I’ve been feeling really quite low for the last few days.  I was really down on Saturday, better yesterday but still not great.  Today I am feeling kind of crappy too.  I live such an isolated life these days and I guess it’s getting to me.  Probably the weather has something to do with it.  The very short days don’t help.  Today it was grey and cold and dark by 4:30.  I have a ton of work to do and barely got anything done.  I’ll try in a minute and hope to feel better by bed.

I didn’t even do anything with the dogs today.  The farm never got back to me about training and I didn’t call back to follow up.  I was going to just do some agility training in the yard but didn’t even do that.  Interestingly, the dogs just slept all day and have been as quiet as I have been feeling.  Maybe there’s something in the air.

The rest of the week is busy.  I don’t know why I suddenly crashed like this after feeling so positive for several months.  Maybe it’s the effect of the accident.  I typically crash after a strong emotional shock, and hitting the deer was certainly that.  Who knows.  I just hope I start feeling better soon as this sucks!  I’m sure the dog are hoping the same thing so they can get back to their routine of fun and exercise.

Well, the weekend is winding down and I didn’t get out and work the dogs at all.  I doubt I’ll get them out on stock much for the next few weeks, and once winter sets in, probably not at all for a few months.  Maybe it will be for the best.  I find it very tiring driving back and forth to where we can train – 1.5 hours return every time we work.  Maybe I’m better off saving my time and money, working hard to wrap up my degree, and then finding a place to move to (or a field to rent nearby) come spring so we can train every day.  The dogs do love to work so I will likely get them out from time to time, weather permitting, but I am feeling pretty discouraged overall about how much energy it takes just to get out and do something with my dogs.

Two nights ago I gave each dog a dose of a homeopathic remedy that I decided was appropriate to help get their life forces in better balance.  Both Hannah and Kestrel needed tweaking after being in heat (heat cycles are very hard on the life force and make imbalances clearer), Mira certainly needed a tune-up as I’ve discussed, and Ross needed a little help after his incident earlier this week.  Heck, I figured I might as well try taking a dose of something to try and help my back and sleep problems, which have flared up since the accident.  My insurance is giving me the run-around with respect to getting any professional help – they will pay for it but I have to submit a mountain of paperwork – signed by an army of health practitioners – before I can get started.  And since I am insanely busy right now, it all has to be put on hold for the moment.  The result is that I am in pain and sleeping badly and just having to live with it.

But I digress…

I gave Hannah a dose of Pulsatilla, which probably wasn’t the correct remedy for her. She had been scratching her face again and I typically give her Silicea, which seems to be her constitutional remedy (or at least profoundly affects her current state in a positive way).  Pulsatilla is the acute of Silica, and is a deeply hormonal remedy.  Hannah fits the profile very well and I thought since her issues were flaring up around her heat cycle, Puls would be the right choice. In hindsight, I think another dose of Silicea would have been the better choice. I may need to do that if I don’t see any improvements in her itchiness in a few days.

I gave Kestrel a dose of Belladonna.  This remedy seems to fit her very, very well.  I originally gave it to her in as a 30c dose, with no effect.  A few weeks ago I gave her a dose of Bell LM01.  I didn’t notice any difference at the time, but in hindsight I now realize that she has calmed down quite a bit and is no longer always flushing red and panting like a freight train, getting excited about everything and anything.  Belladonna is a remedy that is all about suddenness, and also red and heat.  There is often a lot of aggression in Bell, but Kestrel has no aggression in her at all.  However, she does have a fair bit of anxiety, along with explosively sudden movement and responses, and lots and lots of redness.  If she were a person, she’d be one of those who turns beet red at the drop of a hat.  Since giving her the Bell about a month ago, all of the above as declined steadily.  Is this just the result of maturity?  Perhaps.  I don’t know.  But I gave her a dose again two days ago.  Yesterday she went back to being her frantic, hyper former self, so it seems that the Bell is indeed doing something.  Time will tell.

I gave Ross another dose of Cantharis, 30c.  This is a remedy that is like Bell but has a lot of sexuality in it.  Ross definitely has some hyper-sexual behaviour and that has diminished since taking Canth.  Ross was on Bell for a long time when he first started his homeopathic treatment, and then got stuck.  I switched him this summer to Cantharis with good results.  Considering that his injury this week was to his groin area (no coincidence), I decided another dose of Canth was in order.  I only have this remedy in 30c and am considering whether to order it in a higher potency and see if it continues to help him.  I am going to be working with a professional regarding his thyroid issues, so will likely just leave things alone for now.

As for Mira, I decided to stick with Phosphorus as that seemed to give some improvement last time I dosed her.  I gave her a dose at bedtime and at 3am she woke fussing about the room.  I called her and she crawled out from under the bed.  No idea what she was doing under there, other than hiding.  Phosphorus has a lot of anxiety – and noise sensitivity – among other things, and I expect that she was having a bit of an aggravation.  I gave her a very dilute dose but she still was reacting. I put her in her crate where she’d feel safe.  Today she seems calmer, so I am hoping this will help.  She has been so quirky of late that I’m not quite sure what’s going on with her.  The hormones definitely were messing her up, but she seems to be overall going off-line a bit.  Now that I think of it, she did the same last winter.  Perhaps she’s just not getting enough mental activity. She gets plenty of physical exercise but I haven’t been training her very often lately.  I did do some agility work with her yesterday and she really, really struggled to keep her brain on the task at hand.  I will do more in the morning.

As for myself, I decided to try a dose of Pulsatilla as well.  The remedy fits me in many ways, but what caught my attention was that it has back problems, sleep problems, and is indicated for people who “sleep with arms over their heads.” That’s me – I sleep with my arms above my head every night.  Weird, I know, but I’ve been doing it since I was 20 years old.  I can remember when I started.  I can put my arms up over my head and instantly get sleepy, or pull them down by my sides and wake up.  Anyway, I thought that might point to Puls, being such a weird symptom, and took a dose.  I was prescribed Puls a couple of years ago so a professional once thought it was a good fit as well.  Interestingly, I woke up in the morning with my arms by my side.  As the day wore on, I became really, really down.  Ick. It’s been a while since I’ve taken a homeopathic remedy that messed with my emotions and I forgot how unpleasant it can be.  It didn’t help that I got some news that upset me, which probably is the real reason I was feeling so down.  But the remedy likely made me more susceptible to being upset by this news.  Fortunately I am feeling better today.  I’ll be interested to see how long I sleep with my arms by my side.  It definitely helps with respect to my back pain as I am not tensing up my shoulders as I sleep.

Today I took the dogs for a good hike at the conservation area.  There was a black SUV parked there that looked to be the same as the one I saw when I ran into the man wearing camouflage and carrying the bow and arrows.  I suspect he was back in the woods, hunting.  The conservation area runs into private property and sometimes I wander the boundaries of the two with the dogs.  Today I avoided that area as I am pretty sure this is where the guy hunts. The last thing any of us needs is an arrow sticking out of us!  I need to dig out my bright orange scarf and tie it around Hannah’s neck when we go out – she forages far and wide when we hike, and she also hunts deer.  She has white on her back legs and tail, which flashes like a deer’s when she runs in the dark woods.  I worry that she might chase a deer past a hunter, who might not notice that she’s not part of the flock.  I think deer hunting season is over, but tell that to the guy in camouflage with the bow and arrow in the woods…

I haven’t posted any photos of the dogs in a while, so I thought I’d put a few up now:

Hannah working sheep:

Hannah demonstrating a square flank:

Hannah imitating a greyhound on the gather (I wish I was in as good condition as my dog – look at those muscles!!):

Helping Hannah solidify “walk there”:

Waiting patiently to be sent:

Hannah demonstrating a lovely cross-drive:

Taking the sheep home:

Hannah and her well-earned trophy.  We had to send it back last week for this year’s champion, after enjoying it on the mantle all year:

The Crew enjoying the straw I put down in the yard to keep down the mud and give them a warm spot to sit or lie when outside:

Throw the ball!! Throw the ball!! (Hannah, Mira and Kestrel are the three at the back – I was dog sitting for a friend)

Border Collie pandemonium:

Enjoying the fall foliage at the local conservation area:

Hannah taking her turn as the “sheep”:

Whoo Hoo!!!

Another stretch of days where I am gone all day.  This actually has worked out well this week as I’m keeping Ross quiet for a few days after his injury (no sign of any additional problems) to make sure he’s fully healed before I let him run around with any intensity.  And Kestrel still needs to be kept under lock and key because of her heat cycle.  She’s no longer standing but still smells good to Ross, so I figure she’ll still smell good to some intact male should one come along.  By the weekend everything should be back to normal.

Hopefully that will be true of Mira too.  She’s still being totally goofy.  She has taken to spending all day on my bed and refusing to go outside unless I go with her.  Then she walks around the yard glued to my leg, tripping me.  As soon as I open the door, she bolts inside and runs upstairs as if her life depends on it.  What on earth is going on in this dog’s head?  This weekend I am going to spend some time reviewing homeopathic remedies to see which one would fit best.  A quick search last night using the term “fear of going out of doors” has Lyssin as the most strongly listed remedy.  Lyssin is made from the saliva of a rabid dog – and Mira certainly has plenty of inherited rabies vaccinosis.  I have given her Lyssin in the past and it made a big difference.  Maybe she needs another dose.

It is tricky to find the right homeopathic remedy when you have a subject who can talk.  In dogs, it’s darn near impossible.  I have found that initially I have a lot of success with homeopathy in a new case, but then my ability to find useful remedies drops off.  I think this is because when the life force is really out of balance, many remedies will help push it back towards centre.  As such, a shot-gun approach does seem to work.  But as the life force gets stronger, more precision is needed to make any impact.  I could be totally wrong about this, but that is what I think might be going on.  This would explain why no remedy I have picked for Kestrel has had any significant impact: she’s very balance and so needs little tweaking.  I am going to have to find the exact remedy to have any effect on her.  Mira is much farther out of balance, but she’s much better now than she used to be.  So when if first started treating her, I saw big differences.  Now I don’t.

Rubrics I am considering to find the right remedy for her right now include:

Mind: Fear of going out of doors
Mind: Aversion to going out
Mind: Desire to stay in bed
Mind: Desire to stay in bed, during menses (she’s not in heat but clearly is affected by the hormones as if she were)
Mind: Clinging, children, to mother
Mind: Clinging, children will take hand or part of mother (she holds my pant leg)
Mind: Anxiety, going to bed ameliorates

The problem is, of course, that I don’t really  know why she’s doing the things that she’s doing.  And there’s no way for me to know either (unless I put faith in an animal communicator).  Does she really feel better in bed?  Is she really afraid of going outside, or is it that it is now cold and she doesn’t like to be cold?  I have no idea what is going on in her mind and can only guess.  If I’m lucky, I’ll guess correctly.  Otherwise, the remedy I choose will have no effect (or could even make things worse).  So I’ll need to be fairly sure in my decision before proceeding.  Phosphorus comes up in many of these, and that’s the last remedy I gave her.  Perhaps I’d be best off sticking with that and maybe going up in potency.  It did seem to have helped last time.  Phos is a remedy with plenty of anxiety, and there was no indication of any negative effects when I gave her a dose.  Still,  I need to do more reading and decide.

I could just let her be neurotic, but it is irritating and also causes problem.  Two nights ago, she pooped on the floor again.  Now, I am certain that the last few episodes were Kestrel, but I’ve fixed that issue by making sure she gets out long enough – and without distractions such as a ball or other dogs or cats to herd – that she takes care of all business after a long day in the crate.  Two nights ago I am certain it was Mira.  Then last night, before bed, she refused to go out to potty.  It was pouring rain and I didn’t feel like standing out in the rain in my pj’s so I let her stay in.  Then, at 1am, she woke me up to go out.  She likely would have pottied on the floor if I hadn’t gotten up.  So I put her in a crate and she had to hold it until I got up in the morning.  Cruel?  Perhaps.  But , I refuse to put up with this behaviour in a 3 year old dog who is perfectly healthy (physically) and well house trained.  So in a crate she sat, and this morning she was happy to go out with the other dogs.  Maybe I just need to reprogram her patterns.

I’ll keep you posted…

This morning I was sharply reminded of how difficult life on your own can be.  Ross was injured while playing out in the yard right before I was to leave for work.  He was bleeding a fair bit, and I couldn’t immediately tell the extent of his injury.  I brought him in the house and checked him over, and gave him some homeopathic arnica.  The bleeding stopped almost immediately and once I cleaned him up it did not start up again.  My assessment was that he was going to be ok and did not need to see a vet, but I was not comfortable leaving him unattended in case I was wrong.  I called into work and told them I needed to stay home for the morning.

I spent the morning catching up on some housework and a few odds and ends, keeping a close eye on Ross.  He was quiet but seemed totally fine.  He ate his breakfast, followed me around the house, chased the cat, flirted with Kestrel, and instantly showed up in the kitchen when I opened a package of cheese.  If I hadn’t seen the blood earlier, I would not have even considered there might be anything wrong with him.  Needing the money and knowing how busy things are at work right now, I decided to go in for the afternoon.  I left the dogs with peanut butter kongs and headed out.

Despite my head telling me very clearly that Ross was fine, my heart was very shaken.  I couldn’t help but worry that perhaps I’d assessed things incorrectly.  Should I have taken him to the vet?  No, I was pretty sure that wasn’t necessary.  But I started second guessing my decision to leave him home alone.  If he had started getting worse (even though I watched him for nearly 4 hours with no sign of any problem), he would have no way of letting me know.  No one was at the house and I don’t have any neighbours I could call to have check in on him throughout the day.  I work one hour from home and by the time I was driving back at 7pm at night, I was on the verge of throwing up I was so worried about him.  Why, oh why, did I leave my poor boy alone?

When I got back to the house I jumped out of the car and started whistling as loudly as I could.  True to form, the dogs started barking from within the house.  Mira?  check.  Hannah?  Yep, that was her howling.  The gruff bark?  Kestrel.  But where was Ross’s voice?  I whistled again, and again, all the while fumbling in the dark with my keys.  Then, to my immense relief, I heard Ross.  I almost burst into tears.

I opened the door and ran up to my room and allowed the dogs to jump all over me in greeting.  I gave them each a hug, especially Ross.  He was full of beans and wanting to go and play.  He was totally, 100% fine and was looking at me like I was nuts as I hugged the daylights out of him.

I have quite a bit of experience assessing injuries and illness in animals and I knew in my head that I had made the correct assessment of Ross’s situation.  If I had thought for one second that he was in any danger, I would have never gone into work and taken him straight to the vet.  But once away from home, my imagination got the better of me.  And since I had no one to support me, no one I could ask to just peek in on him, I let my paranoia take over.  I really need to establish a better support system around here. I’ve never had to work so far from home before and I am liking it less and less every day.  I will definitely make a change for next year.  Maybe I could look into getting a video cam in the meantime!  Fortunately I only have 1.5 weeks of work left before I go on Christmas break.  That will mean a good 6 weeks of working strictly from home. I can’t wait!

I just got back from training the dogs.  It only took 4.5 hours!  Yeesh, no wonder everything in my life is moving ahead so slowly.  I have to dedicate half a day every time I want to train the dogs, so their progress is slow, and my work progress is slow because I spent so much time training the dogs!  I sure can’t wait until I can just walk out the door and work my dogs.  I think it is much better for them to learn in short training sessions than long marathons like I end up doing after driving 40 minutes to get to sheep.  I have a friend who takes his young dogs out for 5 minutes at a time, several times a day.  Their progress is amazing.

In agility last week, we (re)learned the concept of a latency period.  Essentially that is the time lapse between teaching a dog something and letting it sink in.  In my lesson, the instructor has me introduce the dog to something new.  We do it for 2 minutes and then the dog goes and sits in a crate and thinks about it while we talk about theory etc.  Then we bring the dog back out (after a few minutes) and try again.  Every time, the dog is much better at what we had just been doing.  It’s as if she thought it through, figured it out, and understood.  Well, I expect that’s exactly what’s going on.

Ever notice that you teach your dog something and then go back to it days or weeks later, and the dog does it better than the day you last worked on it, even though you haven’t practiced or taught them anything new in between?  I’ve often assumed my dog has been thinking about our training and understanding things in between training sessions.

The day I got into my car accident, we had been working Hannah on whistles. I have been having a really hard time getting Hannah to switch to whistles.  If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that I had a hard time getting her on voice commands too.  The friend I was training with worked Hannah for a bit, walking quietly with her and only using whistles.  When Hannah didn’t take the whistle command correctly, she did not revert to voice commands – which is what I had been doing.  The theory I was following is that the dog will backchain the commands, so if you add a new command (in this case, a whistle), in front of the one you are already using, the dog will eventually take the new command as a cue and start responding to that instead.  Works for many dogs, but not for Hannah.

I think what’s going on with Hannah is that she is so intently focused on her sheep that she really tunes everything else out except what she’s listening for.  Or perhaps her brain is too full to add anything else, or is too focused to start taking on what she sees as unnecessary tasks.  I don’t think she’s being stubborn – I really don’t think dogs behave like that.  I think they just get overwhelmed with information and tune stuff out.

My friend worked Hannah for a bit, using only whistles and correcting her with a “hey!” instead of going back to what Hannah already knew.  I didn’t get it at the time, but now I understand that what this does is force Hannah to start paying attention to the whistles.  She had no voice commands coming, so after a few “hey!”s to let her know she was wrong, she must have started listening to the whistles.  And she must have started understanding them too.  She must have spent a lot of time thinking about those whistles afterwards, because when we went to the herding clinic last weekend, Hannah correctly took every one of the whistles I gave her.  It was really astonishing.  One training session followed by a two weeks latency period (after the accident, when we did no training at all), and she had it figured out.

Today I did more whistle-only work with Hannah and she is really coming along well.  She sometimes refused and once ended up losing her sheep as a result.  She was not happy about that!  She took the wrong flank – twice – and so I called her off and let her watch the sheep run back to the barn.  I wouldn’t do that with a young dog, but at her stage there has to be consequences for not listening.  She took every command beautifully after that.

The sheep were really ornery to start with today.  I suspect they haven’t been worked for a while (trial season is over and the owners are taking a well-earned break!), and the rams have been mixed in with the main flock.  The dynamics of the flock seems to be different.  When I sent Hannah to gather them, they split in several different directions.  I really needed at least two dogs to get this flock up.  That’s never happened before.  I don’t know if a single dog should be able to handle 100 sheep going in several different directions, but it was too much for poor Hannah, even though she worked her little heart out.  I ran over as quickly as I could and we shed off a group of about 20 and and drove them away and worked those.  They were still quite obnoxious, splitting and running in multiple directions at once.  This is no doubt why Hannah was blowing off my flanks – she was getting stressed and wanted things under control!

To do so, I made her stay well back off the sheep and let them calm down.  We drove them around the field for a bit, and that got them to start behaving as a group and flocking better.  We worked on our whistles and some shedding and a few gathers, and by then we’d been going for probably and hour (using several different groups of sheep).  I put Hannah up with a big pail of water and took Mira out next.

The last group of sheep kindly stayed out in the field, so I decided to keep working them.  Hannah had them moving nicely and we had only been driving them fairly slowly so they were ok to keep going.  I had run the dogs prior to taking them to sheep, so I knew Mira would be relatively calm.  To make sure she shook out her beans, I started with a few outruns.  I’d send Mira on a decent size outrun and walk towards the sheep while she was casting out.  By the time she was at the lift, I was about two thirds of the way to the sheep.  That way I could control the lift and get her to lie down once they were moving, and the sheep didn’t have to run far or fast.  Then I’d wear up the field, leave the sheep and walk Mira down to the other end.  Repeat.

It worked well.  I have to say Mira is putting in such gigantic outruns now that I can hardly believe this is the same dog who used to run straight up the field at stock.  I’m sending her from my feet with just a quiet “shhhh” and she’s casting out beautifully and going big and going deep.  Too big and deep, in fact, for the field we’re working on, and for the group of sheep we had.  She’s coming in off-contact now, but at least is walking up fairly quickly and lifting them straight.

Mira worked very hard and I didn’t keep her out there too long.  I really wish I could take her out two or three times a day for just a few minutes. I think it would make a huge difference in her.  She burns out and then gets lazy.  Today she let three ewes go over the course of our training session.  The first one she turned back, the second one she stopped but when it ran off, she didn’t go after it.  I sent her after it and she ran half heartedly in that direction, then let it go.  I’m not sure if she thinks it doesn’t matter, or if she’s just too tired.  I’m not sure if it was my imagination or not, but she seemed to be wobbling a bit as she trotted around after our last outrun (which is why it was our last outrun – I immediately called it quits). It’s not hot, but I do worry that there’s something going on with her hips.  Walked her back to the car and gave her water, and walked her around the property a bit, watching very carefully.  I saw nothing wrong.  Hopefully the wobble was just my imagination.  Certainly she was ready to run hard in the hay field half an hour later when we went for a hike.

Next I took Kestrel out.  In the clinic we attended last week I discovered that she is asymmetric in her running, meaning that she doesn’t run properly when she circles left.  I was advised to work her left, a lot.  So that is what we did.  I had her go around and around and around and around the sheep to the left.  I also made sure to step into her and push her out as she’ s quite flat going left too.  After a few minutes of that, I did some flank drills (telling her to go “come-bye” and applying body pressure to send her that way, then doing the same on the away side).  She is starting to respond to verbal commands before I do the physical ones, so I’m pretty happy about that.  Next I did some short outruns with her.  she is starting to actually go around and gather from 50 or so feet away.  That’s a big improvement.  Not long ago she’d just go straight at the sheep and drive them off unless I was standing between her and the stock to push her around.

I need to call Kestrel’s breeder to ask what I can expect in terms of her outruns. With Hannah, I was taught to push her out but now she’s too wide.  I did nothing with Mira, knowing that her genetics would predispose her to big outruns.  Sure enough, they are coming out now. If I had pushed her out, she’d be going to the next county to pick up sheep.  So I’m very glad I let that develop naturally, even though it took two years to come out.  I bet Mira’s outruns would have come out sooner if I had know how to train her properly earlier on.  Kestrel’s breeder will be able to tell me what to expect from Kess, and if I’ll need to help her outruns or not.  From what I’m seeing, I’m guessing it will come naturally.  Regardless, I won’t do any work on them for some time.

I could be making a big mistake, but I’ve decided that it’s more important to get flanks and stops and other such commands down solid while close up, before trying to work the dog far away.  I think we didn’t do Hannah any favours by starting work on outruns first.  I suspect that made for a dog who really didn’t understand her flanks, or trust my commands, working at such a distance that she felt she had to take things into her own hands.  The result is a lot of anxiety when she’s working at a distance, and I’ve had to do a lot of our training over close up to build trust.  I still struggle with getting her to listen at a distance.  Maybe that would have happened regardless, but for Mira and Kestrel, the focus is on getting the close work down solid before worrying about outruns.

I now have three very tired dogs, snoring away at various points around the house.  Ross is barking in frustration as I locked him up to give Kestrel a break from his constant flirting.  I’m going to get the woodstove fired up, and settle in for an evening of work since I spent the afternoon training my dogs!

Good grief, I’m sick of hormones in this house.  Hannah is done her heat cycle, and Kestrel should be out in a day or two.  What a nuissance to have multiple bitches cycling together!  Well, I suppose it at least gets things over with all at once.  From that perspective, I wish Mira would join the club and get onto the same cycle as the other two.  For she gets just as stupid with all these hormones, even though she’s not in heat, and then goes through it all again when it’s her turn two months later.

The heat cycle of a bitch lasts around 21 days.  They are only actually fertile for a few days during that time, which is when they are in what is called “standing heat.”  They call it this because the bitch will stand for the male to breed her.  Hannah is a perfect case in point – if she’s not in standing heat, she will not stand.  Instead, she will sit on her behind and protect her chastity with bit pointy teeth.  Good girl!

Because of this, it is very clear when Hannah is ready to breed.  She stands around days 12-15 of her cycle.  Kestrel seems to be about the same.  Mira stands much earlier, at around day 9 and stands for close to a week.  She may not be fertile that entire time but I do have to watch her carefully.  Another way to tell when a bitch is in standing heat is the colour of her blood.  It will start out dark red, and then turn a paler, almost orange or rust colour when she’s ready to be bred.  Daily checking with a folded kleenex is the best way to keep track of this.

Because I don’t have an intact male in the house, I don’t really worry too much about them getting pregnant.  When they are in standing heat I don’t leave them outside unattended.  And even before they are standing, when they’re out I am sure to put either Ross or Mira out with them in the yard, as they will both bark loud and hard should another dog come near.  We did have that big male lab come visiting when Mira was in heat this summer, but there’s been no sign of him this time.  I suspect he’s just a summer resident as I haven’t seen him in a while.

The clearest indication, however, of when a bitch is ready to breed is behaviour. My goodness, you should have seen the flirting and carrying on that is happening in this house this week.  It got to the point of being so annoying that everyone got put in crates.  Poor Kestrel received the brunt of it.  When Hannah was standing, all she wanted to do was flirt with and hump Kestrel.  Mira has been wanting to hump Kess all week.  Now that Hannah’s out, she’s lost interest in flirting, but Kess is now standing and Ross is following her around, flirting his heart out.  At first Kestrel was terrified (she’s still very weary of Ross) but now she seems to be enjoying the attention.  Who knows, maybe they’ll get along better now.

Interestingly, Ross paid no attention to Hannah when she was standing.  I don’t know why this is.  Maybe he considers her ‘family’ or maybe she isn’t emitting the correct hormones or body language.  He is very keen to breed Kestrel and Mira, and I have to keep him apart from them when they are standing.  But he pays no attention to Hannah whatsoever.  Today, Hannah is beating up Mira while Ross is flirting with Kestrel.  Could she possibly be jealous?

I’d love to know what’s going on in their heads and how they all see each other and their relationships to one another.  I’d love to understand why the girls are so keen to have little love fests with each others.  Why does Mira try and hump Kestrel but not Hannah?  Is it a dominance thing?  Is it something else?

Hopefully this will all be behind us by tomorrow.  I am sick of the hormones and I’m sick of keeping high energy dogs cooped up in the house where they get sillier and sillier.  I’m also sick of how goofy Mira gets when there are all these hormones floating around.  This week she’s taken to refusing to go outside unless I’m out with her, and otherwise just wants to spend the day curled up on my bed.  She won’t come down when I call and I have to go and physically pick her up and put her out the door.  Then she sits, leaning against the door until I open it again.  Yeesh!  So bloody annoying.

Well, we’re off to work sheep and hopefully also work off some of this goofiness.  And by tomorrow hopefully we’ll be through this round of hormonal craziness.

I have not had much time to write this last couple of weeks, but the reason this time goes beyond just being busy.  Two weeks ago Sunday, I hit a deer on my way home from training the dogs.  It was around 6:30 at night, and pitch black.  I was driving down a completely unlit, two-lane highway when a deer came out of nowhere and bolted in front of me.  I was going about 80km an hour (50mph) when she came up over the bank on my left.  I honked, hoping she’d swerve.  She didn’t.  I slammed on the brakes as hard as I could.  We collided.

The whole thing happened in about 2 seconds, although it felt like a good half an hour as I can still replay every instant in my head.  The phantom deer glowing faintly in my headlights suddenly coming into focus in my mind.  My thought to honk, and then the hardwired instinct to brake.  Good thing I didn’t have the muscle memory to brake and swerve to avoid as otherwise I’m sure we’d all be dead.  At that speed, doing anything but trying to stop in a straight line would have been a death sentence to anyone who wasn’t well trained in high speed chases.  And given the ditch on one side and the potential for on-coming traffic on the other, there really was nowhere to go but straight.

Very fortunately, I drive a Toyota Matrix.  I am sure this car saved my life.  Its bumper was high enough to hit the deer’s centre of gravity and send her flying through the air forward, rather than hitting her legs and having her flip up on the hood and through the windshield.  The entire front end of the car collapsed inward, absorbing the impact so successfully that I felt little more than a gentle bump as we decelerated from 80km to zero in under 2 seconds.  $5,500 worth of damage to my car, and we were all fine.  Thank you Toyota.  I will never own another brand of car.

As strange as this may sound, before the shock of the accident set in, the very first thought that went through my head was “I wonder if I can fit the deer in my car and bring her home for the dogs” followed rapidly by “I wonder if I have it in me to butcher a deer.”  As I sat in the middle of the road, pondering these thoughts, the deer – who I thought was dead – regained consciousness and struggled to her feet.  I watched as she hobbled off on three legs.  I sure hope she survives, but I don’t think there’s much chance of that.

Once she was gone, I started to wake up to what had happened.  I noticed that there was a big ridge of metal sticking up in front of my windshield that I was pretty sure wasn’t there before, and an odor of something burning.  Rubber?  At the same time, I became dimly aware that I was sitting at a dead stop in the middle of the highway.  I turned the key and the engine turned over.  I pressed the gas, and the car moved forward.  Amazing.  It still worked.  Wondering what I should do, I started driving down the road.  After a few hundred yards, my brain finally kicked in and I pulled over.  I got out and inspected my car, and that’s when I really realized how close I had come to not making it home again.  Ever.  I started to shake.

I got back in my car and reached for my emergency kit.  Homeopathic arnica is the first remedy to give for shock and injury, and the sooner you take it, the better.  I found my bottle and put a pellet under my tongue.  Very quickly I stopped shaking and started to think clearly.  The dogs.  The dogs?  How were the dogs?  It had taken me this long to even realize that I had been in an accident, and I felt horrible that I only then started worrying about the dogs.  Ross was at my side in the front passenger seat and he had been calm throughout all of this.

Ross was wearing a seat belt.  The girls were each in a crate, sleeping with full bellies after a hard day of working sheep and hiking.  I don’t think they even noticed anything had happened other than a quick stop.  Thank you, Toyota.  Thank you, the inventor of doggie seat belts.

I let my dogs ride free in my car for the first 18 years of having dogs.  Jake and I drove 6 weeks around the US at one point, and 4 weeks on another trip.  All highway miles at high speeds.  I’ve driven across the continent several times with a loose dog in my car.  Did I worry?  Yes, mildly.  But not enough to do anything about it.

Then, two years ago, I had a conversation with a fellow dog owner who’s uncle is an OPP officer.  She told me what her uncle had said to her when he found out she let her dog ride free in her car.  He told her of all the horrible accidents he’s seen with loose dogs in the cars.  Dogs who were thrown through windshields, dogs who flew around the car and killed well strapped in people who would have otherwise survived.  Dogs who were thrown clear of cars, running away in terror, never to be seen again.  And then there were dogs who survived the crash, only to be shot and killed by emergency workers because they didn’t know if they could safely get near the people trapped in the car.

My gentle, sweet little Ross being shot to death because he growled at someone after surviving the trauma of a bad car accident?  The thought of this last scenario terrified me.  I went out and bought a seat belt, and have been strapping him in ever since.  And thank goodness, as otherwise he’d be dead now.  Launched through the windshield.

No, I can’t stop thinking about the ‘what if’s’.

But Ross was fine, the girls were all fine, and I was ok too.  I called my insurance company who called the police.  They took 1.5 hours to find me, so it was a good thing I wasn’t injured.  I expect they would have looked harder and faster if I had told them I was bleeding to death.  The cops were great (and quite cute I might add!) and sorted everything out.  My car clearly could not safely be moved under it’s own power, so they ordered a flatbed truck for it.  For me and the dogs, they ordered a taxi-van.  I was 150km from home (95 miles) and the taxi cost $295.  Good thing I had just been paid as I don’t usually have that kind of cash kicking around!  There was a lot of serendipity going on that night.

The dogs were good as gold in their crates as the taxi took us home.  I was absolutely exhausted by then.  From the time I hit the deer to time I got home, 6.5 hours had passed.  It was 1am and I could barely stand.  I came in, cancelled my meetings for the next day, put the dogs to bed, and hit the hay.

I had a very busy 10 days after that, and dealing with all the insurance calls, police calls, rides to get my rental car (40 minutes to the  nearest car rental agency), going to the body shop to pick up all the stuff I needed out of my car and so on, took up every spare minute I had beyond work.  And all I wanted to do is stay home and sleep!  My body ached, my muscles were recovering from having tensed up horribly, and my joints were swelling from the adrenaline reaction.  Two weeks later I still have a fair amount of pain and need to go to an osteopath and homeopath to work with getting it under control.  My insurance is covering everything, even the taxi ride home.

Apparently this is “deer season”, not just for hunters but for drivers.  Between the hunters in the forest and the combines ripping up the fields, the deer have nowhere safe to go.  Over the last six weeks, giant combines (this is a small one) have been working day and night (literally) to pull up all the corn and soy that is grown around here:

…turning fields, that the deer are used to looking like this:

…into moonscapes with no place to hide, like this, overnight:

With such dramatic changes to their environment, and gunshots going off all around, the deer are panicky and disoriented and run into cars willy nilly.  The police who helped me that night had hit a deer a few weeks before, and the tow truck that pulled my car away had a huge dent in its fender from where it hit a 9-point buck the week before.  The car rental agency said they get 3-4 people EVERY DAY in this area (i.e. rural countryside) in October and November, renting cars after hitting deer.

They say everything happens for a reason, but I’m not sure why this happened yet.  Maybe it will become clear down the road.  I feel like someone was really watching out for me, as it could have been so much worse. I lost the time that evening, and more time during the week.  But I am not injured, my dogs are safe, and my bank account is intact.  I get my car back this morning.  I had been slack a bit of late, with all this driving, and occasionally not strapping Ross in if I’m not going far.  But I’ll never take that chance again.  That accident happened so quickly – and if anything preventable had happened to him, or any of the dogs, I would have never forgiven myself.  Maybe I needed to learn that lesson.  I don’t know, but I do know that I am extremely grateful that we are all OK.  As for the poor doe – well, I sadly don’t know what happened to her.  The police couldn’t find her.  I sure hope she recovered, or died quickly.

Well, I’m off to pick up my little car from the body shop…

This week I took Hannah and Kestrel to agility.  Both girls are in heat right now.  I brought the girls into the training arena and brought towels to put down in the crates where I would contain them during our lesson, with the intention of wiping down the crates afterwards.  Having bitches in heat has never been a problem where I was doing agility training before, nor has it ever been a problem at any herding venue.  In fact I had both girls at a herding clinic this weekend and all I did was keep them a few feet away from the boys to avoid unwanted puppies.  The boys still had to think and work, and they had no problem doing so (young dogs with virtually no training, I might add).  In herding, the attitude is: “if your dog can’t work around a bitch in heat, that’s a fault in the dog, not the fault of the bitch.”  This is also true for Shutzhund and other working-type sports, and even conformation competitions.

Today I found that this attitude is exactly the opposite in the agility world.  My instructor said bitches in heat are only allowed on the property while wearing diapers, and warned me that they are universally banned at all agility trials.  The reason she insists on diapers at her facility is that she holds trials there and can’t afford to replace equipment spoiled by contact with an in-season bitch’s blood.  Furthermore, bitches in season are forbidden on the property two weeks prior to any trial.

The argument is that intact male dogs often lose their brains around a bitch in heat.  In fact, they lose their brains if a bitch in heat has been near the agility equipment, ever.  In other words, if my dogs were to go over a jump and leave a drop of blood on it, the jump would have to be thrown out because intact males would become incapable of going past the jump without stopping and sniffing and losing their brains.  This – the argument continues – is not fair to the owners of said males, so bitches in season must be diapered, and kept away from any competitions completely.  It was further explained to me that the reason that things are do different at agility trials is that dogs in agility are rarely exposed to bitches in season, and as such don’t learn how to control themselves.

My thoughts on the above is that this is a load of crap.  At the risk of anthropomorphizing the situation, it is more than reminiscent of the argument that women should be covered up because men are not capable of controlling themselves if they see hair or breasts or, heck, an ankle in the Victorian era.

Last fall I competed with Hannah at a sheepdog trial and the male dogs there were all perfectly capable of functioning in her presence, and keeping their mind on sheep despite her scent mark at the post.  I’ve seen an intact stud dog pick sheep up off a bitch in standing heat at a trial and, after a quick glance and sniff in her direction, get back to work with a single holler by his owner who was a couple of hundred feet away.

I would hazard a guess that these agility dogs lose their focus because agility is not something they are driven to do by instinct (unlike herding) and as a result, they are not used to having to control their primary instincts, unlike a trained herding dog.  At the same time, an intact male agility dog with sufficient training should get over this.  The first step in agility training is, after all, impulse control.  Hannah has been in standing heat at an agility class and the intact males were perfectly capable of running a course, although they did sniff and froth a bit while waiting for their turn.  My former instructor (who is now too far away to train with) never thought twice about having my girls in class while in heat.

I think a big part of the problem is that a bitch in season will bring out holes in the training of the owner of the intact male.  If the dog’s training is not solid enough, or if his enthusiasm for the sport is not strong enough, he’ll get distracted.  And since our society is quick to blame the woman for any poor behaviour on the part of a man, the distracting bitch must therefore stay home.

Another potentially contributing factor to this issue is that, in my observation, agility dogs on the whole tend to be a lot less stable than working dogs.  A dog who is capable of working (be it stock work, hunting work, search and rescue, police work etc.) must be capable of considerable self-control.  In fact, many people do agility with their dogs specifically because their dogs are so high strung and reactive.  I have taken a number of my foster dogs to agility classes for exactly this reason.

This is likely for a number of reasons.  Dogs bred for these types of sports (agility, flyball, dock diving etc.) are selected for manic and obsessive-compulsive behaviours, instead of for an ability to think and have self-control in face of strong stimulus.  Also, many agility people get partners from shelters, and many of those dogs have been rejected because of their behavioural issues to begin with.  In other words, it’s a population already tipped in that direction.  This is often made much worse by the stress of the shelter coupled with being surgically altered and heavily vaccinated all at the same time (for my thoughts on this horrifically damaging practice, read this).  Some agility training facilities require yearly vaccinations, and many of them as well, further contributing to the mental problems of these dogs.  As a result, many agility dogs start with much lower thresholds for distractions.  Reactiveness and hyper-sexuality are both behaviours that can result from a demyelination of the central nervous system caused by vaccines, especially the rabies vaccine (here is a list of articles discussing this further).

Nevertheless, I don’t think this is a good reason to ban bitches in heat from competitions.  How about more proofing people?  Is it my dog’s fault if your dog can’t work past a toy or treat that has been dropped on the ground?  Or gets distracted by someone else’s shout or movement or click?  Certainly not.  When a dog who is afraid of men is running, does the judge ask all men to stand back from the side of the arena so as to not distract her or cause her to panic and run out of the ring?  No again.  People who have dogs who break for these reasons all have to work very hard to desensitize their dogs and have them stay focused despite such distractions. My girls will all break for various reasons, and I proof my training against this as much as possible.  We in fact look for such holes and practice, practice, practice. This is a big part of agility training in general.

My instructor told me today that until I could get my dog to hold a 2-on-2-off contact position and continually nose target a piece of plastic on the ground, while I run at top speed, hooping and hollering and tossing toys and treats as I go, she will not be ready to trial. If my dog can hold her position during the above scenario, surely an intact male can learn to hold it when a bitch in heat walks by. So why not train and proof intact males around bitches in season?  Why should my girls have to stay home just because someone else hasn’t trained their dog to keep his mind on the ball instead of her tail end?  It seems to me that sending any bitch in heat home only serves to make this problem worse.  If I had an intact male (which I have had in the past, and will have again in the future), I’d work him around bitches in season intentionally, as another level of distraction.

The icing on the cake is that if you have to keep your in seaons bitch home from a trial you have already paid for, you can only get your money back if you get a certificate from the vet to prove that she is in heat.  This requires having a good relationship with a vet so that you don’t get charged for an office visit to get the certificate. When I heard this, it was enough to make me reconsider ever trialing in this sport.  How unbelievably ridiculous.

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.