Winter Evening Rambling

I just battled my way home through the first real winter storm we’ve had this year.   We’re getting the north tip of a big storm that is pummeling (once again) much of the US Northeast.  They really are getting blasted this year!  I usually love snow but given my long commute, I’ve been grateful not to have to fight snow on top of it all.  I expect there will be a few more snow days before the winter gives way to spring, but we’re well on our way now.

The dogs had another long day at home without me.  I was at my parents house over the weekend, getting more work done on my back.  So travel, plus having to grade 160 exams and then prepare a lecture for today made for a very busy few days.  I’m sleeping horribly of late, despite all the work by my osteopath, massage therapy and homeopath.  As a result, it’s been tough finding extra energy to get them out for exercise, let alone train, although I have done some.  We have agility tomorrow and I didn’t get nearly enough practice in since our last lesson.  Drat.  Fortunately I have 12 days off starting Thursday and I can’t wait! I was going to take the dog out to the farm and work sheep, but given the weather, it might not be an option.  Perhaps I’ll stick to my plan of taking January and February off after all.

I have a bit of a dilemma – I’ve been offered more work for next year.  Now this would be great, except I’ve already accepted enough work to keep me busy full-time. It’s exciting to be in demand (for teaching) at long last, so I am not complaining.  However, the pay is extremely low.  Taking on more work will of course mean more money – and who doesn’t need more money these days?  But it will be at the expense of time.  That said, if I have this degree done and over with, maybe I will be able to do it.  I need to put more thought into it.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I am working with a new homeopath, and this week she had me take a higher potency of the remedy that she identified for me.  On Sunday night I took a 1M dose.  I haven’t noted any big earth shattering change but I am feeling generally not too bad these days.  Even with all this work and long days, I am not sliding back into my exhaustion states that I was experiencing last year, and especially since the car accident.  So I think it is indeed helping.  Homeopathy works by helping you feel more like yourself.  As such, it’s hard to really identify how it helps you.  You just suddenly start being able to be…you, more easily.  I am getting work done, staying positive, not getting upset by things that used to send me flying into a rage or tears, and catching myself whistling away or singing songs I made up.

I am also experiencing a few ‘aggravation’ symptoms from this remedy, specifically canker sores.  Yuck! I hate them, and my mouth is full of them.  It hurts to eat, talk and smile.  My teeth ache.  I can’t wait for this to go away.  I am very sensitive in general and often experience aggravations if the potency is a bit too strong.  When I first started homeopathy, I experienced periods of uncontrollable sobbing (like for four days), which is probably why I feel so calm now – I let several decades of built up suppressed grief out all at once!  Not pleasant but I sure feel better now.  Still, it would be nice if I could get to feeling better without suffering these side-effects.  At least they are just on a physical level now, which now that I think of it means I have done A LOT of healing.  My mental state (the deepest level of health) is better than I think it’s been in my whole life, so with time my body should catch up.  My only regret is that I didn’t find out about this earlier.

I am rambling tonight with no clear point to this post.  I have a number of things I want to write about in more detail but they will have to wait until I am more clear headed.  I was going to light a fire and sit here and write for a couple of hours but now I think I am just going to go to bed.  I took some photos of the dogs and of the beach the other day, and will try and get them up, maybe tomorrow.  I’ll take a few more after this storm is done.  For now I am going to enjoy the howling wind from inside my snug (although not that warm without the fire going) home.  Good night!

Struggling to Keep Up

Today I have to grade 160 exams.  This is really not going to be fun.  Usually this time of year I am crazy busy (as I am again this year) but we have plenty of snow on the ground so training is not possible.  I take this as a good excuse to give the dog a couple of months off while I work.  A lot.  When we go for hikes the dogs get fantastic work-outs in the deep snow, and I don’t feel too guilty about not doing much else with them.

This year we have no snow.  At all.  Even with yesterday’s massive blizzard that blanketed much of the US south of us, I look out my window and see grass.  Fortunately most of the ice has now sublimated so the dogs can run again.  I took them for a good long hike on Wednesday and yesterday I played soccer in the yard (on the steep hill behind our house) until they were all panting hard.  I also did some brain work in the house, but I’m now out of treats and need to make more.

Yesterday Kess was a right royal nuisance she was so full of beans.  I had to try several desperate measure to get her to settle, none of which really worked very well.  I put her outside with a fresh bone and that kept her busy for some time.  I can’t leave her out all the time because she starts barking at people walking past, squirrels, clouds, who knows?  She doesn’t bark a lot but it is becoming more frequent. Obviously a self-reinforcing behaviour and I don’t want it enforced any further.  So in she comes the second she starts to bark.

Next I did some box work with her.  I put the box down that we have been working with and she immediately jumped in and sat down.  She is such a quick study!  That is where we ended things on Wednesday and she clearly got that this is what was wanted of her.  Good girl.  Then I flipped the box over and shaped her into sitting on top of it.  The box was a bit wobbly and she didn’t like that much.  But she did finally get it after about 4-5 minutes and got to finish the treat bowl (which contained roast lamb, so she was pretty happy about that!).

I hoped these things would settle her but no luck.  She was constantly pacing about the house, tossing toys about which is fine, but annoying when you’re trying to work.  Click, click, click.  Bang!  Click, click, click.  Bang!  Finally I took them out and played soccer on the hill.  That did the trick. I will likely do the same today.  I would have taken them for a hike in the conservation area but I received a phone call from my homeopath that lasted 2.5 hours (we were doing a follow-up on my case which requires a lot of detail).  By the time we were done it was 4pm and that’s when others are out walking their dogs.  There’s still enough ice on the paths to make walking four dogs on leash past other dogs quite dangerous, so I opted out.

I was also being lazy.  I’m really tired and starting to feel quite run down these days.  I have so much work piled up it’s staggering and I hardly know where to start.  I can’t seem to get into a good routine of just getting up in the morning and either working or running dogs.  I putter, check my email, write in my blogs etc.  The next thing I know I’ve wasted hours and my work is still sitting there.  Today I am going to try and break that pattern.  I am going to sign off and immediately start working.  I need to finish something for my dissertation this morning then do these stupid exams.  I am not looking forward to them but they must be done, and ideally finished today so that I can at least take tomorrow off and enjoy and spend some time with the dogs.

As is also usual this time of year, I start to fantasize about spring and summer.  I won’t be working at all this summer and that will hopefully be wonderful.  Of course I will be writing, which is work, but my own (unpaid) work.  My own schedule every day.  I can’t wait!  So I am pondering questions like: should I build a raised garden bed in front of the dog yard, which is the only fairly sunny part of the property?  I would love to garden again this year and grow some veggies of my own.  I really missed doing that this past summer.  But building a garden bed is a lot of work and if I do end up staying here this year, it is almost impossible that I’ll stay for another.  I also really want to get a few chickens. I read the by-laws of my township and couldn’t find anything about chickens, which likely means they are not illegal.  But I did discover that I can only legally have three dogs here.  Groan.  I rarely have all four outside at once, but I hate having to hide how many dogs I have.  Getting chickens might bring animal control to check on things, and then I could get in trouble.

So then I start thinking about moving again.  Would that be more trouble, or less?  There is a little town that I have my eye on, and they allow not only chickens, but four dogs per household.  It would be nice to be legal.  Furthermore, there is no mention of rabies vaccines being necessary for dog or cat licensing.  That is also true of where I live now.  What a refreshing change.

There is really nothing I can do about any of the above right now, so what I really need to do is sign off and get down to work.  If I am efficient, I will have tomorrow off completely and that will be a real treat.  Hopefully that will be sufficient incentive to keep me on the straight an narrow as I plough through the mountain of papers on my desk.

Well, here it goes… Wish me luck!

Spring Awakenings

Well I didn’t get any training done yesterday – I left at 8:15am and returned at 11:25pm, completely exhausted.  Don’t worry,  I knew I was going to be away that long and made arrangements for my roommate to take the dogs out etc.  I won’t be able to do that again for at least a month as my roommate is away until March and the next nearest person who could help me is an hour drive away.  But last night I went to a lovely party hosted by my supervisor at work, an event I didn’t want to miss.  The soirée was in celebration of Imbolcg, a Celtic ritual honouring the start of spring, which today is more commonly celebrated as Groundhog Day.  While Mr. Groundhog saw his shadow and predicts 6 more weeks of winter (winter ending?  I can see grass out my window and am still waiting for it to really start…), according to Celtic belief, yesterday marked the day where seeds start to stir in the ground.  The beginning of germination.  An awakening of life, deep under the frozen earth.

How could I miss such a celebration?  It was fun, and a great opportunity to get to know my colleagues at work (and a few new people) a little better.  I am so lucky to have this job – I enjoy the work and especially the people.  While it is only for 10 hours a week and certainly doesn’t pay all the bills, it offers me social interaction at a level that I haven’t had in ages.  It’s been years since I last actually really enjoyed going to work.  What a blessing.

Back to the dogs – today I am at long last working from home (doing a serious happy dance about that) and the first thing I did was get up and train the dogs.  I didn’t even have breakfast.  Still in PJ’s, I took each dog, one at a time, into the bedroom and did 10 minutes of work with each.  Then a big breakfast for all (myself included), the dogs out in the yard and I got down to work.  I still haven’t started my academic work (next on the agenda, after I finish this and walk the dogs); instead I finished making a large pot of chicken soup stock, got caught up with a few emails and a long phone chat with a good friend, and then made six loaves of bread.  I make bread roughly once a month and freeze it.

Training went well.  Hannah is really coming along with her game of two-on-two-off, throwing herself onto the board and waiting to be released.  She is still not just reaching out with her back feet and placing them on the board, which would be ideal, but rather turns around, gets on then board and the steps off it.  I am going to see if I can think of an exercise to get her to back onto it, which will make for better rear end awareness.  I made one mistake with Hannah in that I tried to tug with her in that position, the idea being that until released she is not to take her back feet off the board, even while playing tug.  I would play tug and then stop the game the second she’d step down.  After doing this three times Hannah refused to tug while standing on the board.  Clearly I taught her the wrong thing.  Darn it.  I went back to just releasing and then tugging and she was happy with that.

We also worked on nose touches to the target.  Getting a really strong target separate from a really strong two-on-two-off position is what my instructor wants to see before combining them.  Once combined, then you can start doing full contact equipment.  Hannah and I have done contacts for over three years now but there were holes in our training that showed up very clearly with this new trainer.  So she is having us break the behaviours down separately, and build them back up again.  Our current focus is to rename the action of putting her nose to the target on the ground.  Until this point I have used ‘target’ but now I am to use ‘push!’  The idea is that you want the actual leather of the nose to move from the dog pushing so hard on the target.  Simply by switching to the word ‘push’ my criteria changed.  Of course the dog doesn’t know it, but my visual of ‘push’ is quite different than ‘target’ and I started clicking different things.  You should see Hannah ‘push’ that target now!  She actually goes into a bow position and does it, which is ideal for weight distribution.  I think she’s probably getting pretty close to being ready to rebuild the pieces into the end behaviour.

I also did a little weaving with Hannah, having her weave through four poles out to a toy already on the ground.  It took several tries before she finally understood that yes, I wanted her to actually weave in the bedroom. She’s doing 12 poles now at the arena but with a change in the environment she had trouble doing four.  At least for the first two minutes.  It’s amazing how place dependent dogs really are.  It is a good reminder for me to train in different locations as often as possible.  Since my roommate is away for a few weeks, I will put the equipment in different rooms every couple of days from now on.  By the time she gets back I’m hoping the ice will be gone and we’ll be back to being outside.  I can also go to the arena nearby which I can rent for $10 an hour, but to just work on these basics there is no point.

I next worked Mira who was surprisingly on her game.  We did targeting – I still am holding the target in my hand and working at getting her to hit the plastic and not my hand.  A couple of well-timed reinforcements and she started hitting the target squarely.  We also did a refresher on the weave poles, just working two to practice the entrance.  She nailed it every time.  Tomorrow we move back to four.  Next we did the end position game.  I am training that through shaping and then building up a desire to stay in position while I move around.  Mira is very sensitive to my body language (as I have become acutely aware of in herding, as mentioned in other posts) so I have to build this up very slowly.  She is extremely in tune with me (which is probably why I’ve gotten so frustrated with her at times) so training her to ignore what my body is saying is tough.  For example, running away from her without her following is almost impossible.  But we made some baby steps of improvement today and she’ll get there.  her impulse control has come miles and miles from where it was when I wrote about it a while back (was that a year ago now?).  Work still needs to be done but she gets it now.  I think what Mira really needed to do was grow up before she was ready to work.  At three, she is finally starting to not only make good progress in the venues I had hoped she would train in, but take pleasure in it.

Next was Ross.  Poor Ross really suffers when I’m away from home a lot and I’m glad that my schedule should now slow down a fair bit.  Or rather, while my work load is going to increase, my need to be apart from the dogs (and cats) will diminish substantially now.  At least as things currently stand it will.  Keeping my fingers crossed…

Ross’s targeting is quite good and I’m going to start moving the target to the ground from now on.  I also did the end position work with him.  Again he’s got that down pat.  He’s so smart and so much fun to train.  Actually, now that I think of it, all four of the dogs are training like Ross – happy, enthusiastic and for the most part, confident.  I recall Hannah and Mira being quite reluctant and worried in the past, but no longer.  I guess I am doing something right, or perhaps maturity has changed things.  Because I won’t be doing weaves with Ross, I decided to work on some rear end strengthening exercises and shadow handling.  Of course he did very well in both.  I use treats to train with Ross as he’s not that interested in toys.  Also I don’t like him doing a lot of starting and stopping with fetch, or playing tug which jerks the spine.  We ended our session with a good cuddle and belly rub.

Finally I worked Kess.  I started with doing box work again, which was probably a mistake.  It absolutely fried her brain.  We did it for less than 2 minutes and she was done.  She did get all four feet in the box after a few tries, and I rewarded her heavily for this (click, treat, click, treat in rapid succession until my hand was empty of treats).  She understood clearly that this is what I wanted of her and jumped in the box without hesitation two times in a row after that.  Heavy reward, and we put the box away.  Next I started to do targeting.  Kestrel was panting hard and kept lying down.  They are supposed to target standing up so I kept moving positions to get her to stand again.  She’d come over and flop.  Goodness!  I had no idea how tiring box work can be for a young dog.  Kestrel gets so worked up when working with me that she burns out quickly.  This will pass with time, but it’s something that I need to keep an eye on (and see if perhaps homeopathic treatment might help to improve).  She is always bouncy and smiling but clearly worries excessively.  I put her in a crate and gave her a short break.

After she caught her breath we tried again.  A few more targets – she’s largely slamming her nose into my hand any which way, which is at least an improvement over her tentative little taps of just a few weeks ago – and then we moved on to the weaves.  She is working on proper entries with just two poles.  She did it perfectly about 5 times in a row, and then stopped.  A couple of times she had come up short, acting like she was about to enter the poles but didn’t.  As she is so quick, I accidentally clicked these and somehow she decided that what I wanted was just movement towards the poles. Darn it.  I put the tug toy down and went back to training with food for a few minutes to lower her level of excitement and get her to go through them again.  Two successful tries and we ended on a good note.   Next a few minutes on the travel board.  She is getting end position but pops out of it very quickly still.  We did four or five repetitions and stopped.  I could tell her brain pretty much gone, so had her lay down and just practiced having her take treats gently from my hand.  She needs so much work, yet burns out so quickly, that what I should really do is several very short sessions a day.  Short like 2-3 minutes each.  I’ll see if I can do that on days that I’m working from home.  That will be more often than not in the month of February so fingers crossed we’ll make good progress.

I ended my session with Kestrel with a gentle massage.  She gets so stimulated by any interaction with me that I want to start working on having her relax when I touch her.  I’m not sure what the best way to do this is, but I thought petting her gently and quietly might help.  I have had Kess for a whole year now and she is a completely different dog from the pudgy, sway-backed, dull coated, lackluster lump I brought home from the pound in January 2009.  I first had to get her health in order, and also to let her learn how to be a dog, and specifically a border collie.  She needed to learn that it was ok to be who she really is, and that has taken a long time.  Probably always an uncertain dog, her start in life really did a number on her self-confidence.  Or at least, it did little to help it.  She’s much improved but still has a ways to go.  She’s extremely confident on sheep, and is good with the other dogs now, even Ross.  Her next big lesson is to learn how to be a good companion to me.  This is very much a two way street and I have been consistently working on our relationship – not nearly as much as I’d like, but making almost daily efforts – and I’m definitely seeing improvement.  She sleeps on the bed every night now of her own choosing, sneaking up past the other dogs to lie as close to me as possible.  She lies at my feet while I work.  Now she needs to learn to be calm when we work together.  I am sure with time this will come.

One Hour a Day

My poor dogs are about to burst they are so full of beans, and there’s not a whole lot I can do about it.  The ground is covered with ice, just about every inch of it.  We have essentially no snow – what snow we had got rained on heavily 10 days ago, followed by a deep freeze.  The rain didn’t quite wash the snow away and what little was left is now ice.  Walking is treacherous and running is downright dangerous.  I don’t want the dogs wiping out and pulling muscles or tearing ligaments.  They are very fit, but they are slipping and sliding and wiping out just running around our small property.  Even the healthiest dog can still end up injured in these conditions, so I didn’t take them hiking at all this weekend.  Yesterday Mira came in from the yard with a bloody foot.  She must have cut it on the ice.  The cut is deep and starts bleeding again every time she goes outside.  I have given her homeopathic Calendula, and applied some topically.  Today she is in her crate to hopefully let the cut heal up a bit.  I am hoping for either snow or a thaw, and neither is anywhere in sight.

To try and take the edge off, I did some training in the house last night.  My bedroom is huge – big enough to set up four weave poles or work on a travel board quite comfortably.  So that’s what I did.  I couldn’t find my training notebook so just did some basics from memory.  Hannah is getting really good with her targets and also holding position on the travel board.  Last night I played a game with her where she would put her back feet on the board and I’d release to play tug.  I trained the table that way too, making her hold it for varying lengths of time.  Hannah is nuts about tugging, so anything that facilitates tugging quickly becomes strongly enforced.  She loves the table, flying onto it and instantly throwing herself into a down, waiting like a coiled spring to be released.  She’s starting to do that with contact position.

I am teaching all four dogs the same basic exercises.  Hannah has them down most precisely, but even Ross is doing them well.  He’ll never do agility but until I get going with Rally-O and learn what I need to train for that, agility basics it’ll be.

Kestrel is the one who needs the most work.  She gets so stimulated by training that it’s hard to get the timing right.  She’s absolutely lightening fast, and gets higher than a kite.  Within seconds she is jumping – no, leaping and bounding – back and forth over the travel board she is supposed to be standing stock still next to with her back feet on it.  Trying to click the second a foot touches is all but impossible.  When she doesn’t get rewarded, she gets even more silly, and then quits.

I realized that I have not done any shaping basics with Kess, and this is something she really needs.  She clearly wants to please, and loves, loves, loves training.  But she also gives up easily as she is not very confident.  I decided I need to take a step back with her and do some basic shaping with a box.  I put a large box on the ground and worked at shaping her to stand in it.  It wasn’t easy, but this was her first time working with a box.  She quickly started putting her front feet in, but then resorted to this leaping over it with her back feet.  I don’t think she has much rear end awareness and I am realizing just  now that I should do some of these exercises with her as well.  She really has no foundation.  Tsk, tsk.  Time to get my butt in gear!

After several minutes, Kestrel finally put all four feet in the box.  I was very  happy and fed her the rest of the treat bag to celebrate.  She then had a drink and passed out for the rest of the evening.  It’s amazing how tired they can get after a little brain work!

All four dogs settled really nicely after their training sessions.  I spent roughly 8 minutes with each dog, so not a lot of time.  I should be able to do this every day.  Surely I can spend 40 minute a day developing my dogs brains, and another 20 doing the basic exercises I have been assigned to rebuild my back.  One hour per day.  Can I do it?  This is my goal.  Wish me luck!

Quick Update

Not a lot to report as I’ve been working like a fiend and not spending a whole lot of time with the dogs.  We had an agility lesson this week and my instructor commented on how happy she was with the progress we’ve made.  Practice does pay off! She still thinks it will be 8 months before Hannah will be ready to compete, but we’ll see.  She said if we continue to practice at home regularly, this make happen sooner.

I am signing us up for another Kevin Evans clinic, to be held in May.  I am really looking forward to working with him again.  I learned a lot last year and the time I spent at that clinic really moved us forward.  I want to make sure we train as much as possible prior to the clinic in order to get the most out of it.  Last year the dogs had seen sheep perhaps a half dozen times in the 7 months leading up to the clinic, and we still learned a lot. This time I am going to enroll Mira and Kestrel into more session as I need help with both of them.  There is also a specific shedding clinic being taught by Kevin the day before the main clinic is being run and I have signed Hannah up to that.  We can shed, but it ain’t pretty.  Time to learn how to do it well.

I just go tin from a walk with Ross.  The beach is completely transformed – no longer a flat sand beach that runs into water.  Now it is a landscape of steep hills, created by the build up of ice.  It’s really amazing!  I forgot  my camera but will go for another walk later or tomorrow and bring it.  I don’t know if pictures will quite capture the magical landscape of sparkling 30 foot hills of ice, but I’ll try!

Dogs Naturally Magazine

I am not a fan of Facebook, but I recently joined the Rabies Challenge’s facebook group because I was hoping to keep up with any new info this initiative was providing.  I am glad I joined as they don’t post often, but when they do the info is quite good.  This week they posted about a new magazine called Dogs Naturally.  You can access this magazine here, and download the entire first issue (free for a limited time only).

I have only glanced through the articles, but so far they look quite good.  There’s an entry by Don Hamilton (DVM) who writes about vaccines (he is the author of this fantastic book on homeopathy for dogs and cats), and an article written by Jean Dodds (DVM) on autoimmune problems and hypothyroidism.  I glanced at this and article and saw listed under symptoms of hypothyroidism the droopy eyelids and “tragic look” that Ross has developed and which I have been convinced are a symptom of his life force being out of balance.  There it was in black and white at last.  There are also articles on kidney disease, cancer and an introduction to homeopathy.  I am really looking forward to reading the rest of this magazine and hope it will be a valuable addition to the knowledge available to those wishing to raise their pets naturally.

Barf Fest

This morning I fed the dogs some chicken that I purchased at the grocery store last night, and a little bit of fish that I also picked up.  I had decided not to bring food with me to my parents’, but just buy some locally.  I usually do this because after fitting five crates in my little car, there is really no room for a cooler.

I bought the fish (smelts) because they were there.  I rarely feed my animals fish, but I thought I’d give them a little treat.  I had second thoughts about giving them the fish along with the chicken just because if anyone got sick, I wouldn’t know what from.  Ironic that this thought crossed my mind, because three out of my four dogs have since barfed up their meal.  Ross wouldn’t eat the fish.  But he also wouldn’t eat the chicken.  The cats refused the fish as well, and picked at the chicken.  Hannah, Kess and Mira cleaned up not only their own meals, but the stuff left behind by the others.

Mira was the first to get sick and, just to add to the loveliness of it all, her vomit was moving!  Gross of all grossness.  I HATE worms.  It’s been several years since any of my dogs has had worms and, considering that they are all adults, I figured it would be some time before I’d encounter them again.  Typically worms only affect puppies and dogs with compromised immune systems.  So does this mean that Mira’s immune system is compromised?  Now I need to consider this as well.

I noticed that all the girls had lost weight over the last couple of months but have attributed it to spending time outside in the cold.  Likely that is the case, but now I am going to have to struggle with whether to worm them all, or just Mira.  I don’t like the idea of treating without proof of infestation.  Of course while I went to grab stuff to clean up Mira’s vomit, Kess ran in and ate it.  Aren’t dogs wonderful?  So now I know that Kess has ingested worms, but will they take up shop in her intestines?  Adult dogs should be able to throw off worm infestations on their own, but do I wait and see?

I am about to bring Ross in to a new vet, and also start him working with a professional homeopath.  I am concerned about the state of his thyroid and want to start moving forward with addressing his symptoms.  This has been spurred on by a black blotch that has suddenly appeared on his right inner eyelid.  It looks like ink got spilled in his eye.  It doesn’t seem to affect his vision or be growing or doing anything – essentially it is a change of pigment on the inner eyelid.  Strange, however, and no one I have shown it to has ever seen anything like it before.  So Ross is going in to the vet for a check up and some bloodwork.  I have to decide between two vets who have been strongly recommended to me as being truly holistic and also happy to avoid vaccines and support raw feeding.  Both are a good distance from me (1.5 hour drive) but I don’t mind that if I get the care I am looking for.

Once there, I will also discuss worming protocols.  I will also be putting an end to the morning smooch fest my dogs like to start their day with!  Blech!  The worms I saw are most likely hookworms, which are definitely contagious to people (although not by kisses – it’s more the thought!).  Delightful.

Upon reflection (and further internet research to brush up on my worm lore) I will be dosing them all with diatomaceous earth (DE).  This may be sufficient to clear away any worms as hookworms live in the intestines and will be affected by this product.  I have learned the hard way that whipworms cannot be eliminated by DE because they spread to other parts of the body beyond the gastrointestinal tract (the DE, a powdered earth, only passes through the digestive tract), but most other common types of worms can be.   Hopefully that will put an end to it, which I will test with a stool sample.  .

It’s been a long time since my dogs have had any kind of health issues and I have to wonder if there’s some reason that this is happening now.  Are they stressed by my being away so much?  Ross has made it clear that this really bothers him.  The others aren’t so obvious, but I suspect it is hard on them as well.  More things to think about as I try and figure out my next step.

Sneaking A Little Sheep Time

I decided to take the day off and spend it with the dogs.  We went to the farm where we train near my parents’ house, and started with a nice little hike around a couple of the pastures.  I figured it would have been completely unfair to take the dogs to sheep without at least letting them stretch their legs first.  They had no exercise yesterday and had been cooped up in crates for several  hours prior to arriving.  I wanted to maximize our training time, and spending it trying to get my dogs’ brains on-line was not my idea of fun.  It was a beautiful, warm and sunny day (for January, that is) and I was in a good mood.  I wanted to stay that way.

After our hike, I decided to start working with Mira.  My friend Janet had arrived before us and separated out three young lambs to start training with.  I have been working my dogs on larger groups than that, but I figured we’d give them a try.  To ensure that things stayed under control, I brought out the whip.  Mira is very sensitive to this instrument and all I need to do is have it in my hand to have her full attention.  Today I had too much of her attention, however, and won’t be bringing the whip out again for a while, if ever.  Mira was very obedient, but I noticed that she kept looking at me instead of the sheep.  She also started getting so wide she was off contract.  That’s not what I was looking for when I wanted attention.  I tossed the whip aside and worked without it.

Mira was back to being a bit quirky today.  I never know what to expect of her when I take her out.  Some days she’s amazing, others she’s, well, she leaves me wondering what on earth I am doing wrong to make her behave in such strange ways.  Today it was going almost into orbit when being sent on an outrun.  I sent her to pick up sheep about 50 feet away, and she almost went to the next county.  When she finally got to 12 o’clock, instead of turning in towards the sheep, she just kept going on a tangent off across the field.  It’s like she forgot what she was out there doing and just started running for the sake of running.  I had to give her a stop whistle and then call her back in to me.  Even then, she would often turn back on her tangent as if that were the correct thing to do.  To get her to come back to the sheep, I had to actually tell her ‘that’ll do’ and call her back to me.

I mentioned this to Janet when we came off the field, wondering if it’s possible that my dog has zero feel for sheep.  Certainly it appears that way some times, while other times she’s perfect.  Janet said she’s seen other dogs do the same thing in that field and that perhaps it is the pressure.  It is pulling in several directions and perhaps the dog gets confused.  Or at least a green dog like Mira does.  Who knows?  All I know is that Mira kept running off contact and doing other weird things, even after I ditched the whip.

I do think I put too much pressure on her and that probably started it.  She can take very little pressure from me and I need to remember that.  I did my best to lighten things up, having her do some wearing and little outruns, and practice a few flanks, all with plenty of encouragement and happy tones from me.  She did do well and worked her little heart out.  She tries so very hard that I still felt good working her.  Still, I need to figure out what it is that I’m doing that sends her to the next county.

I worked Kess next, who couldn’t possibly be any more different from Mira.  I can flip and snap the whip all I want and Kestrel barely even notices it.  It does help get her to move out when she’s tight, but otherwise it’s not overly useful with her.  Today I worked on getting her to fetch sheep to me.  She has a strong propensity to walk on to sheep to drive them away, instead of going around and gathering.  Janet showed me a little exercise to build the dog’s outrun.  I kept it short, perhaps 50 yards at most.  I would put Kess in a down, walk part way to the sheep, then stepping away from the direction I was sending her (i.e. if I sent her left, I’d walk to the right), I’d release her.  If she came in tight or straight on the sheep, I’d flick the whip in her direction, slightly behind her.  This would encourage her to go wider, and to keep going around.  The few times she just walked straight into the sheep, I simply called her off.  When she didn’t do it right, she didn’t get her sheep.  I only had to do that a couple of times.  Kess did quite well with this and was soon consistently going around the sheep and bringing them back to me.  Still, we have a long way to go before she has anything I’d call an outrun.  I really must get in touch with her breeder and ask if her lines have natural outruns or if they tend to need some assisted construction.

Finally I worked Hannah.  My original trainer used to have me start with outruns as a way of burning off excess energy.  I used to do this every time I practiced.  We’d get out some sheep, then walk a good distance and she’d outrun and fetch them to me.  The fetches were always messy, with crooked lines and galloping sheep.  Upon rethinking things, I have decided to start with doing close and controlled work, and moving to outruns later.  No matter how tired, my dog always seems happy to do an outrun.  But if she’s full of beans, she can’t seem to control herself when she’s 250 yards away from me. Spending the first part of our session doing more careful brain work seems to remedy this.  Today I took Hannah into the pasture where some of the sheep are housed and had her shed off a small group to work with.  We then had to drive them out through two gates and past some cows.  Next we went into another field and picked up three more.  Now with seven, she had to drive them across some tall grass and a frozen swamp to the area we were going to train in. For good measure, I had her drive them around the field and then to the farthest point from the barn.

By then Hannah’s brain was fully engaged and I felt it would be safe to do some outwork with her.  Janet brought one of her dogs out and held the sheep while I sent Hannah to pick them up.  Hannah did a very good job and brought them to me through tall grass and across ice.  It’s tricky business working sheep in the winter and often you just have to stop training all together for safety’s sake.  But today wasn’t bad except for the patches of unexpected ice.  To navigate these required a calm, steady pace.  Hannah pushed a bit harder than I liked, but she did heed my “take time!” commands and generally did a very nice job.

It’s really interesting working three such incredibly different dogs.  Learning how to run each one is teaching me a tremendous amount, and having to switch back and forth, changing gears between them, is teaching me even more.  Most of all, it is making it clear to me how much more I need to learn!  This is particularly Mira’s task.  I always leave the field shaking my head at my lack of skill and knowledge.

I have so much work to do it isn’t funny, but I’m still hoping to sneak out tomorrow and train again.  I saw tremendous improvement in my dogs over Christmas when I was able to train 6 times in 9 days.  That kind of consistency really makes a big difference.  No wonder we progress so slowly.  It’s not just my lack of experience, it’s also our lack of quality sheep time.  I continue to ponder ways to improve both.

Giving Up the Illusion of Control

Just a quick post to keep writing.  Yet another busy week and I am dog tired.  The dogs, however, are not tired!  Not at all.  In fact they are quite full of beans and all I want to do is go to bed.  Fortunately they are good beasts and will settle once I have climbed under the covers.

This week I had to be away from home four out of five days.  I hate that.  At the same time, my life is moving forward in very positive ways.  I continue to really enjoy my work, and it’s opening doors to both very pleasant social engagements, and potentially more interesting work.  I’m excited by all of this, but being away from home so much, and all the driving that it requires, is pulling me in two.  I’m not sure how to reconcile these diverging forces, but it’s something I’m going to have to work out over the coming months.  I love my animals and keeping a cozy, happy home, and don’t like spending so much time away from it.  How a I going to work this out?

I am trying not to worry too much about this.  Worrying accomplishes nothing and my day to day life is pretty good right now.  I am confident that interesting opportunities will arise when the time comes, and I will put my faith there.

Last week I had an interesting conversation with a friend who is pregnant.  She was told by her midwife that she needed to learn to just let go of all her plans and expectations around giving birth because she “is not the boss of this.”  The concept of not being the boss of ourselves, of our bodies, our decisions, our fate, is difficult for us to accept in this society that preaches so diligently that how our lives turn out is our own responsibility (this is the foundation of the capitalist myth, but that’s another discussion).  The more I think of it, the more I believe this midwife’s statement is wisdom for life in general, not just for expectant mothers.

This was driven home a couple of days ago when I was doing a little job hunting.  I saw an interesting prospective job ad for a position on the east coast of Canada.  I would actually enjoy living there, and debated putting in an application.  After some time, I decided I wasn’t up to trying to find a full-time job, which would require a lot of work and chasing down or references and so on, while immersed in everything else I’m doing right now.  I decided no, I am not going to turn myself inside out to chase down a job.  I am going to wait and seeing what comes to me.  Two hours later I got an email inviting me for a local job interview in response to a resume that I submitted in early December.  Really?  I thought, another year in this area?  How many times have I written about moving away?  How many times have I thought about it?  Searched for opportunities elsewhere?

So much for the best laid plans.  The timing of that email was not a coincidence.  I made a clear decision in my heart, and almost immediately the universe responded.  It is not the first time something like that has happened to me.

Apparently I’m not the boss of this.

But that’s ok.  When I have struggled to force things to happen, I’ve ended up miserable.  In contrast, when I put faith in the universe and allow it to direct my choices, things work out well.  Just look at how well thing have worked with my move last summer.  I didn’t know what I was going to do, and then out of the blue this opportunity came to me and has been just wonderful. The same is true of my current job contracts.  I believe deeply that my next steps will be equally good, provided that I allow them to come on their terms.

This weekend I am going to my parents house and hope to get the dogs out to train for the first time since the beginning of the month.  I have also been invited to participate in a seminar on sheep care that sounds quite interesting.  I have a lot of academic work to do so I’m up in the air as to whether I will be able to fit it all in.  For now, however, I am going to stoke up the woodstove and climb into bed.  Good night!

Photo Update: A Winter Walk in the Woods

Here are a few photos from our hike on Friday.  Off we go, down the trail:

The dogs running their hearts out:

No obstacle can get in our way!

But we can get in our own way….oops!

My, what pointy teeth you have grandma…
No wonder the sheep move when she walks up at them!

River walk:

Stopping to catch their breath, allowing for a posed photo:

I just love winter’s subtle beauty:

Another thing I love about winter is that I can often see what my dogs are smelling.
Take these raccoon tracks, for example:

Ross, striking a pose on my favourite downed tree:

The Crew: