Okay, the more detailed version is that Hope has again done very nicely helping me today- we managed to take them through gates 4x, moving them between paddocks so the dogs could use the unoccupied one to romp. This is the point where non-dog friends go, "Yeah, AND?!" and my dog friends who've tried herding understand it's more tricky than it sounds! lol Also introduced walk-up though she's not quite sure when to stop since it's a relatively long duration behaviour.
Very happy though as this means that when I need to round them up when they're almost due or have new lambs, she'll be effective but soft enough to help, which in turn means a whole lot less running and slip-n-slide for me. While we're no where near what the advanced dogs can do, for a total of a few days and with only a few minutes a day for a couple of rank novices we don't suck. ;-)
Brag two is that I took Verity to the pet supermarket today and she did quite well. She rode the whole way calmly though, even when we were going through a workzone at a crawl near a jackhammer and wasn't fussed at the store... not overly curious (which is my prefered reaction to novel situations, "Oh, hey, what's this and how do I make it result in treats???") but not fussed either, which was quite nice! She had to deal with food bags being put in a trolly, walking next to said trolly with chattering bubba down narrow aisles and there were other dogs, people, kids, clippers and blowdryers going etc. The closest I let anyone get was about a foot and a half from her but she was pretty cruisey and bumping my hand for bikkies much of the time. We also discovered that she is not small animal safe... they all elicited way too much intensity. I'd suspected this as she was just a little too interested in my chooks and ducks for me to think duck herding was going to be a good idea but I think we can now say with certainty she'd be a dose of chlorine in the small animal genepool.
Off tomorrow to Bendigo for the Sheep And Wool show to see sheep, alpaca and working dog trials! ! ! ! !
Brag two is that I took Verity to the pet supermarket today and she did quite well. She rode the whole way calmly though, even when we were going through a workzone at a crawl near a jackhammer and wasn't fussed at the store... not overly curious (which is my prefered reaction to novel situations, "Oh, hey, what's this and how do I make it result in treats???") but not fussed either, which was quite nice! She had to deal with food bags being put in a trolly, walking next to said trolly with chattering bubba down narrow aisles and there were other dogs, people, kids, clippers and blowdryers going etc. The closest I let anyone get was about a foot and a half from her but she was pretty cruisey and bumping my hand for bikkies much of the time. We also discovered that she is not small animal safe... they all elicited way too much intensity. I'd suspected this as she was just a little too interested in my chooks and ducks for me to think duck herding was going to be a good idea but I think we can now say with certainty she'd be a dose of chlorine in the small animal genepool.
Off tomorrow to Bendigo for the Sheep And Wool show to see sheep, alpaca and working dog trials! ! ! ! !
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