Sunday, June 10, 2012

Good training day today with Diane Menard.
 Worked on outruns and driving with Zest . She still can get locked up on me . She has come a really long way but still she is Zest ;< ) Let's dance around and dive at Mom , it makes her crazy !
Peak got to do single sheep driving. She has a fair amount of nice talent but her head issues get in the way :< ( I see moments of brilliance and then she goes off running across the field away from the sheep. At least she hasn't been doing the screaming too.
Mr. Fios gets to do single sheep driving too. Some how I end up twirling in a circle.  I get what Diane wants and we start doing well then get all unraveled or raveled up , depends on how you look at it ..LOL  I think we almost got a present the sheep to me, Fios stop moving !! Fios also did take the sheep out of the pen so he can do that for the ASCA trial.  Now I get why we did the flanking in the small pen with me on the outside, dog and sheep on the inside and me holding the stock stick over the sheep (as best as the pen allows) and calling the dog under for an inside flank.  Worked real well when I remember it to help with taking sheep out of the pen without me getting trampeled.   We also helped Fios work through not wanting to take sheep off the fence by way of also going past Diaen sitting on the fence line with ehr dog Dare.  Fios was sure it would be better to flip around and take them away from Diane but we helped him get it. The boy is getting good at handling more and more pressure !

On to ducks.  Peak is getting better and taking a fair amount of pressure to stay on the fence. We did an exercise Diane called squeese play. I move the ducks towards the dog and then flank the dog around the other way to lift them off the fence . Well something like that. It works. I won't be trying it by myself yet though. Peak looks bored silly while wearing ducks.  I see her look at them occasionally and I swear she wishes they would just disapear or at least run or do something more interesting than waddle and quack !
Zest does a beautiful job with the ducks. Nice quiet outrun to lift the ducks off the fence.  She doesn't much care for wearing either and does lots of bouncing back and forth. I need to get much quicker with the stick and commands, "away, there, walk "  all like in one second.  My JVC camera not even 2 years old has died so I dragged out the old Sony. Diane still sucks as the videographer :< (  She missed Zest's pretty outrun, lift, fetch on the ducks.  You can see what we got on my You Tube channel  : bettybellbc   . You'll see ducks coming , no Zest, then Zest , no ducks, a little bit of wearing and flanking and Zest getting all up in my grill like the slang saying . All in all Zest was real pretty on ducks today.
Fios (poor boy) got to drive them on the fence "walk, lie down !, walk lie down !  Walk, he  comes up ok gets to go a few steps and starts to pick up his pace so Lie down !  Much eaiser for me to see and get done on ducks than on sheep ! By God, Fios is getting the lie down :< )
Diane said I handeled the duck work well . 
A very good stock day :< )