I cut off my right arm this afternoon. At least that's how it feels. Molly is gone.
She'd been gone for a while, truth be told. As she had so many other times in my life, she was waiting for me to see what should have been obvious. In the past, she was waiting to help me; this time she needed my help. I wish I could have offered it more selflessly.
Rest easy, old girl. Thanks for everything.
Showing posts with label Border collies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Border collies. Show all posts
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
A useful beast
When I arrived to do my chores today, I discovered that my lambs had grown impatient for balage, gotten out, and mixed themselves in with the ewes, whose bales were recently refreshed.
This left me with the task of separating the two groups. Initially I figured that I would go back to the barn, get out the handling gear, drag it out to the field, set it up, shed out the lambs, put them back where they belong, pack it back up, and haul it back to the barn. This is about a two-hour process -- mostly setting up and packing up and hauling back and forth.
I decided instead to have a go at shedding the lambs out of the ewes with my good dog, Tweed. Tweed's a little hot to trot, so I spent about 10 minutes getting his mind right -- just getting him to calm down, listen to me, and work with me, rather than assuming that he knew what the job was.
Shedding using a dog is very exacting, precise work. You start with all the sheep between the handler and the dog. When you get a good sized group of sheep that should be in one group at the front of the group, you call the dog in, cut them out from the rest of the group. The handler then drives the small group away while the dog holds the remaining sheep back so they don't follow. Repeat this process over and over again until all the ewes are in one group and all the lambs are in the other.
Sheep want to stay together. The attraction is like a magnet or gravity: the smaller group is drawn to the larger one, and the effect is weakened by distance. Once that first small group has been driven off far enough that it won't want to re-join the main group, you can use it to draw other small groups so you don't have to drive them as far from the main group on subsequent cuts.
The strategy is key: You want end up with the smaller of the two final groups held by the dog. If you try to drive off the smaller group, it will constantly be trying to get back to the bigger group, requiring the handler to stop manipulating the mixed group to drive them back again. In this case, there were 21 lambs and 79 ewes, so Tweed's job was to hold the lambs and let the ewes go. My job was to shift the sheep around until there were some ewes ready to leave the main group, but no lambs.
Tweed had to listen to me. There's no way that either one of us could do this job alone. His job is to hold what I tell him to hold, and let sheep run away when I tell him to. For a Border collie, letting sheep run away is one of the hardest things imaginable. For Tweed, listening to me is hard at first, but after a while it starts to make sense.
But half an hour later, we had 21 lambs in one corner of the field and 79 ewes in the other. There was one mother-daughter pair that held together until the end, and we probably spent more time getting that last lamb out of the ewe flock than the other 20 combined. We had to regather the whole flock once, when two lambs slipped past Tweed. At that point, we had made two cuts, taking about five or six ewes each time. The two lambs squeaked in with the third cut, which had 10 ewes in it. I probably just got greedy and should have taken two cuts with fewer sheep rather than one big one.
Anyway, a job that would have been a fairly odious and time consuming chore became a way to spend a bright winter's morning with my dog, in close enough contact with the sheep to really get a good eye on each and every one of them, and get a job done in a quarter of the time it would have taken otherwise.
I really must learn to trust my dogs more often.
This left me with the task of separating the two groups. Initially I figured that I would go back to the barn, get out the handling gear, drag it out to the field, set it up, shed out the lambs, put them back where they belong, pack it back up, and haul it back to the barn. This is about a two-hour process -- mostly setting up and packing up and hauling back and forth.
I decided instead to have a go at shedding the lambs out of the ewes with my good dog, Tweed. Tweed's a little hot to trot, so I spent about 10 minutes getting his mind right -- just getting him to calm down, listen to me, and work with me, rather than assuming that he knew what the job was.
Shedding using a dog is very exacting, precise work. You start with all the sheep between the handler and the dog. When you get a good sized group of sheep that should be in one group at the front of the group, you call the dog in, cut them out from the rest of the group. The handler then drives the small group away while the dog holds the remaining sheep back so they don't follow. Repeat this process over and over again until all the ewes are in one group and all the lambs are in the other.
Sheep want to stay together. The attraction is like a magnet or gravity: the smaller group is drawn to the larger one, and the effect is weakened by distance. Once that first small group has been driven off far enough that it won't want to re-join the main group, you can use it to draw other small groups so you don't have to drive them as far from the main group on subsequent cuts.
The strategy is key: You want end up with the smaller of the two final groups held by the dog. If you try to drive off the smaller group, it will constantly be trying to get back to the bigger group, requiring the handler to stop manipulating the mixed group to drive them back again. In this case, there were 21 lambs and 79 ewes, so Tweed's job was to hold the lambs and let the ewes go. My job was to shift the sheep around until there were some ewes ready to leave the main group, but no lambs.
Tweed had to listen to me. There's no way that either one of us could do this job alone. His job is to hold what I tell him to hold, and let sheep run away when I tell him to. For a Border collie, letting sheep run away is one of the hardest things imaginable. For Tweed, listening to me is hard at first, but after a while it starts to make sense.
But half an hour later, we had 21 lambs in one corner of the field and 79 ewes in the other. There was one mother-daughter pair that held together until the end, and we probably spent more time getting that last lamb out of the ewe flock than the other 20 combined. We had to regather the whole flock once, when two lambs slipped past Tweed. At that point, we had made two cuts, taking about five or six ewes each time. The two lambs squeaked in with the third cut, which had 10 ewes in it. I probably just got greedy and should have taken two cuts with fewer sheep rather than one big one.
Anyway, a job that would have been a fairly odious and time consuming chore became a way to spend a bright winter's morning with my dog, in close enough contact with the sheep to really get a good eye on each and every one of them, and get a job done in a quarter of the time it would have taken otherwise.
I really must learn to trust my dogs more often.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
On the occasion of Molly's 15th birthday
Old Molly just keeps on keeping on. She turns 105 today, if you buy the notion that one calendar year is seven dog years.
Just a few weeks ago, I thought she might not make it to this milestone. She suffered a major seizure, and had a hard time coming out of it. But come out of it she did, and bless her heart, she paces up and down "harr-ing" for her dinner every night starting about two hours before feeding time.
To a great extent, I owe the fact that I am a shepherd to this dog. I had sheep before her, but a retired meat cutter could count them on his remaining fingers, and I thought that I had all I could handle. Working them required so much effort that I couldn't imagine having more than six or eight of them. Molly opened doors for me that I didn't even know were there until she pointed them out.
You can put sheep into a pen without baiting them with grain and having two kids and a couple of neighbors running around like chickens with their heads cut off? Yeah, right!
You can walk sheep five miles through the woods, over narrow bridges, and along brushy powerlines? Cut it out!
One man can lamb out 300 ewes? Get out of town!
But with a good dog -- like Molly was in her day -- all these things are possible, and downright enjoyable.
What's hardest to believe is that this dog, my first working sheepdog, was able to show me these things. I didn't know how to get out of her way for a long time, and when I finally started to, she responded graciously -- as if she had known the answer all along but was just waiting for me to figure out the question and ask it. Not very many dogs would have stood for my incompetence and still been willing to give me so much.
It's been about three and a half years since Molly has been interested in working sheep. She's very stiff in the hindquarters, and there's something wrong with her proprioception that makes it even harder for her to walk. Stairs are a real challenge. She can't see well, can hardly hear, and since cold weather set in, she spends most of her time sacked out on the couch. Which is fine with me. She earned her rest. These are her pipe-and-slippers days, and as long as she's enjoying them, she will have them.
Just a few weeks ago, I thought she might not make it to this milestone. She suffered a major seizure, and had a hard time coming out of it. But come out of it she did, and bless her heart, she paces up and down "harr-ing" for her dinner every night starting about two hours before feeding time.
To a great extent, I owe the fact that I am a shepherd to this dog. I had sheep before her, but a retired meat cutter could count them on his remaining fingers, and I thought that I had all I could handle. Working them required so much effort that I couldn't imagine having more than six or eight of them. Molly opened doors for me that I didn't even know were there until she pointed them out.
You can put sheep into a pen without baiting them with grain and having two kids and a couple of neighbors running around like chickens with their heads cut off? Yeah, right!
You can walk sheep five miles through the woods, over narrow bridges, and along brushy powerlines? Cut it out!
One man can lamb out 300 ewes? Get out of town!
But with a good dog -- like Molly was in her day -- all these things are possible, and downright enjoyable.
What's hardest to believe is that this dog, my first working sheepdog, was able to show me these things. I didn't know how to get out of her way for a long time, and when I finally started to, she responded graciously -- as if she had known the answer all along but was just waiting for me to figure out the question and ask it. Not very many dogs would have stood for my incompetence and still been willing to give me so much.
It's been about three and a half years since Molly has been interested in working sheep. She's very stiff in the hindquarters, and there's something wrong with her proprioception that makes it even harder for her to walk. Stairs are a real challenge. She can't see well, can hardly hear, and since cold weather set in, she spends most of her time sacked out on the couch. Which is fine with me. She earned her rest. These are her pipe-and-slippers days, and as long as she's enjoying them, she will have them.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Friday, July 13, 2007
Humiliation at the sheepdog trials
Anyone who has competed at a sheepdog trial knows that it can be a humbling experience. By their very nature, sheepdog trials expose the faults of a dog and his handler: it's a pressure-cooker situation designed to seprate the excellent dogs from the pretty good dogs from the so-so dogs from the biscuit-eaters.
Even when I was going to a lot of trials, I was never a really good handler. I think of dog trials as social events with an opportunity to figure out what training I need to work on with a particular dog. For the past few years, for various reasons, I have been out of trialing, and now that time and life circumstances are allowing me a little more time for myself, I decided to dip my toes back in the water.
There was a two-day open trial at Merck Forest and Farmland Center July 7 and 8, and I entered with Tweed. The weekend served double duty as a getaway for Lynn and me. The scenery at Merck Forest is spectacular. You should go. Really. It's open for hiking, there are rustic cabins. Just go sometime.
These are Sufflok Punch draft horses. The stallion is in the foreground, and three mares that are in for service are in the background.
But anyway, on to the trial. The title of this post indicates a little bit of what happened. Humiliation. Specifially: was it humiliating that Tweed crossed over on his outrun both days (something he never does)? Yes. Was in humiliating that on Saturday he got the lowest recorded score (other than the dogs that retired or were disqualified)? Yes, in a way. Was it humiliating that on Sunday an angry ewe tried to ram Tweed, and faced with the choice of disqualifation or taking the long walk, I took the long walk? Yes it was.
But all of these on-the-field insults were minor compared to something that happened off the field. As I was standing back, watching the last few runs before I was up on Sunday, a spectator came up to me and said, "You're Jon Katz, aren't you." Note the punctuation -- she didn't ask a question, she made a statement.
If there is someone who I am not, and who I do not aspire to be, or be anything like, it is Jon Katz. I sincerely hope I am not as fat, stupid, and arrogant as he is, although I certainly realize that I harbor each of those faults to some extent. Katz is a self-appointed Border collie expert who actually doesn't know biscuits from shinola. He would never show his face at a real sheepdog trial because there'd be a serious danger that he might learn something or get punched in the nose. Or both. He has published a string of books so full of bad information about Border collies that it's hard to even know where to start criticizing the specifics of his writing. One feels like the quantum theorist Wolfgang Pauli who, upon reading a paper that was so vague and misinformed that it couldn't be supported or disproved, said: "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong!"
Being wrong is forgivable. Being not even wrong is not. Being mistaken for someone who is not even wrong -- well that just sucks.
Here's the high point of the weekend as far as trialing went. Tweed lining up his sheep for the pen on Saturday. He was one of just two or three dogs (out of 54 that ran) who had a perfect 10-point pen. Not surprising when you consider what Tweed and I do: we put sheep in pens. But these sheep were not interested in going into pens, and many dogs and handlers had their runs ended without getting the sheep in on Saturday -- the sheep would end up circling the pen until the handler's time ran out. So what does this mean? It means that Tweed can do well if we practice.
Even when I was going to a lot of trials, I was never a really good handler. I think of dog trials as social events with an opportunity to figure out what training I need to work on with a particular dog. For the past few years, for various reasons, I have been out of trialing, and now that time and life circumstances are allowing me a little more time for myself, I decided to dip my toes back in the water.
There was a two-day open trial at Merck Forest and Farmland Center July 7 and 8, and I entered with Tweed. The weekend served double duty as a getaway for Lynn and me. The scenery at Merck Forest is spectacular. You should go. Really. It's open for hiking, there are rustic cabins. Just go sometime.
These are Sufflok Punch draft horses. The stallion is in the foreground, and three mares that are in for service are in the background.
But anyway, on to the trial. The title of this post indicates a little bit of what happened. Humiliation. Specifially: was it humiliating that Tweed crossed over on his outrun both days (something he never does)? Yes. Was in humiliating that on Saturday he got the lowest recorded score (other than the dogs that retired or were disqualified)? Yes, in a way. Was it humiliating that on Sunday an angry ewe tried to ram Tweed, and faced with the choice of disqualifation or taking the long walk, I took the long walk? Yes it was.
But all of these on-the-field insults were minor compared to something that happened off the field. As I was standing back, watching the last few runs before I was up on Sunday, a spectator came up to me and said, "You're Jon Katz, aren't you." Note the punctuation -- she didn't ask a question, she made a statement.
If there is someone who I am not, and who I do not aspire to be, or be anything like, it is Jon Katz. I sincerely hope I am not as fat, stupid, and arrogant as he is, although I certainly realize that I harbor each of those faults to some extent. Katz is a self-appointed Border collie expert who actually doesn't know biscuits from shinola. He would never show his face at a real sheepdog trial because there'd be a serious danger that he might learn something or get punched in the nose. Or both. He has published a string of books so full of bad information about Border collies that it's hard to even know where to start criticizing the specifics of his writing. One feels like the quantum theorist Wolfgang Pauli who, upon reading a paper that was so vague and misinformed that it couldn't be supported or disproved, said: "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong!"
Being wrong is forgivable. Being not even wrong is not. Being mistaken for someone who is not even wrong -- well that just sucks.
Here's the high point of the weekend as far as trialing went. Tweed lining up his sheep for the pen on Saturday. He was one of just two or three dogs (out of 54 that ran) who had a perfect 10-point pen. Not surprising when you consider what Tweed and I do: we put sheep in pens. But these sheep were not interested in going into pens, and many dogs and handlers had their runs ended without getting the sheep in on Saturday -- the sheep would end up circling the pen until the handler's time ran out. So what does this mean? It means that Tweed can do well if we practice.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Look out, world! Here comes Fern
My friend Dee Woessner wrote a haiku called "On Starting Dogs." It's about the experience of working with a Border collie puppy and the process of taking a little ball of fluff and raising it to be an indispensible co-worker and boon companion. I'm embarking on that journey with Fern, a split-faced bitch that I got in April from Maria Amodei.
Fern is the smartest pup I've worked with in nearly 15 years, and she's a joy to be around. If she's inherited the traits that I want from her parents, she'll be a hardworking sheepdog, working directly and taking control of her sheep. It's too soon to tell if she'll live up to her pedigree -- buying a puppy is always something of a crapshoot, although we try to load the dice by choosing pups from parents with a history of producing good workers.
In these photos, taken on June 30, 2007, Fern is roughly four and a half months old. She's just starting to "see" sheep -- by which a shepherd means that she's showing interest in them and starting to show some form and purpose in her approach to them. Although she can run like the wind, Fern doesn't have the physical ability to really work sheep yet. More importantly, she doesn't have the mental capacity to handle the pressure if she's challenged by the sheep or her handler, so there's really no training going on at this point. I'm just exposing her to sheep and helping her out when things get hairy -- mostly by getting her out of her own way!
In this photo she has just noticed that the sheep are moving away from her, and she has dropped her head and tail into the classic Border collie working pose as she continues to walk up on the flock. She's not showing any interest in circling the sheep to head them yet (although she did do so a little bit today when I didn't have a camera). She is looking purposeful and probably most important and unusual at this age, thinking about what's going on.
When these two lambs realized that they had been separated from the rest of the flock, all hell broke loose -- they were calling and running. All the activity caught Fern's eye and she went into chase mode. No harm came of it -- the lambs rejoined their mothers and Fern thought she had saved the day. But this sort of situation is why it's risky to work puppies on larger groups of sheep. If she had tried to head off the lambs, they almost certainly would have gone over her which could have rattled her confidence and put off the day when she's ready to start real training.
Hey, wait a minute! This sheep smells like a dog!
On Starting Dogs
By Dee Woessner
Needing diamonds
we incubate stones
and hope
Fern is one of the nicest stones I've ever attempted to incubate.
Fern is the smartest pup I've worked with in nearly 15 years, and she's a joy to be around. If she's inherited the traits that I want from her parents, she'll be a hardworking sheepdog, working directly and taking control of her sheep. It's too soon to tell if she'll live up to her pedigree -- buying a puppy is always something of a crapshoot, although we try to load the dice by choosing pups from parents with a history of producing good workers.
In these photos, taken on June 30, 2007, Fern is roughly four and a half months old. She's just starting to "see" sheep -- by which a shepherd means that she's showing interest in them and starting to show some form and purpose in her approach to them. Although she can run like the wind, Fern doesn't have the physical ability to really work sheep yet. More importantly, she doesn't have the mental capacity to handle the pressure if she's challenged by the sheep or her handler, so there's really no training going on at this point. I'm just exposing her to sheep and helping her out when things get hairy -- mostly by getting her out of her own way!
In this photo she has just noticed that the sheep are moving away from her, and she has dropped her head and tail into the classic Border collie working pose as she continues to walk up on the flock. She's not showing any interest in circling the sheep to head them yet (although she did do so a little bit today when I didn't have a camera). She is looking purposeful and probably most important and unusual at this age, thinking about what's going on.
When these two lambs realized that they had been separated from the rest of the flock, all hell broke loose -- they were calling and running. All the activity caught Fern's eye and she went into chase mode. No harm came of it -- the lambs rejoined their mothers and Fern thought she had saved the day. But this sort of situation is why it's risky to work puppies on larger groups of sheep. If she had tried to head off the lambs, they almost certainly would have gone over her which could have rattled her confidence and put off the day when she's ready to start real training.
Hey, wait a minute! This sheep smells like a dog!
On Starting Dogs
By Dee Woessner
Needing diamonds
we incubate stones
and hope
Fern is one of the nicest stones I've ever attempted to incubate.
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