WELCOME

Thanks for visiting my blog. It's rather flattering to have someone read your minds meanderings. I hope it's entertaining and sometimes educational.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Moved to Rogers today




I woke up and  leisurely packed the trailer and got ready to move. Roger called me about 10 and said to come on over.  I was almost ready to go so I was there in no time.  Rachel Vest was here already working  a dog which I didn’t know until I parked and set up the trailer.  I took Dare down to the pens and she was there along with Chris Caldwell.  Chris is judging this weekend so he didn’t have any dogs with him.  We worked Dare on pressure on the nasty assed goats and then we worked one of  Rachel’s dogs.  Then I switched to Dually who is a piece of work. Chris, Roger and I were all in there trying to get him to go around the goats without picking a fight everytime. Dually was very bitey and divey.  But Chris worked him for a while and Roger worked him and I worked him and he eventually after a long time stopped  diving and and slowed down and worked nicely.
Another thing we did, that Roger is promoting , to get used to pressure is to use a big pole and get the dog to stay put while you bang the pole down on either side of him and the rear eventually being able to bang it pretty violently. You start it much less vehemently.  The dog should learn to lie there and just take the pressure. Dare was fine. Dually kept trying to bite the stick.  Apparently I was supposed to lay him out flat for that. Tomorrow is another day.  The pup was fine , but we didn’t get too violent with it.
We went out to dinner en masse tonight. JoeSheerhan and wife, Chris Caldwell and wife, Roy Sage,Rachel and STeve,Roger and Kathy and 2 other people I didn’t’ really get to meet. The food  was basically a Chinese buffet with some sushi and hibachi grille too.  It was ok.

I get an extra hour of sleep tonight because we are on  central standard time. Cool beans.  Hopefully the ducks will be cooperative tomorrow. The cows look good and the goats should be fine. Today’s goats were picked  because of their tendency towards arguments I believe and they  did try to beat Dare’s ass into the ground.  He was getting pissed at them.

2 comments:

  1. Curious about the pole thing. It seems like that would desensitize a dog to your pressure, too. I wonder if that would make a dog less likely to move off of YOUR pressure as a handler. Sometimes you need your dog to move off of pressure. Did he do that exercise in the presence of the goats? How does the dog transfer that exercise to stock in his mind? Did you see Roger work a dog that had been trained with that method? If so, was the dog responsive to his pressure? Maybe I'm missing something.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hehehe "nasty goats" (couldn't help but laugh). Do they leave horns on their meat goats? We don't for that reason

    ReplyDelete