew that animals could be depressed before, but Ross was definitely depressed.  There was a big, black hole of sadness surrounding him.  I had seen the sadness before I took him home, and it had disturbed me.  Others had noticed it too.  It was part of the reason his last home had given him to me.  They knew he needed something that they were not able to provide.

Every day I took Ross for hikes in the woods.  There, he would come alive.  He was a different dog.  He was my little back wolf, running wild and free.  I wondered if he had ever had the opportunity to run in a forest before.  I suspect he hadn’t, having been found roaming the back alleys of New York City.  And while his rescuers lived in the country, they kept him in a fenced area, or on leash.

I let him run free.

During those early walks, Ross would run and run and run and run and run.  It was like he had to make up for all the running he had missed in his first couple of years.  Or perhaps he was running for the joy of a healing body, once so broken and full of pain.  He would go absolutely wild, racing and charging, chasing squirrels, and leaping about just for the joy of it all.  It brought tears to my eyes to watch him.  Tears of joy, but also tears of sorrow, wondering what exorcism he was undertaking.  I wondered what demons he was running from, or – hopefully – chasing away.  I’ve never encountered such an emotionally complex dog.

Today Ross is not so frantic about his freedom.  Over time, the inner wolf healed his injuries, and – more importantly – his heart.  It has been a long time since I have seen the puddle dog; the black and sadness is gone, hopefully for good.  It took several years, but Ross seems to believe finally that this is permanent.  That he will always have this freedom, and this ability to let loose his inner wolf.

More Steps on the Learning Curve

I took the dogs to the farm last night to work sheep for the first time in two weeks.  It was a beautiful, sunny day and it felt great to be out in the fields again.  I really love being outside, and so do the dogs.

I started with Hannah, who I needed to sort out some sheep from the main flock and bring them out to the big pasture to train where there are fewer draws.  I have been watching Alasdair McCrae’s shedding video, which I borrowed from a friend.  I have to say it is very helpful!  I had a lot of new ideas and wanted to practice them with Hannah. The basics involve getting the sheep to string out and then calling your dog through a gap between some sheep, and having the dog come around behind you while you step through the gap.  Kevin Evans had shown me how to do this when I took his clinic last spring, but I have not been successful with this method.  Watching the video gave me new ideas on how to do it.  Specifically, I need to work with more sheep, and ideally ones who would happily separate.

Alasdair talks a lot about the importance of using the right kind of sheep for introductory training.  For example, in this case you want sheep who will split easily, ideally using two different breeds of sheep from different flocks, so they won’t stick together.  That is unfortunately not an option in my case.  The sheep I use are really dog broke, which means they run to the person and stick to your knees.  Even when you get them strung out in a line, when the dog comes in, the group behind you.  Alasdair warns that you should simply not try to teach shedding with such sheep (I watched that part of his video last night, after trying and trying with Hannah earlier in the day).  If the dog continually fails to shed, then it will lose confidence, and stop trying.

I did see this happening with Hannah, even before watching that part of the video, and stopped trying to shed during that training session.  I had an idea, which I will get to in a minute.  Instead, I worked on other things with Hannah, specifically testing her pace to see how much she remembered from our last session.  I was delighted to see Hannah work with beautiful pace; she obviously remembered everything, even though we just spent one day working on it.  What a good girl!  Now I think it will be safe to gradually stretch out her outruns again.  That will be our next project.

Next I worked with Kess, who was brilliant and lovely as usual.  She was doing a better job of keeping the sheep to me even when I stepped out of the way, so I started doing little tiny outruns with her.  She actually got it, instead of just walking in on the sheep and pushing them away from me.  She’s going to be a great driving dog, but I do need her to gather first.

Kess also continues to be way too pushy.  I don’t want to take that out of her, but I am also sick of being run over by sheep.  Time to get some pace on that dog.  I first moved around a lot, to let her get a bit tired, then I started asking for pace.  She has a quick but steady pace, and I was happy with what she did.  I will slow her down more later, but as long as she’s not running me over, for now I am happy.

Mira, unfortunately, didn’t work consistently last night.  I never know what to expect when I take her out.  Some days she’s fantastic, others she is not.  Last night I didn’t set things up well, so things started off tense.  I brought her out with Hannah, wanting to use Mira to help me with shedding when we were done training.  I should have brought her out on a leash, but I didn’t.  The two dogs didn’t work very well together – they havn’t done much of that.  Mira won’t lie down well, so she kept bumping the sheep, then Hannah would head and stop them.  This led to a sheep sandwhich, making the sheep nervous and edgy.  Then I worked Mira, who is tense at the best of times, and a tense dog with tense sheep is not an ideal situation.  Mira did do a few really nice moves, such as an impressive outrun to catch them when they got away.  She stayed deep and wide and then came in slowly at the top for a lovely lift.  I’ve never seen her do that before and was very impressed.  But then she started being goofy after that.  She was either way too tight, bumping the sheep and running me over with them, or going so wide that she was off contact and they’d just stop and graze.  It took her a good 20 seconds to walk in to the point that they moved at one point.  She shouldn’t be going that far off contact!

I find that I have to be quite mechanical with Mira, often telling her what to do when she should really be doing it instinctively.  She’s always been like this, and while she steadily improves, days like yesterday leave me questioning (once again) just how far I’ll be able to get her.  I think she has enough talent to make a decent working dog, but the question remains – do I have enough knowledge and skill to bring that talent out?  I am not sure.  But we will keep trying.

Once I finished working with Mira (who’s really getting solid on her flanks, which makes me very happy), I tried my little shedding experiment.  I tied Mira to a post on the fence line and then had Hannah bring the sheep to that general area.  I stood about 10 feet in front of Mira, and Hannah brought the sheep to my feet.  My idea is that if Mira was behind me, the sheep wouldn’t want to go there.  So instead of hiding behind me, they’d run to either side, allowing Hannah to split them.

I think this would have worked if I had done it right at the start, and if I had brought Mira out on a leash and kept everything quiet.  But the sheep were too rattle, and this was causing them to stick together (and to my knees) like glue.  It was getting dark, we were failing, so I called it quits.  Next time I will be more careful to keep the sheep calm.  I will also select sheep from different parts of the herd in hopes of getting some who are not “friends” and thus more likely to split.

Back at Agility

Yesterday I took Hannah and Kestrel to agility.  There is a trainer about 25 minutes from me who offers lessons and also is willing to rent out her arena.  When I spoke to her on the phone earlier this week, it quickly became clear to me that she’s had a lot of people come to her facility who didn’t know what they were doing, and either accidentally or intentionally made a mess of things.  As a result, she has a lot of rules about being on her property.  I respect this, and offered to take a private lesson with her prior to renting her facility so that she could show me the ropes directly, and also get a feel for me and my dogs.  Actions, after all, speak louder than words.

We just worked Hannah and the instructor showed me the various courses she has set up this week.  She changes them weekly.  Her facility is really nice. The building is very large, the equipment is excellent, and the ground hard packed, slightly moist sand (so there’s no dust). I can only imagine how much it cost to put up.  I wonder how she can rent it for just $10 an hour.  Not that I am complaining!

Hannah was in her element.  She really loves agility and was over the moon to be back in the arena.  She performed magnificently even though I truly can’t remember when we last seriously trained.  I lost count of how many times the instructor exclaimed “what a nice little dog!”  I think by the end of the hour, she felt much more comfortable about trusting me with her arena and equipment.

After the lesson ended, the instructor told me I was welcome to spend a little time training Kess on my own.  Wow, that dog is fun to work with.  Agility is very different from herding because in agility, the dog is totally focused on you.  With herding, it’s about the sheep.  And with a young dog like Kess, you sometimes aren’t in the picture at all.  Herding is a working partnership, while agility is a game.  The dynamics are very, very different. I have long said I think they are complementary, and Hannah is an excellent example of that.  She’s a very serious worker around stock, and a light hearted whiz at agility.

Kestrel was similarly excited about learning the equipment.  I had her sequencing three jumps within seconds and taught her the tunnel in about two attempts. I had closed up the tunnel and helped her through.  She went through under my guidance once, twice, and then figured out that this was a game and that was that.  She loved it and dove hard and fast through the tunnel.  I started to stretch the tunnel out, then bend it.  By the time she was on her 10th go (ever), she was driving through a full-length, curved tunnel faster than I could run it.  Woo hoo!  This is going to be a fun dog to run.  She is fast and confident, but still very focused on me.  What an exciting combination.

I am going to start doing agility at least once a week now, taking the occasional lesson and training regularly on our own.  I’ll bring Mira in the future and see if I can get her up and going with the same enthusiasm as the others.  Today, however, we’re heading up to the farm to work sheep for the first time in two weeks.  It’s turning out to be a good weekend for the dogs!

And the Culprit is…

Tonight I watched the dogs carefully, tracking who went where and checking my room after each time one went up the stairs.  Of course, nobody soiled the carpet.  Counting my blessings, I hopped into the shower to get ready for bed.  When I came out, there was a nice little land mine waiting for me in the bedroom.  I can’t win!

This time, however, I at least know who it was; surprise, surprise, it was Kestrel.  I had given her a bone this morning to keep her occupied in her crate as I knew it was going to be yet another long day.  She eats bones right down, and then poops non-stop for the next 24 hours.  Bone stool is dry and very light in colour, so quite distinct.  She’s the only one who has had a bone in the last two days, so there is no doubt about who left the deposit on my carpet. Bad puppy!

It’s frustrating that she is doing this because she spends a lot of time outside, so why is she then pooping in the house?  I’ll have to put some thought into this.  Is she just too busy while outside?  Is she not running around enough to get things moving, so to speak?  One problem is that she doesn’t have any way of letting me know when she needs to go out.  I need to teach her how to use the bell like the other girls.

Hopefully now that I know who’s behind this (although I still wonder if Mira is also defiling my bedroom…) I can fix the problem.  Certainly from now on it will be entirely my fault if it happens again.

The Mystery of the Phantom Pooper

I came upstairs to my bedroom this evening to find a nice deposit waiting for me on the bedroom floor.  Again.  This is getting really tiring.  Ok, downright irritating.

I assume that it is Mira who has been pooping on my floor nearly every day this week, considering her past record of similar behaviour.  But I’m not 100% sure.  After all, there are four dogs in the house.  I know for certain that it is not Ross as he’s always at my side, and would never do such a thing anyway.  Except on the rare occasion when suffering from acute diarrhea, Ross has never once soiled in the house.  Hannah is exceptionally clean as well, and tonight was sleeping on her stool in the livingroom while I was working, so I know it wasn’t her.

That leaves Mira or Kestrel, both of whom were in and out of my room this evening while I was downstairs.  Kess has never been one to poop in the house since she’s come to live with us, but it’s not impossible that she’s started.  After all, Mira was in my room all day today, free, and didn’t do anything.  Kess, on the other hand, was in a crate all day. Mira had plenty of chance to poop on the floor during the day, so why would she suddenly do it 30 minutes after I got home, and after she’d been outside?

I hate to jump to conclusions, but that exactly is the sort of thing that Mira does.  This drives me nuts about her. Her little brain has never quite fired right, and despite her immense improvements, she remains a little ‘off.’  Furthermore, Kess and Hannah are both due to come into heat in the next couple of weeks, and Mira went through a similar bought of pooping in the house right before their last heat cycles.  Perhaps Mira is actually intentionally pooping as a form of marking.  She definitely is competition with Kestrel in a way that she isn’t with Hannah.  Perhaps Mira pooped on the floor because I let Kess out.

Who knows?

The only way I’ll know for sure is if I have one of the crated the next time it happens.  That should be easy enough to set up and I will perhaps try it tomorrow.  Once I know which dog is causing the problem, I can take measures to fix it.  I already tried giving Mira her homeopathic remedy – which has resolved this issue in the past – but it doesn’t seem to be working this time. I have long suspected that this remedy is not her true constitutional but simply one that was helping but that would eventually stop working.  So I guess I need to find another that might work.  I’m going to have to put some thought and research into this, which I don’t have time for at the moment, so crating and barricading will be the way to go.  Once I figure out who the culprit is…

Visit to a Puppymill

When I did a lot of rescue work, one particular kennel was well over-represented in terms of how many dogs came in from there.  Every year at least half a dozen dogs came into rescue from this place, which is a big portion of the number of dogs the rescue actually handled.  The head of rescue was always furious about this and was hoping to find some way to shut this person down.  She figured the breeder, to produce so many dogs, must be keeping the dogs in terrible condition, and if only someone could do a visit and find out, perhaps a complaint could be filed.

When I moved to my new house this summer, I was shocked to drive by a big sign on the side of the road with this kennel name.  So here it is, just  a few minutes away from me!  I don’t do rescue anymore (simply no room for any more dogs!) so I did nothing.  But today, for some reason, curiosity got the best of me and I decided to stop in and check this place out.

I was expecting a horrible experience, but was surprised to discover that the dogs were in clean quarters and that there were only four of them: two bitches and two dogs.  He said he had another bitch out for breeding.  He let one pair out for me to meet and they had lovely temperaments and looked to be in good health.  Well, as good health as is possible on a crappy diet, for their teeth and coats made it obviously the were eating cheap kibble.  I was disturbed by the fact that one of the bitches is 10 years old and is still being bred.  I can only imagine how many litters she’s had by now, poor thing.  But she seemed happy and had a decent sized yard to run in.

In other words, while I wouldn’t buy a puppy there and support his breeding practices, I found nothing that appeared to be in violation of any kind of laws.  Of course there are no laws against breeding a 10 year old bitch.  I was expecting much worse, and have seen worse in breeders with supposedly good reputations.  I suppose if he breeds three bitches twice a year, that ends up being a lot of puppies, and his prices are below market value.  He asked nothing about me, although I mentioned that I had had border collies for years.  So I suspect he’d sell to anyone, especially if he’s producing 40 puppies or more a year.  This is the essence of the problem.  His dogs are decently kept but he simply produces more puppies than he can find appropriate homes for.  As such, his dogs end up in rescue in disproportionate numbers.  On the bright side, he is quite elderly and hopefully won’t be continuing to breed like this for too much longer.

A Little Brain Work

I thought the dogs had an appointment with the chiropractor this afternoon so I made sure to work my schedule around this.  Then I found out that the adjustments are to happen next week.  How wonderful to have some found time!  I arrived home at 3pm from a trip out of town for my research, and was delighted that I didn’t have to rush the dogs across the county.  Instead, I loaded Ross and Mira into the car and took them to the conservation area.

It is so beautiful there these days!  I took over 100 photos when I was there on Saturday at sunset.  I am in the process of uploading my favourites and will post them in the next couple of days.  The fall colours are gorgeous this year.  Usually, in this region, the fall colours are rather subdued shades of browns, golds and rusts.  But with the early onset of cold, the colours are more vivid.  Still not much vibrant red, but the oranges are deep and the golds are brilliant.  It’s all I can do to stay indoors, even when it is overcast and raining.

This week they were doing some construction in the conservation area, building a bridge to cross a stream that until now you had to balance on a log not to get wet going over it.  I appreciate the bridge, but the destruction to the path was horrible!  They brought in a back hoe and various heavy duty machinery that absolutely chewed up the trail, ripped up tree roots and have left the whole thing a muddy mess.  I am really beginning to wonder about this place – is it really a conservation area?  Perhaps their lack of regard for leaving huge environmental footprints is why they also don’t mind off-leash dogs.  I suppose I shoudn’t complain, if that’s the case.  The dogs sure love to run there.

Because of the construction, I ventured off to the other side of the park and found a trail I had not explored before.  Perhaps the falling leaves made it’s existence more obvious, because I know I have come to that point before and not seen a trail there.  I explored it and found a good 30-40 minute loop that looks to be rarely used.  It goes up a huge hill (thus eliminating all hikers but the stout of heart) and along a ridge, before plunging down into the valley along the stream. I’m not 100% sure it’s still part of the conservation area, but the only signs said “no motorized vehicles.”  I figured if someone bothered putting up signs, they’d tell you ‘no tresspassing’ if they didn’t want you there.  Since no such signs existed, we carried on.

Once back home with two tired dogs, I decided to do some long over-due yard work rather than take the other two back to the conservation area.  Running the dogs in shifts is a gigantic pain in the ass.  Each dog gets about 1.25 hours of exercise, and it takes me nearly 4 hours for that to happen.  I get about 2.5 hours of exercise, which I suppose is a good thing.  But I’d much rather walk for 2.5 hours with all four dogs and have us all get really fit.  As it is, they get sufficient exercise to stay in shape, but not to be in really top form. I guess it doesn’t really matter as they don’t really need to be any fitter than they are, considering they are not working full-time, nor competing.  But still, I hate spending so much time and having them benefit only a quarter of it each.

Once I got the bulk of my yard work done (comprising predominantly putting stuff away for winter), I pulled out my agility equipment and spent some time working with Kestrel and Hannah.  Both were really fabulous. Kess catches on extremely quickly, and within one or two tries I had her sequencing.  She is insanely keen, just like she’s keen to work stock.  I signed her (and Hannah) up for agility lessons starting in two weeks with one trainer, and this Saturday with another.  The Saturday lesson is an orientation of a local facility that I can rent weekly to train in.  I expect I’ll train regularly with the other trainer, and rent this place to practice in.  I’ll be taking lessons every other week and we’ll work both dogs during a 1-hour private lesson.  I actually prefer group classes for socialization purposes, but there aren’t any openings right now

I also spent some time working with Ross and Mira.  Ross is so much fun – I just love doing obedience work with him! The trainer I’ll be meeting with in two weeks also teaches Rally-O and I’m considering signing Ross up for that if I can afford it.  I have always wanted to give Rally a try with him and I think we’d have a blast.  Poor Mira is being left out of this equation!  She is a bit frustrating to do agility with. She doesn’t really care for it at all.  She loves to tug, and will do the equipment in order to play tug, but you can tell she’s doing it grudgingly.  At this point she has not really turned on to the idea so getting her to do agility is like pulling teeth.  I don’t really want to be spending money on lessons with her at this point, so will just train her on my own and if she starts to enjoy it more, we’ll re-evaluate.

It was really fun to do a little agility training with the dogs.  I haven’t done any since July and I do miss it.  The dogs really love it, even Mira likes the idea of training with me, she’s doesn’t get the whole jumping over pieces of plastic business.  I guess considering the incredible natural agility field she just ran her heart out in, I can understand.

Late Night

Ack!  It’s 2:05 am.  How did that happen?  I was all ready to go to bed at 8pm, then decided I might have enough energy to process the pears that had been sitting patiently in my fridge since last weekend.  I already let 36lbs of pears spoil and have to put them in the composter (where is a pig when you need one!) and I didn’t want these ones to experience a similar fate.  So I turned them into pear ginger jam, with a few modifications from this recipe.  For one, I used honey instead of sugar, in a ratio of 1 cup of honey per 7 cups of sugar called for.  I find I just can’t bear how sweet most jams are, plus honey is far sweeter than cane sugar.  I use a quarter to a third the volume of sugar called for in recipes when I substitute honey, and find it plenty sweet.  The outcome of my pear jam is a sweet, thick, sauce-like substance that looks like apple sauce and has quite a kick.  I’m not sure if I like it or not.  I will have a better idea in the morning when I try some on toast.

Throughout all this the dogs have been sleeping quietly.  Ross, Hannah and Mira were flaked out in the living room.  Kestrel had insisted on staying outside long after everyone else as that way she could collect all the bones in the yard (I’ve given them several meals in a row with big bones in them that the dogs can’t eat completely).  I looked out at one point to see her lying in the grass surrounded by at least half a dozen bones.  She looked mighty pleased with herself.  Eventually she asked to come in and, given that the others were all asleep on various living room furniture pieces, she plunked herself at my feet and ate scraps of pears from the compost bucket.

Kess is a very personable dog who is happy to hang out with me when there is no competition in the room.  Ross also likes to sleep at my feet, and when he’s near me, Kess tends to go off into another room, or even upstairs.  I feel bad about this.  She’s not really a loner as otherwise she’d behave independently whether Ross was around or not.  But she’s quite different when she has me to herself.  I sometimes wonder if I am doing her a disservice by keeping her.  Would she be happier in another home?  In a home where she doesn’t have to compete against some pretty intense dogs for my attention?  She might be.  But then I wonder if I could find such a home, that would also allow her to work while feeding her raw and keeping her away from any toxic chemicals.  She has been in a conventional rearing home when I got her, and she was a mess.  It’s possible that she can’t even tolerate kibble.

So my mind goes around and around, but the bottom line is that placing her in another home still feels really, really wrong.  It has since day one, and still does today.  So here she stays and I am doing my best to make her feel welcome.  On a positive note, since it’s turned cold Ross has been sleeping on the bottom corner of the bed.  As a result, his bed on the floor is empty.  The last two nights in a row, Kestrel has quietly come up the side of the bed, asked for a few cuddles, then curled up in Ross’s bed and slept there all night.  I’m very pleased with this, both that she has the courage to come join the rest of us, and that she’s able to sleep quietly through the night.

Speaking of which, I am really long overdue for bed.  The animals have all put themselves to bed and now it’s my turn.