Herding Fun Day

Porter & I (and Stout!) attended a Herding Fun Day / Training Day at FairWether in Versailles on Saturday. This is the place where we take lessons from Wendy.

Porter & I only ran once, since technically we weren't on the list. But a couple people weren't there so they let us in. I could have ran a second time later in the day, but I didn't want to take someone's sheep who had actually signed up ahead of time. So I was happy that I had decided to come out & watch!

We actually had one of our best runs ever! We ran the Started A course. We had a bobble on the outrun, but I was mostly to blame for that. I didn't really set him up well at the cone. And I was still worried about getting that initial "bend out" so I pushed to hard, too soon and caused him to try a :come by" instead of "away to me."

But once he was re-directed, he had a beautiful wide outrun (Wendy was holding the sheep, so that could have been part of it). He was way back behind the sheep, although he didn't "drop on the top." The sheep were already walking nicely to me so I didn't push it.

I got the sheep through all the obstacles the first time! With no escapes! But as we continued on the course he did get tighter & tighter. Wendy had to yell at some instructions to me on the cross drive. I got paralyzed wondering which way to flank Porter as I stood on the fenceline with the sheep... But we made it across without much trouble.

Porter was starting to back-talk & push by the time we got to the cross drive. I chased him off once and he settled a little. We walked back down the fence line to exhaust. It did take 2 tries for me to get Porter placed to hold them off the gate. But I was just being picky. We could have easily exhausted them the first time, but I wanted a hold.

And then we celebrated! It definitely would have been a qualifying run! I even tried to get myself nervous like I would be at a trial beforehand. And we still did well!

So there's about a month left until the Cardigan Specialty. I feel much better about our remaining training time now!

(photo from 2011 CWCCA Specialty near Houston, TX)

I stayed the entire day on Saturday so I could watch some friends & agility students do instinct testing with Wendy.

I was really impressed with all of them! There were 3 Pyr Sheps, 1 border collie mix, & 1 Aussie / border collie / golden retriever mix. I think all passed with instinct, some with more than others :)

And obviously I'm finally learning some of this herding stuff, because I could see when the dogs were "turned on." Some I could see kick themselves out wide to cover the heads, some split then did little head checks to bring them back together... And some I could see the desire, but not quite having the experience to execute. I could even recognize the barking as insecurity.

So I may finally be getting it  :)

(photo from 2011 CWCCA Specialty near Houston, TX)