Corbie is celebrating her 4th birthday

This is Corbie at 5 weeks of age. Wasn't she a cutie?! This little thing stole my heart four years ago. She would always run up to the side of the whelping box every time that I came into the room. It was as if she was saying, I am yours. She was a momma's girl then and still is. She has been out working sheep all week and I am sure that she thinks that is the best birthday present that a Border Collie could want. I plan on trialing her a bit in pro-novice this year. I will post here to keep everyone updated on how we do.

Winter Wonderland

We have had fog the last two mornings which lead to this beautiful frost coating on everything this morning. I saw this when I went down to do chores this morning and I just had to run back up the house and take some pictures.

The only time that weeds can actually be pretty to look at.

Or the only time a packet of box alders seeds could actually be pretty to look at.

This was a risky shot taken right into the sun. I thought I'd take the risk and it turned out pretty cool.

You can also see just how blue the sky was this morning. I have a lot more pictures posted to my Facebook page if you want to see more.

Who might that be up on the hill??

Who could that be on the hill top?? She is barely peeking.

I can see her ears.

There is her nose.

Why, it's Corbie!

When we finish chores and go for a walk she will run ahead and "hide" on the hill. It is cute because she will duck up and down. Then she will take off across the hill to the other side.

Horse trainers......

I do read some horse magazines as I feel that we as dog trainers can learn some things from horse trainers. I wanted to share a quote from an article about Clinton Anderson going back to Australia to work with his mentor, Gordon McKinlay. For those of you who might not be familiar with Clinton Anderson, he is a very well known horse trainer and clinician here in the United States. He has a regular TV program on the rural farm network.

The quote that I putting here comes from Gordon McKinlay in this article. I know that this was written for horses, but I think that you can substitute the word dog for horse in a lot of cases.

""Before we bring out the first horse, I want to give you a few things to think about," said Gordon.

"First, you've got to have good feel and timing. Horses learn through repetition. They won't learn if you keep changing what you're doing. Be consistent. A lot of what we are going to be doing the next three days may not make sense to you, either, at first, but it will with repetition. The same is true for the horse.

Second, a horse has a left side and a right side. There is a learning side of the brain and a reactive side of the brain. The reacting part is big and the learning side is small. Our goal at this clinic is to reverse this.

Finally, the horse is a prey animal. They will run from what they don't trust. You cannot force your will on a horse; you have to get their trust first. When you get wild with a horse, it is because you've run out of knowledge. You are the teacher, but in order to teach, you have to have more knowledge than the horse--and therein lies the problem.""

I just thought that I would post this and see if anyone would like to make a comment. We need something to talk about on these winter days. I also have another quote from another article by another horse trainer that I will post at a later date.

I know that timing is also very important for us training our working sheepdogs. If we mistime a correction or if we mistime releasing the pressure of a correction we can end up with problems.

Even tho our dogs are not a prey animal, I still feel that the comment in regards to gaining the animal's trust still applies. And that when we get wild with our dog while training, neither one of us benefits.

Got to work dogs yesterday!

It was finally warm enough to work dogs again on Sunday. Our snow plow guy ended up plowing out this nice sized area where we were able to work dogs. A couple of friends of ours came over and we all worked dogs until our feet were cold.

I was reminded with Cash that if he starts to come in on his outrun/flank, down him and get him out. It worked wonders. I certainly do seem to forget things at times. Corbie was working really nice on her flanks, but I had trouble keeping her on the pressure when we were driving. The lambs kept coming back to me.

Hopefully tomorrow will be warm enough again to work.

The World of Sheepdogs

http://www.kinlochsheepdogs.com/World%20of%20Sheepdogs%20Book.html


I am so excited as I reserved a copy of the book from the above link. It looks like it will be a wonderful book full of gorgeous pictures. And it is all Border Collies. Do you think that I am obsessed like my dogs. -_-

How cold is it??

How cold is it in MN this week?? Watch this video.

http://www.komonews.com/home/video/37654589.html?video=YHI&t=a

One more really cold night and morning and we'll be done with this cold snap. I sure hope that it's the last one of the this season.

Let it snow

I would say that we have gotten about 7 inches so far today and I believe that it is still snowing. I had to drive down to Rochester this morning to do an Invisible Fence lesson. The drive down wasn't too bad as it had only been snowing for maybe an hour. But, the drive home was hairy. For a 30 minute drive it took me between 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes to get home. I saw two 3 car accidents just north of Rochester. I also felt the rear end of the truck dance out once and then a little bit later again and it danced all the way into the left lane. After that I put it in 4 wheel drive and drove the rest of the way.

I did stop at the cell phone store, Alltel, while I was in Rochester. I was overdue for a new phone and I ended up getting a Blackberry Curve. Now I can check emails when I am gone all day long. But I bought it mostly for the ability to have the calendar to schedule my IF lessons. Then a quick trip to Target and I was on my way home.

When I got home we needed to fill the water for the sheep and shovel and shovel. Then we did chores. I worked Corbie just a bit on the ewes flanking her around. Did a little bit of driving to build up her confidence and called it quits. I am in the house for the night. It is supposed to get pretty cold the rest of the week, so I will not be out much. Just for chores.

Stuff

How is that for a subject line?? LOL Sorry that I haven't posted sooner. I have been meaning to write again, especially since I was able to get out and work dogs this week. But here it is.

The hydrant is still working. Keeping my fingers crossed as it's supposed to get really cold over the next week.

I did get out to work the dogs the past two days, not including today. On Monday I went out and worked my dogs. I am trying a plastic whistle to see if I can get the low notes any better. I used it a bit with Jag and I am still trying to get a good feel for it. I still may end up buying a sterling silver whistle, which isn't cheap. I worked both Cash and Corbie on some driving and then some flanks and outruns.

On Tuesday Steve also came down to work his Stryker. They worked on driving and flanking. Stryker is really looking nice for Steve.

I worked my 3 again on Tuesday. Cash wanted to start coming in flat at the top of his come by outrun. I know that part of what caused the problem was the hard snow/ice crusted snow on that side of the field and that he didn't want to go on that. The problem that I had with what he was doing was that he was choosing to come on the inside of the snow instead of going all the way to the fence and avoiding it on that side. By choosing to come on the inside of the snow it was causing him to be way too tight. So, I had to go part of the way out and then enforce that he go out. He did flank out on the next outrun and then we quit on that good note. The other thing that I have noticed is that by my getting him out more on his flanks/outruns is that he is slowing down more and is then thinking more. I like that! His speed can come back and will come back.

Corbie was also being tight, which is not like her. Since it's going to be cold I'll be giving her a little break to see if she improves again. I am almost thinking that she went thru a false pregnancy as she is blowing coat out in clumps. Time will tell.

Frozen hydrant

We started out the new year with a frozen water hydrant in the barn. Fun, fun. I had to haul water from another hydrant that is about 200 feet away. Since Steve hurt his back on December 29th, I got the fun of doing all of the water hauling. Our hydrant guy came out on Friday afternoon, the 2nd and managed to get it thawed and we still have water as of today. What a P.I.T.A. tho in the mean time. The sheep are happy as they are getting more consistent water now.

But the dogs are not happy as we are not able to train right now. First it was too cold and now there is ice everywhere. Bummer. When will spring come?!?!?!!