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.