March Maddness

Took a lesson with Roy today.  The clouds threatened all around us but they stayed away from our little bit of country.  We continued to work on more challenging sheep.  Rave enjoyed it and so did I.  My sheep have become a bit boring for all concerned.  To bad I am not a real farmer.  They would be dream sheep.  Causing no problems, going where I want them to when I want them to.  But no so fun for training.  So today we worked on holding the drive, executing the turn from the panel and making the chute.  Again we had some troubles but better than last week.  Rave didn't over flank as bad.  Roy told me to drift out to the side as she drives down so I can better see the depth perception of the panel.  As always we had trouble with pushing them all the way to the back and so stayed a bit too shallow on the cross drive, having to correct to push them back into the panel.  I got better at my timing on sending her to bring them out of the second panel and head to the chute.  I am still tending to stop her a bit short on her cover at the chute.  Also I have always used come bye as my command as opposed to the more common, at least around here, go bye.  
.  And when I want a shorter, faster flank I say come, come, come.  And I use here as my recall word.  I am finding that this was a bad strategy.  Judges think I am calling her, not flanking her, something that could cause me points in a trial.  I tried saying bye today instead of come but she does not associate that with what I want.  At this point I don't know if I want to try to change it for Rave.  I will need to remember to either use go bye or use just bye as my shorten command much like away to me and way for the short command for my next dog.