Driving in the mud

Good thing my dog has four-leg drive. Har-har-har.

Anyway, we did a little bit of gate-sorting and that was actually a good lesson because the sheep didn't want to go through the gate and kept breaking and running so I worked on Soda to make her cover--which she doesn't always do on her own. It was a good lesson and I am impressed at her growing work ethic. When we first started we literally couldn't work for more than 2 minutes or she'd totally shut down. Now she can go a good long time and she always wants to come back for more. She was a total border collie today and squeezed herself under the gate to get to the sheep! She's never been that keen to work before, so Iwas pretty excited.

Then we went into the big field and worked on driving. It wasn't going very well at all so I had my trainer come and give me a hand and I wasn't starting Soda from far enough away. When she was waaay further out, she didn't have as much of a problem getting stuck. Terry made the comment to me: "She sure doesn't like that pressure does she?" and she's right--she absolutely is very sensitive to pressure and really doesn't like getting into it. You'd think then, that she wouldn't be so dang pushy when she's just fetching to me... eh, go figure!

Anyway, with the distance we made some more headway. When I was working on my own I think I was over flanking Soda and she kept accidently lifting the sheep. I think I need to stop her at 4 or 5 o'clock, rather than 3. (the away side)

I asked Terry about doing AKC intermediate in April and she said absolutely and ... Novice/Novice! She wants to get more driving down and then start really working on outruns. I was so excited to hear about doing a novice trial, lol. I hope that we can pull it off! That's an incredibly big deal for Soda and I. I honestly, honestly, honestly never thought we'd ever make it to Novice. I wasn't even sure if we'd be able to drive and... well, we've just come so far!

Soda's flanks are looking really good and she was staying nice and wide and going out 180 degrees from my side, thusly starting the flank wide.

All in all, a great lesson!