Tell Me Thursday #6

Sorry for the delay today. I had these great intentions that involved getting this up at like 7:30 am, EST. Clearly that's not happening. While I'm thinking of it - if you have questions you want me to ask, or questions you'd like to answer shoot me a quick email (it is enabled on my profile page). See? I'm even giving you all an opportunity to shamelessly promote yourselves. You don't even have to be playing, I'm all ears for anyone who emails.

Ok. Questions for today:

1. How do you teach recalls to your dogs?
2. What is your favorite Restaurant or type of food? Clearly I have food on the brain much of the time.
3. What is your favorite interest outside of dogs/livestock/sports?
4. Describe your path from where you started out to where you are now! (For example, how did you get from Novice to Open? How long did it take? Train dogs? Buy dogs? I'll take answers for any sort of discipline, or even how did you go from wild dog that didn't listen to well behaved dog - interpret this however you like.) This question was suggested by Pippin.
5. Is there a dog that you raised that, if you knew then what you know now, you would have raised them differently? Question posed by Jodi.

1. How do you teach recalls to your dogs?

Uh... well... pretty much I start by calling the big dogs and usually the puppy comes too (as a side note, I have found that this method does NOT work as well for dogs that don't start out with me from the beginning). I've found that for some dogs this is pretty much enough, but others (Linc) not so much. When I start teaching them by themselves I make a big deal over them when they come in difficult situations. With Pia I've actually set out with a treat to specifically teach her what I am asking. I find that usually at some point I wind up having to walk a dog down, and then usually after that they are solid. Gah, I'll never forget Nick at 16 weeks at a Jack Knox clinic up in VA... he ran away from me and I spent 20 minutes walking him down. I'm pretty sure my head was about to explode off of my shoulders.

So I'm trying to circumvent public humiliation by paying closer attention to recalls with Pia.

2. What is your favorite Restaurant or type of food?

Mmmm. Ham's. Bacon Cheese Fries. 'Nuff said. Second to that is probably Outback or Lone Star Steakhouse. But really I love a good Italian or Japanese place too. Oh, or Mexican. Ok, pretty much anywhere is my favorite.

3. What is your favorite interest outside of dogs/livestock/sports?

Zumba! It is my new love. I'm nursing an angry knee at the moment, though, so no Zumba for me in the last two weeks. Boo! This is probably one of the few things I do that is just for me and doesn't involve dogs.

4. Describe your path from where you started out to where you are now! This question was suggested by Pippin.

I got June in 2005. April 2nd, actually. I started taking lessons with her (on stock) and though I took her to two trials we never got past the lift and it occurred to me that I'd need another dog. I bought my right hand man, Nick, as a puppy from Julie Poudrier out of her Twist by Roy Johnson's Sonny in mid-2006. He pretty much hit the ground working, and then I gave him a whirl in Novice/Novice in December of 2007 (or was it Jan 2008??). I ran him in Nursery, and managed to get Nursery leg but then he had a soft tissue injury. Anyway, I moved him up to Open in Sept. of 2009, just past three years old. We've done pretty well for ourselves given how little we've trialed in the last year or so.

How did we get there? Lessons with Robin French, for starters. I also bought a handful of well broke hair sheep from Robin, and kept them out at Julie's (for both of us to work).

The short answer is... it's the dog.

5. Is there a dog that you raised that, if you knew then what you know now, you would have raised them differently? Question posed by Jodi.

There are a few things I would have done differently with Linc (things that I am making sure to do with Pia after learning this lesson with Linc). I found myself typically only correcting him for not coming when called (too much redirection when a correction would have sufficed). I have really struggled with the fact that for a while every time I corrected him on stock he'd leave them and come to me. I don't know that he's EVER actually understood correction on stock, though I've worked hard to teach him (remedially) what corrections mean off of stock.

Another thing I'd do differently is send him to stay with friends overnight at a much younger age. This was hard for him to fathom, and as a result he has been a bit of a punk about it. I probably would also have done more ridiculous trick training with him. Read that more as a "more team building" sort of thing with him. I think he would have benefited.

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