Herding Training Resumes

Yesterday, I let Trey work the ducks for the first time since my surgery back in June.

I had her push them out of their pen, which took a long time and lots of thinking on her part since they really didn’t want to leave. Then I just let her fetch them down the lane and into the front pasture.

She did a lot of excessive weaving back and forth behind them (wearing), but that is just how she works. She has a lot of speed and the only way she can control it and keep the ducks moving at the pace I want is to do those big, windy weaves behind the flock. It’s not pretty, nor is it efficient, but I’ll let her figure that out for herself.

I let her do some outruns and they looked pretty good, no real slicing at the top on her go-bye side which had been a problem earlier in the year.

Then I had her do some driving. For not herding for almost four months, she did a half-way decent job of it. I had her push them away from me and then sent her away to about 2 o’clock position and push them from there. Then I flanked her away again to the 9 o’clock position and had her push them parallel to me. It was like a big number 4. She did a real nice job of it.

I let her work on her flanks to help clarify in both our minds which way is which and I found that I knew my flank commands better than I thought, as did Trey, but she was sometimes overriding my commands because she thought she knew better. We worked until she was pretty tired and then I let her fetch them back up to their pen. She was SO tired and she wasn’t doing as much weaving as she had in the beginning.

One thing I know I have to work on is keeping my voice quiet. I’m a loud person. And when I get frustrated I get louder. Which doesn’t help my dog listen to me. So I need to use my other tools to reinforce my voice while keeping my voice quiet. Easier said than done.