Time Heals All

My appoligies for being off line for so long. We have a bit of sad news to pass on, Vicki the retired female that we took in last year, who taught me some valuable lessons and also blessed us with a fine male pup named Ricky has passed on. It's been about a month and I just now can sit down and write about it. Vicki had a mass on her flank, we took her to the vet who felt that it was not in her best interest to operate, so, that same day we set her free. Just two days before she was out showing off for Stephanie, the livestock inspector impressing her with her ability to handle sheep and do it her way, totally blowing off my commands and corrections...ok I went soft on the old girl. I felt it was best to send her one before her body broke down any further, as it was she was beginning to have difficulties making it through the night and ever now and then was having difficulties getting up and lying down, depending on the weather.

Here's one of my favorite shots of Vicki that was taken last year when I ran her Pro-Novice at the Great Western Sheep Dog Challange, she was peaking around the hay bale trying to spot the sheep, to me she did not look like a 11 year old dog in this shot:

Rest in peace Vicki, and thank you for giving us one lone pup Ricky, he's a real fire cracker.

Lilly Goes Home

Wayne with Lilly at the Southern Iowa Cattle Dog Trial

Lilly went home, we have had Lilly since she was a young pup a Border/Heeler that I traded a local Team Roper a Pocket Knife for. She was the first female that we acquired when we arrived here in Iowa, she also produced many nice pups for us mated to Indy, our Australian Cattle Dog. Lilly was the first dog that Wayne trialed, I guess you could say that it is her fault that we got the trialling bug. Prior we were just happy with a simple farm/ranch dog.

Over the past couple of years I came to the conclusion that we had grown beyond Lilly. Lilly was no longer the goto dog when it was time to do chores. Lilly was spending more time in the kennel then she was in the house, she loved being in the house but really was not great about accepting anyone new into the household, which happens around here on a regular bases. We always have a young pup coming in to learn house manners, Lilly just was not patient enough and would tend to make the pups fearful to do anythng, she was the Queen.

A couple weeks ago we were visited by a prospective new owner for Lilly, Lilly would be their first working dog. They are in the process of building a large flock and they also have cattle. After demonstrating Lilly's abilities and showing many of our other dogs Lilly was choosen to be the Queen of a new domain. I made a follow up call a couple of days after Lilly went to her new home, things were not going great, the sheep were undog broke, Lilly was uncertain and was showing little desire to get her paws dirty. My advice was to help show her what you want, support her and don't let her escape, also reminding them that they are dealing with stock that is undog broke, in some cases raised as bottle babies so they may need to help Lilly teach the stock to move off. This e-mail arrived yesterday, it made me smile:

Lilly is a wonderful dog. She is working for us now, herding sheep and ducks. She wants to work the cows but our fences aren't the best if they would get worked up it could be a bad situation.

She loves to ride in the vehicles with us and even jumps up into the tractor with me. She doesn't like baths but she is getting used to the fact that she will get one at least every week or henever she rolls in a rotten egg. Speaking of which she is an egg thief. She finds the duck eggs in the yard and helps herself. Have to say she does have a shiny coat though.

We really love her. Thanks for the opportunity. When things get a little better ecconically we may be back for another registered dog.

As hard as it is to let the dogs go that we have outgrown and no longer fit in our breeding program, we gain so much reward in knowing that someone is enjoying them and that they are now doing what they were at minimum bred to do, ultimately be a good old farm/ranch dog.

Getting Back into the Swing of Things

Boy, did the day get away from me yesterday, I was able to work a few dogs after spending more time then I expected getting the empty water tanks for the horses dug out of snow drifts, flipped over (great fun when they are frozen down) followed by filling them 1/2 full with water. Getting the tanks out usually triggers one of two things, a big warm up or a major drop in temps which ends up freezing the tanks solid on me, hence the reason I hedge my bets and only fill them 1/2 full. I then restrung the snow fence around the sheep pen, snow is deep enough to allow the lambs to access the large squares in the combo panels. They freely walk in and out of the lot through the fence, so a quick remedy is to line the outside with plastic snow fence. This also deters Ricky, who has discovered that he could find work to do, first putting the lambs back with the moms, then following them through the fence and proceeding to move all the sheep to the barn. Next was cleaning kennels, feeding dogs, moving dogs around so that the two front runs that have access to the inside whelping boxes are empty so that I can prep them for Dottie and Vicki, due end of the month and the first week of April. Hopefully it will get warm enough over the next couple of days so that all the ice and snow accumulation will resolve itself, we can then follow that up with the propane torch (nothing beats high heat disinfectent).

Did I say that I actually did get to work dogs? After spending more time then expected hunting and fitting collars on JJ and Weasel. JJ is quite annoyed with Clyde's old 2" wide collar, Weasel inherited Katie's and is equally unimpressed, her's too is wider then her old collar which was passed down to the puppies last fall.

Weasel, Dixie and JJ all had a lesson in the small pen. Many people ask how much could possibly be done in a small pen, the pen is approx. 30x40, two corners squared, two curved. I use 5-6 sheep and we work on self controlled, calm quiet work. Short drives, holding lines, proper distance as it relates to space and the toughest thing of all, keeping their flanks relative to the stock regardless of where I am. This is where most have the hardest time, they want to flank behind me or always away from me. Time, Patience and a training cord are all keys. Once a dog understands that when they flank that they need to stay in contact with the sheep all the way around, both left and right, a whole new world opens up, they have the ability to be positioned anywhere around the stock and initiate a drive to any location.

Well, I better get off to work...BTW great news, the forecast is showing the potential of high 40's low 50's this weekend, atleast I think it is great news especially if you like mud...

Just like Clockwork

I scrolled back to check the date of the "Changing of the Seasons" post, it was on December 5th, well now it's March 1st and just like clockwork Mother Nature is changing our seasons again. We are still up to our arm pits in snow but it is reducing quickly, approx. 1" a day. The forecast is for 32-34 degree highs for the majority of this week. Boy, this was a long winter.

Our ewes are pretty much done lambing, took them 20 days from begining to end with the exception of a couple of maiden ewes that are due sometime in the next 5 months, we never took the ram out...oops...

In just over 30 days we have a judging clinic that we are going to, in 60 days we plan on going to our next trial down in Missiouri. 45 days later is Iowa Sheep and Wool Festival, by that time we will have our legs and being running at full speed.

Today, March 1st, marks the official beginning of spring training, we are limited to the small indoor pen, but it will suffice for working on obedience and self discipline. With any luck we will be outside and working in the pastures mid March and out in the fields come April 1st (barring any flooding). I've intentionally drug my feet when it comes to training, knowing that we would be limited for a while to the indoor pen.

Here's the line up at this time:

Jake (I'll be running him open on sheep this summer and Wayne is going to run him on Cattle)
Weasel & Dixie (final 2 months of training before going to their new jobs)
Ben (doesn't seem to know what he wants to be when he grows up)
JJ (will be my pro-novice dog)
Bea (looks like she didn't settle, so if she has no puppies it's off to work she goes)
Toby (hoping that he will be ready for the Iowa Cattle Dog Nursery Challenge this fall)
Ugh - ACD (just going to keep plugging along to see how much training he can retain)
Buffy - ACD (much the same as Ugh)

We have some ACD pups that are hanging out, maturing and will continue with their basic manner, recall and leash training until it is time to introduce them to stock.

Ricky and Rosie are going to get to focus on growing up and gaining maturity.

I better get rolling, it's a new day.

Just a few lambs

This little guy arrived on Friday
Tuesday this little ewe lamb joined us....

Wednesday was a two-for, a pair of twin ewe lambs!!

This is a shot of Tuesday and one of the Wednesday girls.

Puppies due March 27th!!!

We are expecting the next litter of Bea x Jake pups on March 27th, 2010. Vicki is due around the 6th of April, we have our fingers crossed for another healthy pup so that our hopes are not all dependent on Ricky, the pups from fall. Hopefully all this snow will be gone by then.

Things have slowed way down here in central Iowa, the snow has me beside myself. I've been spending a lot of time on club business (www.iowastockdog.com). I was able to get the books balanced and closed, annual report approved, year end awards purchased and sent off for embrodiery work, helped to organize and advertise a judges clinic/meeting and soon I will be compiling the next newsletter. Before you know it the trial season will be here. The Judges Clinic will be on April 10th, we are planning on a trip to Missouri to attend the LC Cattle and Sheep trials on May 1st & 2nd, our first Iowa trial will then be right around the corner in early June.

We are also lambing, two down, 13 to go, I'm so glad that we reduce our numbers prior to winter. But, I'm also limited as to what is available for working dogs, basically nothing....so right now the only dog working is JJ, he is my right hand sorting dog and coming along great. We had a break through at the River City Expo that I had not recognized until we arrived home. JJ has a tendency of getting excited and when he get's excited he can't hear. When we were at the Expo I had to tune on him a bit for going bonkers during the Personal Protection Demos. He wanted to jump in and do bite work too. Rather then crating him up and avoiding the situation I used it as a training opportunity and working on his self control. Each time he lost it I corrected him, by the end of the weekend he was happy to just observe the other demos and actually could execute commands while watching the other dogs.

I had not thought about this training helping with our stock work, but it sure did. JJ was having a tough time working in close wanting to escape and loosing his head prior to the weekend, now I have a totally different dog that jumps at the opportunity to try something new. Another trainer once wrote, "With obedience, comes confidence", I want to take it one step further "With self control, comes the ability to be obedient; with obedience, comes confidence."

I've had many argue that what we do with our dogs away from stock has nothing to do with how they handle stock, I disagree. Relationships are relationships, the abilty to control oneself is not going to improve when situations get exciting. The adage, "you have to learn how to crawl before you can walk; and you have to learn how to walk before you can run" comes to mind.

So, even though I have not been getting the dogs out to work we have been training, each time I open a crate I have an expectation that I hold the dog to and test to see if the dog can hold themselves to that expectation. The same is true on a recall or a simple lie down when we are here are around the house. I watch when the dogs a playing for lapses of self control and use that as a training opportunity to teach my dogs that they need to maintain control at all times in all situation regardless as to level of excitement. It's all building blocks, setting a foundation so that when the snow clears and the ewes have lambed will be able to get the most out of our training sessions on livestock.

Enough for now, I'll try to get back into the grove of posting updates. BTW, another snow storm is due in on Saturday...yippee.....

Duck - Sheep - Duck - Cow - Duck...poor Jake

This past weekend was a busy one for us, it began on Friday evening at the River City Expo in Council Bluffs, Iowa where Jake and I presented a herding demonstration with our Indian Runner Ducks. Saturday Morning we competed at the Winter Warm up Sheep Dog trial near Elkhorn, Nebraska, Jake and I placed 3rd, yippee, one place out of earning USBCHA points, go figure.

We then rushed back to Council Bluffs for a Saturday afternoon demonstration....with ducks. Then turned around to go back to Elkhorn Sunday morning to trial on Cattle. I still don't know how we ended up, as soon as our run was over we were loading up to once again return to Council Bluffs for our last Duck demonstration.

Jake and I are both bushed!!! I am really pleased as to how Jake handled all the stock changes, he took it in stride and adjusted as needed. The sheep were challenging some dogs couldn't get them lifted. The cattle were difficult, they didn't want to stay together and took on the dogs. The duck...well, the ducks got smart.

We are preparing now for an ice storm, here are some pictures of our trees that are covered in hoar frost, I just pray the frost melts off before the ice accumulates. I moved all the vehicles out from under the trees, I'll be surprised if we don't lose some good size limbs.