She's ALIVE!

I'm not dead. :) I promise.

We've been off for a couple of weeks. Lots of stuff going on.

Anyway, I had a lesson on Thursday and it went really really really well. Terry agreed that chores were a great idea so we set out to the pens and sort a crap ton of sheep. Little Soda used to not like pen work but I think I see a glimmer of "oh boy" in her eyes now when we go back there.

Terry has a sheep I affectionately call "the Soda Killer" and she, as her name implies, tries to kill Soda. So we're putting all the from the big arena to the middle arena and it was a FAIL. She had to send her dog in b/c poor Soda didn't have the power to push them through because the Soda Killer was at the back, eyeballing her and scaring her.

Anyway, we got them all into the middle arena and managed to get them into the holding pen area by ourselves. From there we started sorting into the little sorting pens. The sheep were being... sheep and didn't want to be sorted and I told Soda to "get up there" and holy cow she ran in and gripped the crap out of the Soda Killer! :D I was pretty proud. We'll see if next week the Soda Killer has a little respect.

We were sorting and I had Soda push a little bit and a Dorper Ewe got a little sass in her pants and jumped up and Soda was underneath her with her mouth open (lol) and then the ewes foot landed on Soda's hock. :( Soda was a big girl thoughand didn't cry out but rather went back to work with three legs! I pulled her out and saw it was decent little cut but she kept on working. It's all healed up now and she's fine. She was a bit sore that day, but kept on working.

We took a rest then went out and practiced driving some. Ughhh. Terry insists it's coming along and I think part of my problem is that it's not pretty like when the real border collies do it. But she's getting it done and I KNOW she has very finite limits but ... still. Also she will.not. take an inside flank. That is a huge bane. We have to get that to continue working on driving--otherwise it will take her 20 minutes to make a 2 foot adjustment because she has to run alllll the way behind me. I could be like 10 yards away and she still has to go all the way around. I'm just not a good enough handler to stop her every time before she overflanks and her stop isn't good enough for that to be enough anyway! This is our next project.

Terry says I need to get out there and just drill on her for inside flanks but that takes money I don't have. Lametimes. Anyone have a farm I can borrow? I can throw hay with the best of them!