Catching up yet again

Here I am catching up again as I have neglected the blog again. Things have been busy around here. Work has kept me busy along with training/working dogs. Steve got a new dog this summer. Jet is a 9 year old retired open dog. She is helping Steve to learn more about working with a herding dog and to help him to have some success on the trial field. They have been working at bonding and understanding each other.

I worked with Cash this summer. Started having some trouble with him on his outruns as he was stopping part of the way out and looking back to me as if he was confused. At times I thought that he was losing his confidence. And then I thought that he was just having trouble and was sometimes blowing me off. One day when Steve was helping me with our outruns and I sent Cash over the hill to pick up the sheep, Steve said that it seems as if he couldn't hear me and was confused on what I wanted of him. So we decided to have his hearing BAER tested. We discovered that he is deaf in his right ear. I have still been working with him as he does take verbal commands better than the whistle. I will continue to work with him as he loves his sheep work. I will only be able to trial him in pro-novice. If his hearing gets any worse than he will have to be retired from trialing.

I have sent an email to the doctors in charge of the adult onset deafness so that I can provide DNA samples to help with their research.

It is sad that he will never be able to run open. I was working him on his shed and extending his outrun when this all started happening. He will stay here with us.

Sting has been coming along with his training quite nicely. He has learned his flanks and I have started him on some short outruns. I have also had him walking up on his sheep for the just the start of the drive. I am quite happy with him.

Corbie is still working very nicely at home and with Steve holding the sheep. We now need to introduce a dog into the picture of holding the sheep before I try again at different farms again.