RFD Working stock dog segment

We watched this program on RFD and I just wanted to share the link for the segment on the working stockdog. John Holman is a friend and the breeder of my old Jag.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-rhbS-EADk&feature=player_embedded

Jet

This is Steve and Jet at their first trial. I just love this shot with the two of them looking at each other.

The following shots were taken at our house when Steve was first working with Jet.

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.

John Wooden

I borrowed this from another person's blog. I think that it is really worth sharing.

John Wooden’s Favorite Maxims for Life

Many of the following quotes are from John himself, others he mentions as favorites of his but are not from him directly.

1. Happiness begins where selfishness ends.
2. Earn the right to be proud and confident.
3. The best way to improve the team is to improve ourselves.
4. Big things are accomplished only through the perfection of minor details.
5. Discipline yourself and others won’t need to.
6. Ability may get you to the top but character will keep you there.
7. I will get ready and then, perhaps, my chance will come.
8. If I am through learning, I am through.
9. If you do not have the time to do it right, when will you find the time to do it over.
10. The smallest good deed is better than the best intention.
11. The man who is afraid to risk failure seldom will have to face success.
12. Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.
13. Time spent getting even would be better spent trying to get ahead.
14. It is what you learn after you know it all that counts.
15. Consider the rights of others before your own feelings and the feelings of others before your own rights.
16. There is nothing stronger than gentleness.
17. You discipline those under your supervision to correct, to help, to improve; not to punish.
18. Goals achieved with little effort are seldom worthwhile or lasting.
19. Make sure the team knows they are working with you not for you.
20. Be most interested in finding the best way not in having your own way.
21. What is right is more important than who is right.
22. You handle things, you work with people.
23. As long as you try to your best you are never a failure; that is unless you blame others.
24. Tell the truth, that way you don’t have to remember a story.
25. Don’t let making a living prevent you from making a life.
26. If I were ever prosecuted for my religion I truly hope there would be enough evidence to convict me.
27. Although there is no progress without change, not all change is progress.
28. If we’d magnified blessings as much as we magnified disappointments we would all be much happier.
29. The best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
30. The worst thing that you can do for another person is the things they can and should do for themselves. Abraham Lincoln
31. It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely help another without also helping himself. Ralph Waldo Emmerson.
32. Do not permit what you cannot do to interfere with what you can do.
33. Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Character is what your really are; reputation is merely what you are perceived to be.
34. Love is the greatest of all words in our language.
35. Much can be accomplished by teamwork when no one is concerned who gets credit.
36. Never make excuses; your friends don’t need them and your foes won’t believe them.
37. We don’t have to be disagreeable just because we may disagree.
38. Be slow to criticize and quick to commend.
39. Be more concerned with what you can do for others than what others can do for you; you’ll be surprised at the results.
40. The more concerned we become over the things we can’t control the less we will do with the things we can control.
41. Don’t permit fear of failure to prevent effort; we are all imperfect and will fail on occasion but fear of failure is the greatest failure of all.
42. Being average means you are as close to the bottom as you are to the top.
43. The time to make friends is before you need them.
44. We are many but are we much?
45. Never be thrown off stride in how you behave or what you believe in because of outside events.
46. Nothing can give you greater joy than doing something for another.
47. Material things are not gifts but apologies for gifts, the only true gift is a portion of thyself. Ralf Waldo Emerson.
48. We cannot live a perfect day without doing something for another without the thought of something in return.
49. Do not mistake activity for achievement.
50. You can do more good by being good than any other way.
51. Forget favours given, remember those received.
52. Make each day your masterpiece.
53. Make friendship of fine art.
54. Learn as if you were to live forever; live as if you were to die tomorrow.
55. Treat all people with dignity and respect.
56. Acquire peace of mind by making the effort to become the best of which you are capable.
57. Be fast but do not hurry.

In one of the last interviews that John Wooden gave he was asked what he would like God to say to him when they met at the peril gates, John’s reply was “well done.”

Actually John I am pretty sure you got more than that, He likely had the whole place do the wave as you entered.

Below is Johns famous pyramid of success. If you click on it, it will open in it’s own window so you can see it without my overlapping blog sidebars. I have a copy in my office and another one in our dog training building. It is worth the re and re-read and re-read.

Be proactive instead of reactive

I have been going thru some of my old sheepdog clinic notes and thought that this one would be a good subject to approach.

I am so bad at being reactive instead of proactive when it comes to running my own dogs on sheep. I can see it with other people, but find it so hard to put it to action with myself. I can so understand what is being said and then I forget about so many things that I have been told. Shame on me.

Here are some of my notes from Carol Campion that have made me think about this again.

"You need to actually figure out the pressure, etc., before you ever send your dog. Then handle the dog to keep AHEAD of what MIGHT happen rather than playing catch up. A stop, or there, or early flank, those are the kind of things that dictate to the sheep what they will do rather than fix what they have done."

"Give the dog what he/she needs, be it a there if the sheep are easy or heavy, and a stop if they very light and need room. She lets hers pick where to turn in on them, but decide how much dog I need for the lift."

"Don't think of downing your dog at the top so much as controlling him as much as you are just maintaining contact. If left along too much at the top, or anywhere else and then you try to step in to help, you are too late. Need to be more proactive. Need to be in contact much sooner."

"You need to be more proactive, if you see a potential for a bad spot or a problem area, then be prepared for it and try to set up your dog sooner to be successful. Don't wait until the problem pops up."

Here is some more that was directly related to a run of mine with my Jag.

"Think of it as more contact with you(me) rather than control from you(me). She thought that I kind of left him to figure out stuff too much for himself. (Which I did) Then if it wasn't what I wanted I was behind on timing because my intervention and direction was needed earlier for precision work."

The above was so true of me when I was running Jag. I sure hope that I can improve on myself with my upcoming dogs.