Thursday, February 24, 2011

Look for your sheep, damnit!

We've only trained in a few places and Soda is pretty accustomed to seeing sheep out in the open and easily accesable to her.

Anyway, we wanted to work on her fetch and stopping on the fetch so it's not like a freight train of insanity. We went up to the bottom of the hill in her neighbor's pasture and set the sheep out on her property. The plants (weeds?) were pretty high and Soda could see over them if she looked. I sent her out and she had no idea what she was supposed to be doing. It was pretty clear that she didn't know that she was supposed to be looking for her sheep.

I walked down a bit, then resent her and still nothing. Walked down a bit more and resent her and she STILL didn't them! Finally, when I was pretty far down I sent her and she saw them and was all pouty because I'd kicked her out a few times.

I was pretty surprised but also glad. I think this has been an issue for us at other trials on different fields. She doesn't know where the sheep are "supposed" to be so she gets all wonky. Hopefully this will solve a lot of that.

So the plan is next week to make her start looking for her sheep so she learns "look." We'll see how it goes.