Visit from the Brain Fairy

Today we learned that you cant always stick to the original training plan. It's been raining down here for a good week, making all of us a little stir crazy from being stuck indoors. I was excited to get Jax back in the field after such a good training session last weekend. Well, apparently Jax left his brain at home and was on "circle the sheep and nothing but" mode. Granted, my dog has a strong urge to keep sheep gathered.... but this was absurd. In my mind I was thinking, "What the heck is going on?!". Circle circle circle circle. No balancing, no fetching the sheep... just keep them together. It became clear the brain fairy had come and taken his little border brain for a vacation. This pup was in it to run and nothing else.

Running at the come by side

Still circling

We did a whole lot of merry go round at first. He just needed to run it out until he was able to get his brain back. He wanted nothing to do with lie down, flanking the sheep, or moving across the field. He would have been content to just run and run and run. In a circle. We kept it even.... we ran round and round on both the away to me and come by side. Either way he was happy to just be running. 

Take a bow aka "Lie the F down!"

Pretty sure at this point my trainer and I realized we needed to take a different approach to the day. It was a bit more mania than was a good learning tool. What we had planned on working on was pretty unproductive (and frankly just making me dizzy). So my lesson was sometimes you need to just go with the flow and pick an easy win and not force the issue if the day just doesn't call for it. We could have gotten heated over what I wanted to do, but when you have a smart dog it's typically in your best interest to make the situation a "win" for everyone. Otherwise you are setting yourself up for a power struggle. No thanks.

We changed pace and worked on driving. With driving the key is to get the dog to get ahead of you and resist the urge to bring the flock to you. You want him to walk towards the sheep and take responsibility on their own. It's still work for Jax, getting him to be confident enough to move the sheep and put pressure on them to move.

It's not an easy task for a young dog to have the guts to confront the sheep on the fence as they were. He needs to scoop them out of the corner, a scary task that means getting them to move (even when they are staring him down and stamping their feet). 

I'm going in! Dogsplosion. 

Jax will go so far, but when the quiet and pressure gets to be too much, he usually will explode to relieve the stress. We're working on dealing with wearing the big man pants and not insist on diving in and causing a circus. 

Walk up... nice and easy

But we got there! He stood his ground and let things go with the flow. Eventually he'll need to be able to do all of this (flanking, driving, fetching) by himself with me at a distance, not there to help him make the right choice or handle the pressure of a difficult ewe. So after a rough start we ended on a good note, with a quiet pet and some loves for a good boy.