Outrun Retardation

[Smokjbc]

Hello,

 

 

Jane has always been a natural outrunner but we are on our 2nd trial in a row where she has hooked into the exhaust sheep and had to take several redirects to get out to her sheep in a field. She is fully capable and reliable at 400 yards and more at home and we try to go to different places (we work in open desert) and do different angles, hide sheep, etc. and training at home she does well.

 

I am looking for ideas to avoid this problem- so far I'm considering not letting her watch the sheep lift at all or not bringing her out until 1 dog before our run. At this last weekend, I did bring her out to watch 2-3 lifts but pulled her back as soon as they were started down the field. I really tried hard not to let her see those $($($@@ exhaust sheep. Unfortunately, one dog before her go, the sheep left the course and she got a quick glimpse of the exhaust direction- so I need a way to communicate to her more clearly that those are not her sheep.

 

She does know look back and have practiced double lifts at a modest distance. My game plan right now is that I may bring out two groups of sheep and work alot more on setting her up for an outrun on the second group with the first group behind us. Also, I think if I had set her up for a different side outrun, where the sheep exhaust was behind her going out instead of behind me (if that makes sense), she would have had to look out to the field instead of hooking around me on her comebye side.

 

Other than this issue, I'm really happy with her as an Open dog- I'm not sure where it started but it really is a bummer to lose your outrun points for this stupid reason. Plus, it just ruins my run mojo

[juliepoudrier]

Jaime,

Lots of folks, myself included, take our dogs out to watch lifts, but I take them away from the field while sheep are being exhausted so they don't see them going in that direction. I understand that she may gotten a glimpse of sheep when she shouldn't, but in general, I think letting the dog see a lift or two is a good thing.

 

I'd also go back and work on retraining the dog to look for sheep in the direction you're walking or facing. The idea of sending her for sheep in front of you with another set behind you would help with this. But I think just in every day work, I'd be setting her up to look for sheep up ahead. For example, if I walk out in my field here at home, especially with the youngsters, I always walk/face in the direction where the sheep are hanging out, and tell the dog "look" or "Look for sheep" as we're walking so that the dog gets used to looking for sheep *in front of me.* That way, even if the exhaust at a trial is fairly close to the post, as long as it's not up near the set out, the dog knows that the sheep I want are the ones in front of me (whether we can see them or not) and not the sheep that may be behind us or off to the side. Right now I have several paddocks with sheep in them (new mothers and lambs in one, the ram and wether in another, and the weaned lambs in a third). If I enter the field at the upper part and the sheep are at the back of the field, then these paddocks are behind us to the left. If I enter the lower part of the field, the paddocks are pretty much directly behind us. So I start early teaching them to look in the direction I'm walking and ignore any other sheep around. If the main flock is up against the fence that abuts the paddock fence, then the dogs get a lesson in moving the sheep away from the fence. My youngsters (basically East Coast P/N level) will sometimes get the sheep off the fence and then look back at what's behind the fence in the other paddocks, but the trained dogs know the difference between what's on their side of the fence and what's not. At any rate, I think working on a "look" command, coupled with walking in the direction of the sheep you want to gather (and never wavering on that) might get her past this exhaust issue.

 

A slight aside--and I'm sure others will disagree, but I think a seasoned open dog ought to understand that the sheep you want it to get at a trial are those that are standing up the field somewhere, not behind you or to the side (all double lifts I've seen have had both sets of sheep up the field somewhere, never behind the handler, so there's not usually a reason at trials for the dog to ever look anywhere but up the field). I do a fair amount of set out, and nothing is more irksome than the open handler who waits endlessly for the sheep to be completely off the field before coming out to the post (while the sheep and set out person stand there in 90+ degree weather in the summer). I don't mind it in the lower classes where one can expect that the dogs might be less experienced, but I honestly believe that by the time a dog is running in open it ought to understand looking for sheep in front of where the handler is standing or in front of the direction the handler is walking. If it doesn't, then the handler needs to go back and retrain that, as you would like to do.

 

J,

[Smokjbc]

A slight aside--and I'm sure others will disagree, but I think a seasoned open dog ought to understand that the sheep you want it to get at a trial are those that are standing up the field somewhere, not behind you or to the side (all double lifts I've seen have had both sets of sheep up the field somewhere, never behind the handler, so there's not usually a reason at trials for the dog to ever look anywhere but up the field). I do a fair amount of set out, and nothing is more irksome than the open handler who waits endlessly for the sheep to be completely off the field before coming out to the post (while the sheep and set out person stand there in 90+ degree weather in the summer). I don't mind it in the lower classes where one can expect that the dogs might be less experienced, but I honestly believe that by the time a dog is running in open it ought to understand looking for sheep in front of where the handler is standing or in front of the direction the handler is walking. If it doesn't, then the handler needs to go back and retrain that, as you would like to do.

 

J,

 

 

Thanks for the ideas- alot I thought I did enough of, but apparently not. It's complicated by the fact that we work in pretty rough desert that looks nothing at all like a typical trial field. She rarely sees those until we get to a trial- we also rarely have fences when we do open work. In the smaller 2 1/2 acre lot we have, it's never an issue even if there are sheep on the property behind us. I think you are right, I will start make a really much bigger deal about looking for her sheep and get her out in front of me a bit on that perhaps.

 

I agree that a seasoned dog should know better- it's excruciately embarrassing. The first time she did this, she didn't even get to her sheep on a 250 yard outrun but I worked hard for the last year on her outruns and she at least found her sheep once she let go of the exhaust sheep. I don't plan on babying her on this for the rest of her trial career but would like to get my scores out of the dumps. This wasn't such an issue in Pro-Novice, maybe its the change in distance, although she was outrunning fine there to 300 yards or so but we did take about a year off of trialing (not practicing, in fact practiced more than ever in that year) between Pro-Novice and jumping headfirst into Open. We have another trial coming up and would like to do all I can to get this fixed.

[DeltaBluez Tess]

I used to have that problem so now at home, when I work a younger dog I load up my two corrals with sheep and then work a set in the field. The younger dogs run to the lambing corral...."oops...can't get those sheep"...then I call then and resend and then they run to the round pen and ...."oops...can't get those sheep"...and then they soon figure out the only sheep they can get are the ones I walking towards. I always make sure at the end they get the sheep that are in front of me. After a while, they race past the corrals, ignoring the sheep next to the fence. As soon, as they get near the corrals, I SHHH them to make them speed up and it seems to help.

 

However, in a trial if they run to the exhaust, I recall them halfway and tell them look or look back and reflank and they seem to get the picture.

 

Either way, I get them to realize the sheep are in front of me....I also use "LOOK" and they scan the area and when they see the sheep, I tell them "Good dog" so they know it is the correct sheep.

 

Diane