Two sessions to write about really quick

Ok on Sunday I went up to Susan Crocker's to work some sheep.  I met up with my road weary friend Jorgen and his sidekick Merckx.  There will a trial at Susan's the weekend of 6/19-21.  We worked groups of 7 sheep, each group had four ewes and 3 weanling lambs.  Things went well and the groups were pretty interesting to work.  The ewes were all savvy to the game and the lambs were being silly lambs.  It made for keeping the group together very interesting.  I tried very hard to pen a group and failed.  On my side I couldn't find the balance between enough pressure on the ewes and lack of pressure on the lambs.  Basically if the lambs were comfortable the ewes walked over the top of me and if I held the ewes the lambs moved to far away.  I was having the same issue with placing my dog.  He tried very hard and stuck with it, so A + on his end for effort.  Our earlier session he just did sloppy work and it was hard to get his attention.  We weren't really tuned into each other.

On Tuesday I drove down to Fido's Farm http://www.fidosfarm.com/ our sheep home.  The training on the whole was much better.

I worked Molly and she showed me that she is calming down.  I focused mainly on driving light sheep.  I put some yearling ewes in the ally and put her a long line.  I focused on getting her to flank cleanly to the inside and outside.  I also focused on flanking, stopping and walking up straight. She often tries to continue flanking(drifting out usually) even after the stop.  She was starting to get it toward the end of our session.

With Z I also concentrated on driving.  I really tried to keep him back off the sheep so he had space to flank.  We worked on his gears while driving.  I also set up situations were I was flanking him off the pressure to "correct" lines.  His fetch line is looking a little sloppy again.  I'm still having a bit of time getting a hold of him right away.  Once I get him backed off some he brings them straight as an arrow otherwise he flounders around behind them a bit and I end up over handling which makes a mess.  Next time on the driving I must aim for panels and drive them way past.  He is starting to take too much pressure off the sheep when they get near a panel.

Just a few more days until our first Open run!!!