Training Pups II –
Maarten Walter,
Jubalee, Angus and
Well, we’re back.
We’ve had lots of things happening on the home front that have impacted
the training sessions with Jubalee, Angus and
Then we had springtime and lots of rain. This unfortunately had a negative impact on training as we’ve had some inconsistencies in the time spent working stock. Today I went out and attempted to have a real training session after a couple of weeks of just playing around a little. Well, this is what I discovered: young dogs can’t get pushed hard, they need to be brought up to speed gradually. Push on them too soon or work them inconsistently and mistakes will start to happen.
Here’s how it all started.
We just finished the morning walk. The dogs were a little tired and were expecting breakfast – normal standard operating procedures around the house. Well, I’ve got to do the chores so this is a good time, I thought, to do a little training. One thing of course leads to another and before I knew it, we were seriously involved in training sessions.
First came Jubalee. I used her to move the ducks into their pen so we could put the goats into the working arena. (Chaps of course moves the new goats in from the woods into the working arena – this is too tricky for the young dogs). Off we go working goats. I noticed right away that Jubalee is hesitant moving away from my side. This should have been a warning signal. She then wouldn’t flank all the way to the balance point like she normally does – like gangbusters. She stopped short. So I flanked her back and forth awhile, half moons, while the goats were parked along the fence line. This usually gets everything working smoothly until she gets an opening and fetches the goats off the fence line towards me. Normally this would happen but not today.
I try a few more minutes to get Jubalee back to her normal working speed to no avail.
Ok, no reason to put too much pressure on her – let’s get Angus out, he’s been the big flanking dog the last couple of months and will have no issues. He didn’t have any issues and we ended up working on his weak point: squaring his top corners. This may sound like rocket science but all this means is he likes to cut into the stock on the top part of his flank, thus splitting the stock once in awhile. Since we have some new goats which don’t flock together real well yet Angus is given lots of opportunities to split the stock – and I’m ready for him. Every time it looks like a goat is ready to split off I ask him to “look back” and I put some easy pressure on him to go around the entire flock and especially the single goat. After two tries I see him looking for that goat and I let him pick it up on his own. “Good boy” I say over and over, I think he’s getting the point.
Now I stand still and the goats are moving all over the place – and I let him do a little work on his own. He likes this part, most Aussies do. I praise him for looking at any goat that escapes or looks like they want to escape. If he swings around their head and tucks them back into the flock, wonderful. Sometimes I help a little with a little pressure from my stick, not a lot, just leaning on him a little. Part of training is knowing how much pressure to put on him and when. Oftentimes we put too much pressure on them when just a little bit will suffice. And of course, timing is everything. Can’t teach that, mostly its many hours working the dogs that’ll get your timing right.
Here’s a picture of what the correct flank (or outrun) should look like. Note that in this case pressure is being applied to the dog by letting the dog out (escape) in the right direction, away from the stock at a 90 degree angle. This is called a square corner on the bottom. The square corner on the top is where the dog should be turning towards the stock, not at any angle less than 90 degrees. This diagram shows square corners, even though they’re rounded off.
And here’s what Angus’s flank looks like when he slices in on the top:
As you can see, anytime a loose-eyed dog comes in on the wrong angle onto the flock, it’s easy to have them cut out part of the flock or scatter them.
The fix for this problem is to put just enough pressure on
them on top, or say near the
Here the handler is putting the pressure on to get a square corner on top so that the dog doesn’t slice in and come at the stock at the wrong angle. Of course you as the handler have to move so you can put the pressure on the dog at the right place and the right time.
Putting pressure on the dog is one, partial way to teaching this. The other, very essential component is to make sure that the dog is always aware of the entire flock and doesn’t just leave some behind while flanking. A dog can be taught to mechanically do a flank on a flock but a dog must have real-life on the job training and education to learn to watch his stock so that nothing gets left behind. This ability to gather the stock as one big flock is also instinctual, some dogs do it better than others. Just the same, a dog with lots of gathering instinct that’s allowed to slice in the top part of the flank can also be taught that it’s ok to cut in. Either way, it’s important to teach your dog correct flanks completely around the stock, not just where it’s easy – when your dog is nearby you.
Good flanks are a huge piece of teaching Angus to be a good stockdog. Out in the field he has to be able to flank around the stock, gather them up, in order to move them someplace. If Angus is not capable of doing this much of his usefulness is gone. Unfortunately the ASCA courses allow most of the Aussies to get by without real flanks. Course C, the new course, hopefully will alleviate that somewhat and force the trainers to put good flanks on their dogs.
So Angus has been picking this up quite nicely. I’ve mixed some mechanical flanks where I push on him quite hard with letting him learn that if one goat is away from the flock it’s his responsibility to flank around it and bring it back. The combination of pressure and showing and encouraging him to watch and keep the flock together is doing the trick, his flanks and gathers are quite nice.
On the fetching side, Angus has gotten a lot stronger too. A couple of months ago he had difficulties getting the stock to move off of him, he never gripped and usually just barked to get the stock to move. A couple of sessions where we encouraged him to be more aggressive on the heads and the rears of the goats have gotten him much more confident.
Our next challenge with Angus is obedience. Normally this is the easiest part and it’s done away from stock. Normal obedience such as ‘down’ (or ‘sit’), ‘stay’ and ‘come’ should be taught fairly young in their lives, say from 6 – 18 months of age. Somehow Angus hasn’t picked up on that piece yet. Part of it is his strong desire to flank and get to the balance point – whenever I step out of balance with the stock and him in order to call him off, he flanks around the stock, back to the balance point. It’s not right to punish him for that so I don’t, all he’s doing is what comes natural and what I’ve encouraged him to do. A couple of sessions with him dragging a light leash and a few warm-up sessions before his works stock is enough to get him to ‘come’ or my favored phrase, ‘that’ll do’.
I’ve decided that Jubalee needs to get back to the round pen. She hasn’t recovered yet it seems from being in season (in season, is that like Christmas?) and is a bit flaky. That plus the new goats have gotten her a little riled and she needs to work on her confidence. The round pen is good for that, we’ll see how that goes next.
Sure enough, doing lots of fetching with Jubalee and letting her work where she’s comfortable and she’s right back to her normal, feisty self. I’m not pushing hard on her flanks, as long as she doesn’t split the stock I’ll let her go for now. She still has a lot of style when she works stock, I just have to be more sensitive to her moods I suppose.
So, lots of lessons learned the past month or so. I need to be much more consistent in training the dogs. I need to bring them back to basics in the round pen if something doesn’t go right and we lose control. Plus I need to balance mechanical, obedience training with letting them work stock and learn on their own too.
Well, the round pen is back up, the ground is drying up and soon we’ll get some light sheep to work as well. No need to work calves yet, that’ll come when they’re a little older, mature and confident. No course work yet either, that’ll come later too. Even though Angus and Jubalee are in a Futurity next year and I know what the course looks like, I’d rather have them know the basics and be good all-around stockdogs than have them know the course and nothing else.
Until next time and I’ll share how we’ve been bringing