Who'd a thunk it?

Well, Janie and Kirk invited me over for an awesome dinner last night (yum!), and I brought just Tess with me, with the intention of working her on Janie's sheep. Well, when I got there, she was working one of her dogs on ducks in her cute little A course duck arena.

I asked her if I could try Tess on them.

I brought Tess in ... and for a while there, she wasn't "seeing" them. She was flanking and stuff because I was telling her to, but it wasn't in response to the ducks. After a while, you could see she was getting it. It was weird, though, because she didn't "turn on" like I've seen Zip do with cattle. She just eventually got more and more intense and looked at me less and less.

So I had a ball ... giving her all kinds of commands in a small little area. I don't know if she knew what to make of it, but she did a great job. She would put them through the obstacles, hold them to the fence, did her "stand there" which I was very happy was working, had a nice call-off, and only grabbed duck twice, and responded beautifully when I told her she is not allowed to do that under ANY circumstances.

I pushed her to see how far she'd go. I got her doing small little commands ... "come bye, way to me, lie down, walk up, stand there, walk up, come bye, down," and she took it all beautifully, but I could see where her limit was when she would stop and ... get this ... bark! at me. Just once, as if to say, "Enough already!" LOL. She was so cute.

I also worked her on Janie's sheep, and got much the same result as I did on my own sheep yesterday (you can read that blog).

All in all, it was an awesome day with great weather. Thanks again, Janie and Kirk. Dinner was wonderful!

JD