Jorgen asked:

What are your plans for making it to the next level with your handling, competition and the journey with your dogs?

I don't actually *PLAN* much…I like to run my life like a surprise party.  I start by opening the door to each day and hoping Talent and Opportunity, Skill and Success will jump up and yell SURPRISE!!
Sadly, Sloth has spent the night on the couch again and Tomorrow is still drunk from the night before, puking last night into the kitchen sink. Our bastard children may always live in my basement, playing World of Warcraft and LOLing.

The next level with my handling might involve puppets.

Competition is relative to me only.  I don't try to compete with others.  At this stage, it would be ridiculous.  I'm only an Open handler because I didn't have to pass a test to be one.  I haven't finished a course at this level yet.  I used to fantasize that somehow a miracle would occur – muscling my bad timing and lack of talent out of the way to lay down some breath-taking outwork, in-work, (whatever), a stunning shed, heart-stopping pen….Just enough time left to scratch my dog's happy belly as the crowd goes wild…P*trick would shed a tear, DD would tell everyone she mentored me back in the day (last year or so) when I tried to pen 3/5 of the sheep…Helsley would say he is the one who first told me I was getting less shitty …and I'd thank them all, humbly but also sort of puffed up like a soda in the sun, as I snatched that winning check out of the judges hand.  

But no.  The further into this I get, the more I realize that, while sometimes good runs happen to bad handlers, it requires a lot more than just luck and I'm still not even to the point where you could call me a Bad Handler. I'm just striving to be a Bad Handler. Now I'm only half-handler.  SO
I'm really hoping to beat my own shitty scores at this point. Someday I hope to be inspired by the Great Run of a handler before me, to study that run and identify the slight flaws that maybe I can avoid to get a better score and know that this is possible.  Someday. 

So the journey changes, like good journeys should.  I've changed how and I am with my dogs, as I learn more about them.  I adjust how I train them and how I live with them.  Both things are very important to me. I'm not in this for the competition, I'm in this for the dogs.

Dirt Blowing…

Jai timed out on the cross drive of her first run and scored a 24. Our second run ended short of the first drive panels with a big THANK YOU when we decided to take down a ewe. I mean really take her down, 1970's cop show style. Or like something out of a western from the same era — Clint Eastwood, if he had functional incisors instead of a six-shooter.

I think I'm going to have to change my whistles. My 'Away' is being misinterpretted as GRIP THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF WHATEVER YOU CAN GRAB ONTO AND RIDE THAT BITCH UNTIL MY SCREAMS TURN TO SOBS!

Wah-wah-wah.

Maybe my tone isn't low enough. Maybe I'm inadvertantly whistling the theme to The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

I called my PN run with Jack because he was NOT LISTENING to my voice or my whistles at all. Maybe he assumed I'm just a background theme. A nice auditory touch to not stopping or flanking. Something that builds the suspense…

wah-wah-wah

Maybe I'll get rid of whistles entirely. Neither dog seems to like them. Likewise my voice isn't helping to build our rocketship to Sheepdog Greatness.

What are my options? How might a mime run a dog? I wonder…

Regardless, and despite how it may sound above, I was happy with both dogs. Helsley said that it was the best he'd seen me run Jai yet, on difficult sheep. I felt at the time, and still feel, that it was my mistakes in timing that brought on the grip on the second go.

The first run was really difficult for both Jai and I and we did what we could. Jai had better flow on the second run, but I fucked up a few flanks and I think it contributed to her frustration. 

DD mentioned that my timing was likewise off for Jack and may have contributed to his soundtrack theory. It was only his second trial and we are still pretty new to eachother. 

Next trial – Kelley Creek in Utah. I have three weeks to order my black leotard, white face paint, and harmonica.

It seems like one of the frustrating, yet captiving things about sheepdog work is that it isn't paint by numbers.  It's not linear or systematic.  There is no fast cheap way of getting good enough results or someone would have a remote cable channeled program teaching some of us to paint that picture by now.  There are methods and processes that work sometimes.  There are generalities that are largely true.  There is a lot that is open to interpretation.  You work at this, and your dog works at this and sometimes it's like finally seeing the 3d picture in a single flat noisy image ….

Being able to see the picture amidst all that chaos, unfortunately, is still a long way away from being able to create it.  And seeing one picture in one flat noisy image isn't the key to seeing all pictures in all flat noisy images.

Or maybe I'm just really sick of getting those calendars for Xmas. Dots and swirls. That's what I see.

I worked Jack and Jai this weekend in a field with the Helsleys and Lavon. 

Jack was pretty good, but he crossed prior to lift off and he continues to struggle to not overflank and bring me back sheep on the drive. He is either having confidence issues, or he hates sheep and wants me to get him something nicer, like goats or prostitues, to herd…still, he is changing and getting more responsive to the work and less survile every time I work him. 

Lavon mentioned that my whistles are potentially part of the problem. Jack has worked on Lavon's whistles and they are similar in opposite ways to some of mine.  My stop whistle is like Lavon's flank and my away sounds like a walk-up.  My walk up sounds like the theme song to I Dream of Jeannie. IT IS!!

He suggested that I use my voice more.   No one hardly ever suggests this. Sober.

Jai was struggling with some Jai issues.  She seemed ill at ease most of this weekend.  I was gone all last week and Saturday we put her through a relatively intense drill designed to make her more comfortable with close work (Read: Less Thank You, More Thank Ewe on and off the course, in that order). She was great during the drill. We worked in a small pen with 5 sheep, flanking and coming in between sheep and fence.  She seemed to take it all in stride, did an excellent job.

And then we moved out into a big field and she said, "FUCK EWE AND YOU, I'm going to take up agility. I want ribbons!"

Helsley suggested that in general I should use my whistles not just as my commands, but also my corrections.  My corrections tend to take the essay format, (REALLY JAI?! AGILITY?! You want me to get you a JACK RUSSELL OR A SHELTY TO HUMP? ARE THOSE THE KIND OF SHORT-LEGGED NASTY PUPPIES YOU WANT HANGING OFF YOUR ONCE TALENTED TEATS!??? REALLY!?)  Helsey said that I might just keep it short and to the point.  Whistle a flank or a stop, if she doesn't take it, whistle it louder.  Maybe followed by a short 'HEY!' if necessary,

"Because," Helsley said, "If you are going to give her one of your corrections, you are going to miss the panel wayyyy before you get to your second sentence."

Jeanie mentioned that we, women especially, tend to take our dog's mistakes or bad days personally.  I know this is true of me, though it's getting better. I can't count the number of times I've struggled not to cry, sometimes unsuccessfully, at DDs house after some incident on the field that I incorrectly identified as the 4th Horse of the Apocolypse.  Now I mostly just feel disappointed and like I'm a failure.

But they were all so kind.  And so I then sent Jai one last time, at Lavon's urging, and she scattered sheep like dandelion seeds into 3 different fields and a porch.  This took about a half an hour to recover from. 

The H's (and the L)  mentioned that they'd be working later in the evening.  I wanted to stay away from what I felt strongly would be an Interventon…but Lavon talked me into coming back.

First, however, I went home and built a barrier between my dog yard and my pasture so that Jai couldn't spend her days bending the sheep with her mind. 

Things went much better in the evening.  Jai was still a bit off her game, and I'm not sure what is up with that, entirely, but she worked much better.

Jack was a little better also. I used Lavon's whistles and some quiet brief screeching, what I call my Indoor Voice.

Next weekend – the Dirt Blowing Trial.

We'll see what we see.