Rarin' To Go

I worked Cedar for only the second time in a month yesterday, out at Dianne's. Needless to say, we're both really rusty. Dianne had us take the sheep out of the take pen to start our work. I helped Cedar out by grabbing her collar and taking her behind the sheep. They bolted out of the pen with their heads high and tails in the air, which got Cedar pretty excited. I laid her down to go and shut the gait and the sheep took off. Cedar took off after them (I think she was just trying to collect them and bring them to me), but ended up splitting them to holy hell. We got things back under control and did a few outruns and worked on driving. She was pretty good but excitable. She split them a few times and acted all frantic at times, but we got some good stuff done. We ended by re-penning the sheep. They were very happy to go back in, and I don't blame them! LOL

Our second work started out much the same way. I helped her get them out of the pen, but at least this time, the sheep just walked out, and Cedar stayed down while I shut the gate. I sent her around to pick the sheep up and she was a little tight but not bad. We worked some more on driving but it became clear kinda fast that her head wasn't in the game. She was starting to get frantic so we took a break from that for awhile and went back to "easier" stuff... i.e. outruns. I worked on getting her to go wider and squarer, and also slowing down her pace. By the time we did a few in each direction she was much better and actually listening to me. We worked a bit more on driving and having her do a lot of little tiny flanks. I think that was harder for me to process than it was for her! Everything happens so quickly that sometimes I feel like my head is going to explode...

Anyways, I really liked doing that exercise with her. By the end of our lesson, she was nicely loosened up and listening well. I am hoping to start going out to Dianne's more consistently now that we are pretty much all moved in and unpacked.