Jaenne came over to practice last night. Ann also stopped by. Took Echo out to take a look at what sheep I have here. She is about to outrun the entire length of Russ' field now, and does it well. However, if I am standing on Russ' house side of the pasture and send her, the away side is beautiful, she covers nicely, but then the sheep draw to the east fence and she needs to go "comebye" in order to pull them off there. Instead, she holds them on the fence while walking up and bringing them to me. When she gets close enough to me, she will peel them off the fence. I need to change up the routine ... go stand on the opposite fence, etc. Oh the drawbacks of a small place.
Anyway, she is getting to be very trustworthy with me. I am finding that I am using her more and more. I had her bring the sheep to me, I grabbed Pepe and schnuggled him all up and put him through his daily kissings. By the time I was done with this, the rest of the sheep had wondered off, so I again sent Echo to go pick them up and bring them back to poor little lonesome Pepe. She did wonderfully. I had her hold all the sheep to us while we discussed them and inspected them ... figuring out which ones were Ann's, which ones were pregnant, etc.
In the meantime, Jaenne was busy shoving other sheep in and out of the trailer, getting them used to it for the trial. She had the nasty black ewe in a pen and she was very reluctant to come out. So Jaenne and I used the opportunity to introduce our young dogs (Jaenne used Mo -- who is looking great, by the way!) to a tought, tight situation. Taking the dogs by the collar and showing them how to scoop sheep out of a pen like that. Even doing so, the black ewe still wasn't buying it, so I gave Echo a "ssskkkkkiiiiitttt 'er" and Echo was all too happy to oblige. Good girl, Echo!
Putting proper bite work on the list of stuff to ask Dianne about.
Off to Janie's today to go set up the course and put the sheep through it. Both Echo and Zip will be going with me. I can see how Echo's outrun goes in Janie's field.
More later.
Happy tails,
JD
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