2018 May June

Mystery Trainers
Unfortunately, there were no questions submitted for the
Mystery Trainers for this month’s column. If you have training or
trialing questions that you would like to have the Mystery Trainers
comment on, please send them to me at tmorarre@msn.com. We
will try to include the questions and the Mystery Trainer responses
in future columns.
*****
Mystery Pups
Things are starting to thaw out and it’s time to get back out in
the fields and do some training and even some trialing. The mystery
pups are going strong and we have a few reports on their progress
to share.
Finally, Finals!
stub gets to wiggling a lot yet. That’s my clue the puppy brain is
taking over. And, Dude watches me a lot. Any time he’s not quite
sure what I want. I recognize that’s the reason. Something I wasn’t
catching before. I’d get irritated, yell, flail, do all those things a
good trainer shouldn’t do. Now, I stop, reassess, and redirect. And
guess what? I get results. Huh. Go figure.
Also, thanks to input from a friend, I’ve started working Dude
with a more experienced dog. I’ve only done it twice so far. Time
will tell.
Dude is likely the most immature dog I’ve dealt with in some
time, but he loves to work, and he never holds a grudge, so I’m
confident we’ll find our way through.
Mystery Pup Lessons to Learn
Mystery Pup Nessa
Time to Ponder
One thing that happens over winter is I have a lot of time to
think. Granted, that’s not always a good thing.
Nessa is one leg away from her WTCH and then, hopefully,
it’s on to Finals. Neither of us is ready for that. This may be true
for me more than her. I know it’s a matter of time and miles. If we
don’t hit the trials, we won’t learn and grow. We won’t find our
comfort zone and the success we’re after. Quite frankly, however,
I can’t keep throwing money at trials and not even pulling out a
Q. We should be beyond that stage, but we’re not, and I need to
fix that before we can move on.
At home, Nessa and I are rock stars, I kid you not. I have
witnesses. That’s not a brag, but it is extremely frustrating because
it makes our failures at trials even more unbearable. I know what we
can do. I know how we can work together, how Nessa can handle
her stock, how she has my back. And yet, time and again, we fail.
Given that, I’ve decided to make this year about training,
not trialing. I’m going to try for that last leg we need for Nessa’s
WTCH, and then we’re going to focus on finding places off the farm
to work and train. I don’t know how much, if any, trialing we’ll do.
If I want to make a run for the 2020 Finals and be competent when
we get there, I owe it to both of us to figure out the disconnect and
fix it.
Mystery Pup Dude
Time to Grow
I have come to the conclusion Dude is just a ball of immaturity.
He looks like a mature dog and occasionally even acts like it. Truth
is, at just two years old, he is a goofy kid with only a couple serious
brain cells who isn’t near as confident as I believe he is.
And I’ve been pushing him. Pushing him and making us both
crazy because he wasn’t really getting it. He was mentally just not
there. Bless his soul, he’s tried. And I know a lot of folks that would
have given up on him by now. I’m not one of those.
I’ve been able to work Dude a few times now that the weather
is starting to be more cooperative and lean, however grudgingly,
toward late winter/early spring. I noticed quickly that his little
A day in the life
Being retired has its advantages. One really big advantage is
you get to work more with your dogs. My day seems to start around
6:00 a.m. I let the dogs out; feed the dogs; then let the dogs back out.
Drink coffee with breakfast. After checking my email it’s time to
drink more coffee. Next it’s off to the barn with more coffee. Then
we sort off the sheep to work from the ones to turn out to pasture
for grazing. As we sort sheep off, I take a head count and inspect
any that need treatment. (I check for cuts, deworm, check bags and
look for any weak lambs.) I’ve been alternating two dogs on this
task.Lessons to Learn is taking over this job from my older dog.
I work the gate and he keeps them bunched and filtering through
single file. Every day we sort 60 head of sheep and 15 goats.
Once that hour is done, I’ll go back to the house, refill the coffee
and get a few more dogs to work. That is usually about 5 to 8 dogs
in a day. Some days I load dogs up, have stock in a trailer and head
to another pasture about 20 minutes away. When we arrive I let the
stock out to graze … oh wait! NO fences or pens, just open pasture
so the dog has to cover and work as the fence restricting where we
want grazing to occur. Or we just might go on walk abouts around
the land. We usually make many stops for grazing and rest for the
dog and me. Oh, and surprise: more coffee.
Next week we are heading to a client’s place. He needs some
help with his young BC. He runs about 50 stocker calves. My client
and I will work with the dogs the first time. He needs his dog to
learn to do an outrun and gather a pasture and move the calves to
another pasture. We will have a few days to work the calves and
dog break the group before they can be turned out on a few hundred
acres of rotational grazing pasture. We will start with a group of
10-15, then add 5 daily so that by the end of the week his dog will
have a nice set of 50 that are easy to handle. His dog does not have
a strong bite, so Lessons to Learn and one of my other dogs will
be there to help him out.
The first few times we will help with the gathering and moving
the calves to another pasture. The client will stand near the gate
and look them over as they filter through. Of course, he will stand
far enough out so he does not interfere with the flow of the calves.
After that is done, we load up, head home.
Back home I fill all the feeder bunks then send out my boy
to gather the herd from grazing and bring them to get their grain.
If the grass is thick, they linger in, if it is wimpy, sometimes they
meet us at the gate wanting grain. After the sheep are settled on
84 AUSSIE TIMES May-June 2018