I always love working with my friend Erin, especially when a group of us actually get together to work on real things that cattle dogs need to work on. I worked all of my dogs at least once.
Sue: The little viper discovered his teeth…. we worked him once in the little square pen, and he was looking to control movement, AND was trying to hit everything his little teeth could get his mouth on! He was actually really good at responding to pressure and switching directions, AND acknowledging my existence. BUT, we really aren’t ready for any sustained work.
Rory: Rory tends to default to driving, and getting caught up on the first eye that she finds. This isn’t a terrible thing, but we really had to work on getting her to let go of the first point of control to rush to balance. It took a few days working goats to get her to let go and understand her power.
Chunky: We had been working on holding pressure, and getting a bit more speed going to balance, as well as the concept of pushing stock off of me into a corner. We also work single goats to hold pressure at balance, and to bring me stock.
Mazikeen: Mazikeen has a really bad tendency to start to sneak to the head of stock, especially on longer drives. We had to work really hard to get her to stay on the line we set. We also worked with the cattle on pushing her through to balance at a high level of speed on cows. The inside flanks are still very sticky, and she still stops on balance to me, rather than balance to where I need her to be.
Fiddle: As my resident old lady, speed really isn’t her forte anymore. But, we worked really hard driving groups of goats where they really didn’t want to be. I am so proud of how hard that she worked to get that. We also have some work to do on inside flanking, and when she is uncertain, she tends to go too wide, sometimes disengaging, so we keep her in contact with the stock as well.
Clarjo Farms 