holding the heavy side

[Kathy H.]

Hi all,

 

I'm looking for "exercises" and/or set ups to help with a young (2 year old) dog that *really* wants to hold the heavy side, especially with penning. Driving isn't too bad as long (depending on how "heavy" the side is) but penning can be a bear.

 

We do lots of off balance work and that is helping. She can 'circle' sheep standing still, stop and walk on from anyplace on the circle although you can still see her being more "holdy" on the heavy side even if the heavy side is virtually non-existant (to me, obviously to her, it's quite salient).

 

She has a fair amount of eye (big surprise, right!) and holds a line on a drive quite well for her age and experience...and, this is where holding the heavy side is actually an advantage sometimes.

 

The problem I see is two fold. One is that she just comes up a bit too far on the heads on the heavy side and stops/slows the sheep on the drive.

 

BTW, I want to back off a bit on the off balance work because I think she has decided that I just want her to "follow sheep" since I've been asking her to flank "wrong" so we're now doing lots of long drives where I just walk with her in various places and distances and we don't worry about lines but about control.

 

 

The real problem though is the pen where she truly is obsessed with the heavy side and when she finally takes the flank that makes her let go, she "blows up" and buzzes the sheep. She is, BTW, great at chores and regular gates so I'm going to try to build a pen on a fence line but then, what after that? I don't want (I think) to just gradually move the pen away from the fence since that could set up a huge wreck (no room for her to flank out on the one side).

 

Sorry for the long and probably hard to follow description. I'm pretty sure this is all about not wanting to lose her sheep and I am very careful about this. We have a special command (let 'em go) which means that it's OK for the sheep to leave and she's fine with this. Otherwise, I stop and send her for escaping sheep.

 

Anyway, any ideas at all on this and things I can do to help her figure it out. She really wants to do "right" and is not a hard dog in any sense.

 

Her mom was like this too BTW.

 

Thanks,

 

Kathy/Iowa

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

Total novice alert. But, I do have experience with almost the exact same situation. I think. If I'm understanding you correctly.

 

What helped my dog was lots and lots and lots and lots of what I guess you'd call assisted driving with no commands but what was needed to keep him from heading on that side he wanted to drift to (and at first to keep him steady, not running them). We used my trainer's whole flock, to keep them heavy, and I made up stuff to do - driving from the novice setout pens to the open setout pens, then down to the barns, round and round.

 

I think this helped both of us gain a lot of confidence driving.

[Kathy H.]

Total novice alert. But, I do have experience with almost the exact same situation. I think. If I'm understanding you correctly.

 

What helped my dog was lots and lots and lots and lots of what I guess you'd call assisted driving with no commands but what was needed to keep him from heading on that side he wanted to drift to (and at first to keep him steady, not running them). We used my trainer's whole flock, to keep them heavy, and I made up stuff to do - driving from the novice setout pens to the open setout pens, then down to the barns, round and round.

 

I think this helped both of us gain a lot of confidence driving.

 

Thanks! (and sorry for the delay in responding, things are busy). We have done a lot of this and I think I need to go back and do more inbetween trying to get some "steering" on her. She gets frazzled easily when things don't make sense to her ... but we're getting there.

 

I realized today (OK, I knew it before but saw it again today) that she needs to take her flanks quicker when they're off balance. She has this moment of waiting to be sure that I really want her to do something that "stupid"....

 

Kathy/Iowa