October Training Update

It's been about a month since my last update...where to begin?!

I went to the Cheryl Jagger-Williams' Judging Clinic last weekend in Hop Bottom.  Wow.  If you haven't been, it's a great clinic.  I learned a lot about how scores are determined, things you might do that will unknowingly put a judge on alert, and all kinds of other tips. Whether my brain will be able to engage and apply these things when I need them remains to be seen, but I did learn a lot and had fun doing it.  They also video tape your run on both days of the clinic...then everyone gets to "judge you"...it's not always pretty, but everyone learns something and I would recommend this clinic to anyone, regardless of your level of trialing.

We didn't get to do the fun trial at Mary's last weekend - can you believe it SNOWED there in October?  I was pretty bummed about it; I was looking forward to running Binx in N/N to see how he held up (ok, or how I held up) under the pressure of a trial situation.  I know we aren't ready for a real trial...but a Fun Trial is nice in that it allows you the opportunity to go out and help your dog through any rough spots if needed.

Much to my delight, there is now another Fun Trial scheduled for October 31st and it's even closer!  So it all worked out for the best, and I'll get to see how we hold up afterall.

Binx and I have been working on his outrun, his distance off the sheep, picking up sheep from a hold out person, and a little bit of driving.  We are also practicing to pick the sheep up off the fence in a *calm manner*.  We haven't had a lesson in a while because of my schedule and Nancy's, but she did do some driving with him in her field last week when I was there and she said he was looking good.  I must say that I am very proud of him.  He is getting more confident everyday.  There were about 25 sheep in the flock he was driving and they would turn and stare at him a few times, but he just walked right on in - good boy! 

He's also coming along with his outrun ...he is checking himself on his way out, which makes me very happy, but he's still a bit tight at the top.  I've been working on this by lying him down and telling him to "get out", which worked when he used to come in at 2 o'clock....not sure how long these things take, but we're still working at it.  The other thing I have recently been doing is moving my position so that he has to keep going around to get to balance.  So for example, after I send him "away", I continue to move to my right on his arc so that he has to go further around to cover before he comes in. This is something that Carol Campion wrote about in an article I read.  I'll update with the status of that after we do it for a few weeks.

Suzy has been coming over and holding out for me so that Binx learns to pick sheep up from a hold out person. You can tell he's still a bit confused as to why there is another dog and person out there with his sheep.  Sometimes he tends to hold them to Suzy...which is very understandable since she was the persont that got Binx started going around his sheep before I learned how to work my own dog!  But he's starting to get it I think.  Our sheep are also pretty heavy, so he really had to push to lift them off of her...and then he wants to blow into them when they finally take off...so, we're workin on that too :-\.

Rhyme remains my best decision of 2009 :-) - what a great dog...both on and off the field! She has helped me so much already and we haven't even trialed yet. She still gets lost in her sheep when there is some distance between us (i.e., does not take my flanks in a timely manner) so we keep going back to the cirlce work and close up stuff, just to loosen her up and to remind her that she should be "listening" when we're out there.  I do see improvement, I think it will just take a little while for us to really "get together" as they say.  I'm certainly not the level of handler that Maria is, so I'm sure Rhyme is still trying to figure out what the heck I'm asking for sometimes!  (then again, I often wonder that myself...)

Rhyme and I will run in our first official trial together at Sherry Smith's next month.  I'm pretty darn nervous about it, but I'll never get past that feeling if I don't start somewhere, so at least I'll have lots of friends at this trial.  That makes it a wee bit easier I think.

There will be no trialing in 2009 for me and Binx...just the Fun Trial at the end of October.  Other than that, we'll keep working on our foundations and confidence and hope to see the trial field in the spring.