12-2-09

Malibu

MO:
We did two runs and both were pretty good but we stayed in too long and she got a little unfocused towards the end of each. On the first run we tried some outruns and she started moving wide before breaking up the sheep and then would collect them nicely, only a medium amount of gripping, and bring them to her handler.

We worked on having her lay down and then gather the sheep which she did ok, but seemed to revert to an obedience kind of mentality and her focus shifted off the sheep and onto the handler so we’re going to lay off that stuff for a while until she gets more keen on working. We also need to start keeping her from gripping the sheep without killing any of her drive.

Stevie:
She continued to hate going clockwise so she got schooled on it by both of us. We would set her up for an outrun and let her gather then work on half-circle directions alternating randomly between come-bye and away with a stand in between and an occasional that’ll do and call her off to do another outrun and so on.

Working like this is called “freeing her up” which is a confusing phrase since it means to get her out of her head and willing to go in whichever direction the handler needs instead of what her instincts are telling her. With the sheep between the handler and the dog, the handler should be able to give a direction command and pivot around in that same direction using the stick at the dogs shoulder to keep it moving and to keep it out. At the half-circle the handler would stand the dog and either have it go the opposite direction or again in the same direction, balancing out monotony against working on her weak side, until she gets to the other half-circle point where she stands again.

Next time we work on this we’ll try to have her lie down instead of stand (confusing since she’s been taught that “lie down” is stand, so sometimes she’ll stand and sometimes she’ll lie down – mostly depending on what’s going on. In the house she’ll lie down, in the field she’ll lie down when we enter the field but then stand while she’s working.)

Stevie goes into surgery tomorrow to be spayed and will have two weeks off, MO is also going to the vet to have some rectal bleeding checked out (one or two drops of funky smelling blood and a swollen anus when she is ready to poop).