New stuff

Well, I promised that I would blog about my lesson today, so here ya go...

Ann and LJ Estes were out at Dianne's today as well. Ann is doing a great job with Levi! They have improved a lot since I saw them work last. LJ's bitch, Gina, as always, was great, too. She's a nice dog.

I worked Cedar twice, and she was pretty good. She didn't really do much wrong, but for some reason I don't feel totally satisfied with our work today. I'm not sure why. At first, we worked mostly on lengthening out our outruns, like usual, as well as a little bit of driving. Dianne had us actually take the sheep out to the pasture, which was fun. I really like doing "practical" type stuff like that, and I think Cedar does, too. She listened pretty well to me and stayed nicely off the sheep which is always nice. I appreciate it when she actually behaves herself! As usual, Dianne had us work without her close by, so I corrected her for "not covering" on one side when, actually, Cedar was right. She was feeling the draw, and didn't want to push them too far towards "home." I feel like a jerk, oh well. She'll get over it :)

Our second work consisted of trying to get Cedar comfortable with picking sheep up off a set out person. Ann was nice enough to help me out, since Cedar is so intimidated by Dianne :D

It was sort of rough going for awhile... Cedar really was uncomfortable with all the pressure and struggled with lifting the sheep on the come by side. However, she moved the sheep around very considerately, didn't take any cheap shots, and took my corrections and seemed to learn from them. We finally got a really nice lift on the away side and quit with that. I'm pretty proud of her; we've made a lot of progress in the past month or so I think, and it's given me some hope. No matter how much I might complain, I really do love working and learning this "herding thing" with her.

P.S. (Puppy-script) All the puppies are looking great. I played with Moss today.... he is SO freaking cute! I think he might kind of recognize his name. He paid the most attention to me out of all the puppies; I wonder if he might sort of recognize me, too? Probably wishful thinking...

I can't believe he's over 5 weeks old now!