Monthly Archives: October 2008

Judgement

07 Tuesday Oct 2008

Posted by in My Life

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I think that if my government meetings were run more like stockdog trials we'd get more done and/or move along faster. We could disqualify participants for …oh, lack of progress, unnecessary gripping of stupid ideas, taking the meeting off course. 
If we timed each manager with one of those big red clocks, and hired a judge…maybe a tax payer…to call TIME! at regular intervals.
At the end of the meeting the judge would score our bureaucratic processes based on how well each manager did with gathering information, driving points home, shedding out the stupid shit that other people interjected REPEATEDLY, and finally penning his topic in 12 minutes or less. Thirty if there are handouts and powerpoints to be distributed (double lift) or more stupid ideas than usual due to the presence of managers from other agencies (interagency shed).
This could ensure that only projects that make it to the finals would be funded. 

Yeah.  Its a stretch, but it gave me something to think about instead of who would look the silliest naked and what it would take to get them that way…publicly…..$!0,000? A kitten on a sawblade murel? Gunplay? What about  a dolphin?

I'm not bred for meetings.  I get twitchy and my mind wanders in impossible directions.  Like….did you ever hear of John C.  Lilly's experiment with dolphins in the 1960s?  In order to study dolphin/human interactions Lilly had his attractive young female assistant shack up with a male dolphin for a period of time …21 months?  The experiment ended prematurely due to the cute assistant tiring of the dolphins increasing sexual demands and her struggle with depression.  Living knee deep in sea water and the constant odor of fish,  plus bad decade decor, the last thing that poor hot girl needed was to be repeatedly hit on by Bubba of the Sea.  No means no, flipper.   Still, I wonder if years later…when she was an old woman…like now-ish…Margaret looks back fondly on that time and wonders what might have been…if only she could have not cared what her parents and friends would have thought.  If she could have just closed her eyes and pretended he wasn't nearly a fish.

I hate meetings.

Mindfulness Over Clean Carpets

07 Tuesday Oct 2008

Posted by in Uncategorized

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I'm in Reno.  I'm staying at one of those lavish looking resort casinos where everything is glitter and gold… and, yet, filthy.  Fountains and marble floors, cherubs floating on a fake sky 100 feet in the air above….a sawmill? velvet victorian covered furnishings….but the hall carperts are crawling with filth and vomit stains.  As I write this I'm wondering just how corrupt is this gold lamme bed spread that I'm resting underneath. I mean, if these bed coverings could talk….they would surely cut their own tongues out. 
My one last question to Nevada is this: When did painting kittens on sawblades become art?  I mean…I've wondered about the whole sawblade as medium for art for awhile now, but the blades usually feature mountain scenes or flowers. Kittens? Really? Isn't that sort of ….oh, grisely? Big eyed kittens. Is it a statement?  An anti-big-eyed cat statement?

Anyway.  On to the Stock Dog Training portion of my Blog:

The Western Regional Border Collie Championship was held in Pendleton this weekend.  Jodi and Ellie  and I drove over and spectated.  Both Ellie and Jodi have blogged about it, so I won't be repetitious except to say that It was a really fun time watching a lot of impressive dogs and handlers doing their best with Satans Little Range Kabobs.   Watching these trials really both inspires me to work harder with my own dog and makes me glad that Dianne doesn't have a training blog.  If she did, today's entry might read something like this:

Scout is improving.  She shows progress every time she works; she's working farther out, paying more attention to both handler and sheep, and thinking more, reacting less.  Katy… should perhaps go to a pet home.  (I stole this line from another funnier context/person.)

Three things I learned today..or rather felt the significance of especially today:

1) I really have a hard time not getting distracted with the details. Where's my dog, should I correct her now? or now? lay her down….throw my stick…where's the sheep?  Is Scout's tail up? My PANTS HAVE A HOLE IN THE ASS.   Solution: Look at the sheep. Just the sheep. Correct the dog as determined by the pace of the sheep.

2) Correct and move on. Immediately.  Correct and mean it, and move on.  I have a hard time meaning it.  I mean, I do want the behavior to change so I provide the gesture of correction…but its taken today to really sink in how much Scout needs me to mean it. Not just the posture of correction, but the emotion.  This team thing doesn't work if i don't communicate to her the terms.  I need to communicate and have her acknowledge that the communication has taken place.  This is big for me.  I don't like yelling and it doesn't come natural to me unless it involves road rage or me crying an apology after.  I get the idea that neither is what Dianne has in mind.   Solution:  Work on engaging fully in my expectations of Scout and my working relationship.

3)  For the future: More subtlety.  I need to slowly expand the details to include things like WHEN Scout's tail is up, and why, and which ewe is going to give us trouble and how…sheep in general…I tend to think of them as something fairly relevant that I keep tripping over, but I don't really pay much attention to them.  They could be shopvacs for all I notice them as significant players.  Aside: Do you know about Roombas?  They are like robotic vacuum cleaners that just drift industriously around the house hoovering up dirt and dog hair. When they encounter an obstacle they reverse direction.  I'm thinking buy a herd and put some fleece caps on these bad boys and I've got one day a week where I don't have to go outside to look stupid.  

No.  Not really.  I don't vacuum anyway. I just sprinke bacon bits on my carpet once a week and let the dogs do their magic.

Anyway, I do think that this herding business is something that comes easier to many people. I am just thankful that Dianne doesn't have a remedial class (yet) and that Jodi doesn't make me work in a really SMALL round pen with only one sheep. 

I'll get this one day. 

Tonight I'm reading The Miracle of Mindfulness, which sounds like an incense scented hippie book…and it is.  I heard the author (Thich Nhat Hanh) talk on NPR once a few months ago about Mindfulness and I really liked the idea, which, oversimplified is learning to live fully in the moment… an introduction to meditation…sort of.  I tend to be a person with a ridiculously short and fragmented attention span.  I think that this sort of thing will definitely help me with learning to handle my dog(s) and sheep. 

This week, until Fri/Sat, this blog will probably be off topic.  Sorry again, but i'd have to really stretch my experiences in Reno to make a stock dog training link.  I'll see what I can do, though.

All I Need: 100 Acres and Some Car Seats

02 Thursday Oct 2008

Posted by in stockdog

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My husband, Eric,  doesn’t believe that I truly want to live "in the middle of no where" with sheep.
"You don’t even like sheep," he dithers, oblivious to the obvious.

No one likes sheep. They aren’t put here for us to like. They didn’t
evolve a personality.  They evolved car seat fabrics and roast meat.
I’m a vegetarian, of course, except for sausage and bacon and an
occasional steak.  And when someone gives me elk meat…  I love
chicken! Still, I’m pretty strict about not eating hamburger or
anything coyly described as ‘fingers’ or ‘wings’ when it is not
anatomically possible for that species/menu item.

Trivia: Did you know that cows don’t breed naturally anymore? Farmer Brown
(not his real name) sticks a long metal rod full of hastily thawed bull
(hopefully) giz up ole Bessie’s hoo haw.  70% of the time he misses and
it dribbles wastefully into another orifice or pocket. (most times not
his own). I just read and paraphrased this from the Internets.  It
totally could ruin the Catholic church if this gets out.

Anyway, yeah. I’m looking up property in the hinterlands that includes acreage for my nonexistent sheep.
My
dogs will love it.  I think I will love it. No neighbors. Solitude. I
miss living where no one can hear you scream.  I will breed soft
blankets and scratchy socks.  Better still, I will let them breed
themselves!

I’m trying to write more.  Commitment to the Blog.  Some of these posts will be good and informative…others like a metal rod in the wrong pocket.

On Shutting Up

01 Wednesday Oct 2008

Posted by in stockdog

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Once again, the answer seems to be "Shut Up and Pay Attention."

"You need to listen to your dog," Jodi told me last night.  She used
Scout to put away the sheep after practice.  I guess I looked surprised
when she said that Scout did a good job.  It was dark and the task seemed a
little beyond her.   I’ve been hearing more and more about me being the biggest problem in our herding equation.

About a week ago, when Scout and I were at Dianne’s for a lesson, Dianne pointed out that the quieter I am, the better Scout seems to respond.  She reacts pretty well to body pressure and calm commands.

All this time, meanwhile, I have been juggling a plastic milk jug full of rocks and a stock wand that I tend to thrash around in a manner that can only be described as ‘spastic’…screeching often the wrong commands.  Dianne has pointed out on more than a few occasions that if I want Scout to get off her sheep and not rush in, etc., that maybe a calmer voice would work better.  Certainly my posture is often ridiculous…

"Why are you pointing?"   

"Why are you bending down?"
I don’t know.  So I can hear Scout whisper, "You’re an idiot, please let the other lady train me."??

The jug of rocks did seem to make her stop and think, initially, but it had grown to be a distraction or even deterrent. She was more worried about the mere presence of the jug than the position of the sheep.

I think it had to be tempting for Dianne to take the jug from me and smack me around a little with it, maybe yell, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" 
I mean, how many times can you tell someone to not run at their dog yelling excitedly to SLOW DOWN!! OHMYGOD FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY PLEASE SLOW DOWN!!! IEEEEEEEE! rattle rattle rattle…

(No, it wasn’t quite that bad. Still, it feels that way sometimes. Like I’m forever making the same obvious mistakes.)

I think my biggest problem, or one of them, is that I don’t give my dog
enough credit for picking up on subtleties.  Because I am not by nature
a subtle person.  It seems like in herding you need to learn to be,
though, or you’ll frustrate your dog, at best.  So, I’m working on it.
(Plus Dianne still has that milk jug….)

Anyway, last night at Jodi’s Scout and I worked well together. She worked great for me in the big field, and in the round pen.  I tried to keep
calm and quiet and put myself in the right position physically for what
I was asking Scout, and the sheep, to do.  I tried to be aware of when the sheep were moving past me as a cue that Scout needed to get back further.  She responded pretty quickly, often laying down, which I don’t want to be her first response, but I’ll take what I can get for now. She was paying attention. We both were.

I’m working on keeping one thing in mind each time I’m out there, too.  My goal lately, and for awhile, is to keep Scout off the sheep, increasing the distance until it is more comfortable for her to do naturally.   AND SHUTTING UP.  Paying attention to what I’m saying with my body instead of my big ole yammering pie hole.