Lesson Day

It was fun to start lessons for this year today.  Some prior students with new dogs and one new student with a lovely white shepherd puppy.  Very nice temperment and very interested and kind to the stock.  Nice to find in a shepherd and it looks like if anyone wants a good breeder of shepherds , the breeder of this pup is local so contact me.

Kathy and Wish came and worked and they are ready to move up to some started classes.  Wendy will be back next week for the clinic with Jan and Zippy was turned on today.  Much more dog than last year.  And a nice aussie pup came with Kim.  Very turned on and also not a hardhead.

I did get bumped on my ass by Reddi who is going to get a comeuppance if he keeps that up. My leg is sore and I twisted the same foot and ankle that I did when I fell off the trailer step on my way home.  It's not a sprain, but if I do it again who knows what it will be.

I worked with Edge on putting his chin in my hand. He seems to think it is odd and looks for something else to do.  I taught him hand signals this am , but of course I need to keep working on that. Gotta love a clicker used right!

I took one of my wicker chairs off the back porch, washed it and painted it and then put it in the living room.  I took an old cushion and put a new cover on it and Voila ---cute little chair.

Heat is off tonight and I will leave it off all night . Tomorrow is supposed to be high 60's. 

Clicker Training

I can't tell you how much the clicker used correctly is helping me. Suddenly Dare can get into heel position and he now understands hand signals. I have to work on using it more with heeling but I will wait to see what Leslie's take on heeling will be. 
We have started a little puppy type heeling but not using the clicker just food.  I am still waiting to see how it works out, but I am giving it a chance.

Dually suddenly understood signals today.  yay clicker.  His heeling is all over the place. He's bit of a lunatic.

The heeling is food in right hand, walk 1/2 step and count 1,2,3,4 with each step and reach over with each step and feed with left hand at each count. So left foot is 1 feed and then pull right foot ahead and count 2 and feed until 4 and then walk quickly and count while you are doing it 1,2,3,4 and then feed and repeat. You can do this in a small area because you can do turns. You do have to wait for the pup to catch up and get in heel position before you feed him. Edge is doing it well. It's more me getting the rhythm down because it is kind of awkward.

I also worked on the chin exercise which is getting him to put his head in my cupped hand and hold still for a 2nd and then click.  I think I am clicking incorrectly which is causing a bobbin action. Next thing I will try is to get him to touch his cheek to my hand. I didn't think  I should do both at the same time.

I picked up the new flooring for upstairs and some 1 by 3's to  make some shelves in my closet.  It's slow going but we will get there. 

Dog Work

This morning I went to my cross training class and snuck some time in with Dare before the class started. He did very well in that room.  I'm thinking he doesn't  like working at Collinswood because of the barking dogs.  
The pup worked the rest of the class and we did a little heeling a new way and some more box work and now we are going to start chin and cheek work this week.

I sorted off the  goats and worked all three dogs in the conrol pen.  Interestingly, the big white doe kept breaking off and running so Dare had to keep covering her.  She did not do that for Edge orDually.  I worked Dare and Dually on inside flanks and pressure in the corner. The goats didn't want to stay in the corner so I will have to keep working on that.

I did the same corner exercise with Edge with me up close. He didn't want to go in the corner if they were facing him so I had to keep backing him up.  He seems stickier on his go bye  side doing that and freer on the away. I need to get him in a bigger area and work on balance and pace.  He's cute though.  I did get him to come away from the sheep a few times  and come to me.  That's huge!

Damn Sheep/goats

I was about to take the dogs about back to the arena to play and saw that the livestock had basically decimated the gate that I had made for them to eat the hay thru.  It was in pieces. So I put all the dogs back in the yard except for Peaches and went in the house to get the screwdriver and came out to try an find Peaches. She's not coming and I can't see her.  She shouldn't have gone under the fence and up the road but a few minutes later I see her way up the street coming towards the house. She had a big bone in her mouth.  She and Mikey used to take off frequently but I thought since Mikey was gone she wouldn't bother and she is getting old.   Well Mikey tried to escape the last day of his life but he ran out of oomph and had to come home. I was right with him anyway because by then his escape was at a very unsafe walk.

So back out the fix the gate thing and the screwdriver bit would not stay in the driver and I was losing it and finding it and losing it and finding it till I finally got in a rythm that allowed me to hold onto it or put it in my pocket after every screw.  Finally got it back to together and put it back up so they animals could no longer get in and trash the hay they were trying to eat.

I spent the morning rearranging the living room and sorting the assored junk laying around. I made quite a lot of progress but now I am out of steam and I am not quite done. Lots of stuff to go downstairs someplace and a bagful of trash and some stuff to go to the take it or leave is shed at the dump.  Actually looks a lot better though.

Car Repair

So I left this morning at 8 am and got halfway to the garage and realized I had no money or credit card so  I had to turn around and go home again. I spent 2.5 hrs in dunkin donuts waiting for the car and then another hr at the shop.  It cost me $323 but at least my check engine light is no longer staring at me and the rear brakelight that I could care less about has been replaced for a mere $200.  It was a very expensive LED light. 

So I captured all the lambs and ewes in my chute and gave them all vaccines.  I hit my finger once with a needle and started bleeding all over everything. Those needles are sharp!  Then I fed them and the lambs didn't eat all their food in the stall so when I let the goats back in they immediately ran in thru the lamb door to finish the food so I sent Dare in there to bite them as they stuck their heads in first and then to just guard the opening while I tried to make it too small for them to get in.  He thought that was a great game. It was very amusing to me becasue most often when I put him in the stall , all he can concentrate on is eating the grain. This time he was way more interested in being able to bite the goats. Good dog Dare.

I worked the puppy a little in the control pen but it's so soft in there that I could not move around much to do much with him.  I did work on his call off a little bit.  I managed to catch him but only if he was going in the direction around the sheep that happened to be toward me.  I wasn't really calling him off sheep just catching him as he ran by.

Darn it why so cold April 2nd?

  Too cold to do any work outside.  33 deg is not comfortable.  I did load the truck and make a good useful trip to the dump.  It cost me $20 to dump the old pc's and monitors but I am very glad to get rid of them.

I picked up the CD&T that  I forgot at Tractor Supply yesterday and I bought a new tire for the wheelbarrow which I hope doesn't prove to be a problem with installation.

I got some short ribs at the store that I thought would be a crockpot recipe but it turns out they only take a couple of hours and OMG are they good.  The recipe called for a bottle of beer but I didn't have any so I used some Cabernet that I had in the fridge.  It was good for something!

Darn mucky mud

I just went outside to fix the sheep hay so they could get to it. I had a nice clean pitchfork with  me and I leaned it up against the fence to play with the hay.  The sheep knocked it into the muck and then walked all over it.  It was snowing and blowing and I was ankle deep in mud and they put me over the edge.  And then to top it off , I had to slosh back and forth a few times to get a pair of scissors and a hammer to fix things up so they lambs could not get inside the feeder.  They do make a mess. 

I allowed the 2 skinny goats to stay in while a fed the nursing ewes and I watched them slam the lambs around in the stall so I had to stand there and sic Dually on them every time they came in the lamb door. Obviously the lamb door is too big if it allows the stupid goats to get in too.  Just add it to the list.

I went to Tractor Supply to get CD&T vaccine and grain and they get it out of the fridge and bring it up front for you to pick up on the way out. Of course I forgot it and now I have to go back again. Well maybe on the way back from the dump tomorrow.

I am having fun working the box with Dare, Edge and Dually.  Peaches would love to, because there is food involved but sorry Peach. Both Dare and Dually seem to understand the Down hand signal.  I worked on it last year and I guess they had time to think about it.

I bought a tub of protein lick today.  It was 125# and I got it into the wheelbarrow only to find out the it had a flat tire.  Not easy pulling 125#'s with a flat.  So I pumped it up to get the grain out and by the time I got to the barn , it was flat again.So I tried it again and couldn't even get it pumped up so I took it off and will bring it to Tractor Supply and buy a new one.  I used the single wheel wheelbarrow to unload the 400lbs grain.