No More Fetch

More Driving.

Driving Driving Driving Driving. That's all I can think about these days!

It's still slow going but we made some progress today. We started out in the arena and did alright and moved to the green green field and did better. She just doesn't like the arena much. I really got after her for blowing off her flanks and that made quite an impression on her. I don't think she'll be making her own choices anymore.

So the new plan of action is no fetching. Or at least, as little as possible. The idea is to make driving the only way she gets to move sheep so it gets reinforced more often and she doesn't get to rely so much on fetching. This, of course, means a lot more work for me now because I'm going to have to go behind the sheep and walk with Soda rather than being lazy and making her bring them to me. I think, in the short time we worked today, we saw an improvement and more fluidity. I was really proud of her. We used some natural draws to help Soda push them along and that helped but when the sheep really started to go for it I could she would panic about losing her sheep and that was difficult to reconcile, especially on our "no fetching plan". I would try to flank her out enough to stop them, but not enough to fetch them and then reposition myself and then start the exercise again, but when we would do that, we'd lose the draw. Like I said, very hard to reconile.

I rounded up the moms and babies that were out grazing and Soda was pretty good with them but she looked at one of the little babies and I could see her thinking "WTF is that??" and I had to remind her that we weren't going to be sniffing little baby sheep and possibly trying to pounce on them. (She had *that* look until I gently reminded her to mind the rest of the flock).

I'll tell you what, lambs may be the cutest things in the universe. For real. I picked up my favorite (I named her Sally) and carried her around for a minute, Paris Hilton-style. Shut up. I know, but they're soooooo cute!

On a non-sheep related note:

I love the drive down to Escondido. I really do. It's so beautiful. A lot of people don't realize how beautiful California is. I suspect most people think of that shithole Los Angeles as the typical California but it's not. Really. CA has some stunning natural beauty and has tried really hard to preserve a lot it and I respect that. The drive to weekly lesson takes me down the 5 freeway which is on the coast. I can see the ocean for 3/4 of the drive. It also takes me past Camp Pendleton, which is the largest Marine base in the US. Anyway, a lot of the time, you get to see the military doing practice exercises out on the water and it's so cool. There are helicopters flying around doing lifts and drops, there are tankers out in the water and land vehicles (including tanks!) all around. It's really neat.

I stopped at a view point off the freeway today, hoping to get some good pictures of the military stuff but they weren't doing anything. I was a bit bummed but I did get to see the world's fatest and tamest ground squirrels begging for food. It was a riot. For one thing, they were less than 5 feet away from my dog and didn't seem to care at all. There was some big burly trucker dude feeding them and they would come to his feet and stand up and beg (I'm not kidding, folks!) and he would set the food down and they take it and race off and come back and beg at his feet again. It was adorable. They were all super fat too.