Almost 2 years ago I wrote a entry about flanks where I went into some detail about why when and where, (http://leaningtreebcs.blogspot.com/2009/07/life-without-flank.html)
You would think that people would figure it out, just how important proper flanks along with the when, where and how of it, but once again I watched a bunch of people talking flanks but not showing any concept of the little parts of the flank. So many think left or right, others think around but few are factoring in the livestock and recognize that a flank is not set in stone but rather a always adjusting place based on feel. We can't command a dog along a proper flank path, from a distance we can not anticipate correctly what they feel or see or how the stock will respond.
This comes back full circle to the mechanical vs. natural argument. When I think of mechanical I'm thinking of the dog that does not feel, does not or has not been allowed to control his stock on his own but waits for the command. I had a moment this past weekend when I realized just how different our approach is then others. Ricky was driving cattle away from me and sliding to the left in an effort to hold the cows on line (basically Ricky was making sure the cows would maintain a straight course of travel). As the draw got heavier he moved further forward in an effort to maintain the line. There is a point where a young dog will make the mistake and slip all the way around, I think it is when one animal makes a larger adjustment, the young dog takes it as a moment of escape or loss of control and comes around to the head sorta out of panic.
Anyway, the person with me was telling me that I was not correcting him soon enough for slipping around to the head, that Ricky was slipping way earlier then when I was recognizing it. As I thought about it I realized that the person may be treating the adjustment Ricky made to weight the draw and try to hold the line as an indication of a slip to the head, basically the advice indirectly was to not let the dog control the direction of the stock but rather wait for me to tell him to move over. Yes it will work, but imo, that's mechanical, not what I want in my dog, I want more.
It was pointed out to me that I will win less the way I'm working my dog. But, to me, that's ok, I have no huge problem being beat so long as my dog works within my vision of correctness. In reality, that is winning, and I believe will lead me to breeding and raising better dogs over the long term. Thinking about being beat, each time I have been beat I can think of many things that my dog or myself could have done better, there are times I have won that IMO was done with poor work. I suspect that when my dog works properly I will be at the top, the difficulty is in not allowing myself to accept less due to being able to win with less.
I had a moment of pleasure this past weekend when I was approached while working Ricky, I was offered a compliment on his flanks, someone saw that his flanks were better then the others, even those that were claiming to have good ones. The proof is in the pudding, or rather the livestock, all you have to do is watch the livestock, a dog that flanks properly will be able to make livestock work look like cake, one with poor flanks makes it look like it is really hard.
So often a dog/handler has a tough time not due to the stock being bad, but rather the dog is not working or responding properly based on the situation. Reminds me of a statement that Tony McCallum made that made everyone groan, "There is no Bad Livestock". I remember thinking to myself, "Yeah, right, you've never seen some of my draws", but I have change the way I am looking at how my dog handles the stock and I have began to recognize places where my dog showed weakness or made a poor decision which lead to a fight, basically making the livestock appear to be difficult or bad. Tony's right, there is no bad livestock. Clean and proper flanks based on the livestock are just one of the factors that can make livestock easy to hand.
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