Porsche and I had two morning sessions with Dave today. The first session didn't go quite as well as the second because I put too much pressure on Porsche with my body language (came through the sheep at her) and made her worry and shut down.
The second session was superb. I kept my body language very quiet and used almost no stock stick, except for the few times Porsche was overflanking because she wasn't watching me. Though she was still worried about doing the right thing, she kept to balance, steadied up and stopped very nicely. Before we went in, I asked Dave for a goal, so he outlined a simple pattern of moving the stock from one corner of the arena to another...really, once I had a goal, that's all I needed to be able to set in my mind what Porsche needed to do.
One of the things I need to work on is to visualize the side that I want Porsche to go to, set her up for it and then trust her to do it - I have a tendency to chase her, which makes her worried that she's doing something wrong. Trust my dog, trust my dog, trust my dog!!
Tomorrow's lesson should go well as I will keep my body language quiet from the start so Porsche should have more confidence. :) I know I sure do.
Overall I am SO pleased that I came to this clinic - I'm going to have to keep in touch with some of the people who I've met and find more clinics to go to. I'm also going to go to some trials to see what we're up against - again, it's all about the visuals for me!
This afternoon we went out to the large flock (about 300 head) and watched Trudy, Dave and John work their advanced dogs. It was pretty cool to see the dogs work...only you couldn't see the dogs work because you couldn't see the dogs - you could only see what the sheep were doing.
I need to work with more stock so I can get a better read on them. Practice, practice, practice!
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