Catching up - Team Hypoallergenic

View of The Red Barn from the clinic, mid-blizzard

The snow has definitely put a hitch in my winter training. When the weather cooperated, I'd been working on re-teaching the shed with Rae. I was having increasing difficulty calling her through, which was weird because she was such an enthusiastic shedder when she came to me in the summer. I invented a drill that we both enjoyed: I set up 4 cones in a square and practiced driving around them with about 8-10 sheep. I stood in the center of the square and had her drive them around one way, then bring them to me in the middle where we'd shed off a few. Then I'd have her take that group around the square in the opposite direction, bring them back to me, and then shed off a few more. Rinse, repeat. It worked well because practicing driving was a little monotonous for Rae, since I was really the one who needed work, so she was constantly rewarded for hanging in there by getting to shed.

Somewhere along our training journey this fall our shedding fell apart. It got to the point where I'd have a gaping hole set up for her and she would just lie there looking at the sheep, ignoring my pleas to come through! So, we started over. With David Henry's guidance, I worked with her to come directly to me no matter what the sheep were doing, no matter whether there's a hole or not. An obedience exercise - give up the sheep and come the all the way to me so that I can pet you. Since we were working in the round pen, I first had to clean up some sloppy flanking that often rears its ugly head when we're in tight spaces. Of course she knows how to flank, but in the round pen she tends to get slicey and zippy if I'm not on her. Once we got our flanks straightened out, we worked along the fence getting her to come through to me. Rae was like WTF?! She knew that I was setting her up for a shed, so why was I doing something different than what she KNEW to be our end goal? This was not how she learned to shed, so it was totally a new concept for her. I was never to be stern with her when she didn't come through, it was all to be a very upbeat, encouraging experience where she "won" every single time. When I had her bringing sheep to me on the fence, I often had her hustle them in to really get her jazzed up. I squatted on the ground and motioned/called her in, keeping my stick behind me out of her way and also to help keep sheep from folding around behind me. It took her some time to understand what I wanted of her, but with about a week of practice at home, she was coming in pretty well, even when there was no hole at all.

My goal is for her to come charging through the INSTANT I call her, but we're not quite there yet. At least, the last time I worked her we weren't there yet. It's been a couple weeks now >:( We didn't get hit with the 50" of snow they got back home in PA, we had a mere 2' or so. There was a brief spell where it almost all melted and there was a bit of grass peeking out of my field, but then we got another 8" with a crust of ice on it. SO FRUSTRATING! We're due for some more melting Friday, so I'm excited to see what she does this weekend when we get out to work.

Rae working in the fresh snow

More catching up - Edgeworth Winter Trial

Trialing has slowed for the winter. I was fortunate to get up to the Edgeworth winter trial about a month ago. For the winter trial, the sheep are set about halfway up the hill compared to the big fall trial that boasts a 600 yard outrun. I'd been preparing for Rae to take off for the top on her outrun (like she's used to doing at Edgeworth) by practicing calling her in at Christine's. I'd send her, let her get about 1/3 of the way out, down her, get her to walk in, and then re-send. I've never fiddled with her outrun because she runs out very well, just occasionally leaves my feet a little square. She did great with this and was listening perfectly, so I felt like we were well-prepared for the trial.

Before our run, I was sure to show her where the sheep were being set. She watched hers being set and I feel confident that she knew they weren't at the top of the hill. I sent her left and she started out nicely, not too wide until she got to the level of the cross-drive panel. I saw her start to kick out behind a ridge, but I was ready and blew her stop and walk-ups just like we did beautifully at Christine's...this time they fell on deaf ears. Multiple times. She kept right on truckin and I lost her behind that ridge. All I could do was blow stops and walk-ups hoping to get her closer to her sheep, wherever she was. I finally caught sight of her behind her sheep, right where she needed to be, just very deep behind them. I was still blowing walk-ups at that point since I hadn't seen her yet, and I look up to find Rae hauling ass down the hill toward her sheep, "I'm coooommmiinngg!!!" We recovered for a nice lift, fetch, turn around the post, first leg of the right-hand drive.

Then we had communication problems at the turn: some say she flipped me the doggy finger, some say she was in a low spot and just couldn't hear me. There was a lot of "HEY YOU!...YOU GET OUTTA THAT...awaaaayyy!" They got a good 15-20yds beyond the panel before we got control of them, but then she went into automatic fetch mode and we brought them back through the panels. She fought me to go the whole way around the sheep to stop them (I wouldn't have expected any different), but we got 'em going again and had a nice line til I blew the panel at the very.last.second. Another miscommunication (selective hearing vs. trouble hearing?) and she just followed them as they headed for the set-out. More abandoning whistles for yelling. We pulled it together for a very nice pen, which was proving tricky for many.

When we were on, we were ON! But the times in between were not pretty. It was pointed out to me that the places we fell apart were the same as where other teams had problems, and when I watched for it, it was true. I felt like there were a lot of corrections from my end, but I think that's actually a good thing in that I'm not letting her get away with some of the sloppiness that I wasn't aware of in the past. For instance, if she didn't take a short flank, she got a "hey!" instead of a flank-flank-bigger flank-bigger flank-hey!!-flank. I think we're getting there. Score wasn't pretty (lost 11 on the outrun, yikes! but I figured losing points was better than losing sheep), but somehow we tied for something like 7th out of 17ish.

Photo by Dan King

That outrun still has me puzzled. She may well have just been running wide and deep, choosing to go behind the ridge instead of along it since she can be quirky about terrain. She did end up coming in at the right place on her own after I'd lost her for essentially the ENTIRE outrun! Regardless, I was disappointed that she wouldn't take any redirects. The two of us had it down pat at Christine's, I don't know why she was so opinionated this time! I'm not sure if she didn't hear me at the panels or didn't want to hear me. I'd like to think that she ended up in dead spots since I've worked hard lately to make sure she's listening.

Ah well, back to the old drawing board. I hate these trials where we only get one run. I always come away wanting the opportunity to fix my mistakes on the same field with the same sheep. I was to go down to Lazy J in Georgia this weekend but the weather did not cooperate. That would've been two runs, rats! Next on the agenda is a one day Longshot trial in 2 weeks...