Evening Lesson

We went for a lesson last evening.  Our first run was okay.  The sheep were much lighter than those at home.  Again we had trouble holding the pressure going down the left hand (away) side.  Rave was sliding off the bubble when the sheep didn't want to go through the panel and allowing them to come in front of the panel.  I went down to help but got caught up in flanking her back and forth as the sheep strung out allowing her to be to close.  This was obviously not working but I kept at it until I finally figured out I needed to stop everything.  Let it settle, start thinking and regroup.  We then were able to get the sheep through.  We also worked on Rave putting the sheep through the chute.  The set up at this particular arena causes a really strong draw to the repen in the upper right (if you are facing the end panels) corner of the arena.  On the other side of the repen is the sheep's living area.  They have to pass through the repen to be returned to the safety of their home.  And it is up a fairly steep hill.  So the sheep come busting out of the chute heading for the draw.  The dog is too far back as they just finished the hopefully larger flank, needed to keep off the pressure, so the sheep will turn into the chute instead of slide out of it, to effectively cover on the come-bye side.  So we worked on a very quick stop about lined up with the chute opening and after the sheep have commited to going through, and a redirect to the away side so that Rave would have a larger area to kick out on and so relieve the pressure on the sheep allowing them to slow down. Much to my surprise when I called her stop she skidded into it and immediately took the re direct.  It worked very nicely.

Next turn Roy challenged me to not allow the sheep to break out of a walk.  This was a fun exercise and really made me concentrate on watching the sheep.  With little adjustments to her line and timely reminders of staying slow we managed to keep the sheep at a very nice walk.  Of course Rave was not so raring to go as this was her second turn and she had settled.  I am not sure we could have accomplished it on our first go.  We had a nice pull off from the fence but on the cover for the chute she cut in front of the chute to stop them instead of allowing them to flow on to the chute.  I think Rave was surprised that they were going so nicely and controlled and she over reacted.  I should have given her a bit of an out but it caught me by surprise.  I will watch for that next time.