Tell Me Thursday on Friday (Sorry I'm late)

1. In sheepdog training (or lets call it *any* type of training), how do you keep from taking yourself, your dog, your lack of progress too seriously? posed by Ann

Well, I've done so many stupid things I just have to let it go sometimes or I'd go crazy. Like last week while working with a friends dog, one of my sheep busted through the gate and took off. The same gate that another sheep had busted through a few weeks ago and that I was supposed to have fixed. This sheep didn't just unhinge the gate though, she sent it flying about 6 feet. Good thing nobody was standing there. So all the sheep get out and I send my older, trained dog to fetch them back. He gets weirded out in his old age and singles one off and chases it around behind the kennels where it jumps into the fence and falls over. It finally makes it back unscathed and I put the old, senile dog up and get out his sister, who is no spring chicken herself, but usually has a calming effect on sheep. Well not these sheep! They all get panicked and they run down the side of my property which borders a forested area and they duck through the only completely unfenced portion and off into the woods they go. The dog I'm using having no real work sense can't get them back so I call her off. We spend the next 45 minutes walking the golf course looking for my sheep who could be in Timbuktu by now! We finally find them ON THE WAY BACK, and my dogs still must be on drugs cuz Meg crosses over on her outrun to gather them while Seth was going the other way and then she proceeds to go straight at them, single one off and run it away from the others. I finally get her to stop and Seth picks them all up and brings them home. These are my fully trained, albeit rusty, old dogs. No, I really can't take it too seriously. What's the next question?


2. How many crates do you have? For reals.

I think I have about 14 crates, but I own a groom shop, so most of them are at my shop.

3. How do you keep your dogs in shape?

I run them on the golf course behind me. I go for walks every morning and every evening and sometimes I take a nice long hike when my sheep escape there.


4. Who is your favorite movie/tv star eye candy at the moment?

Don't have any favorites really. But I guess I can always stand to look at Mark Harmon.

5. What is your livestock situation? Have your own? Borrow? Herd the cats? (You can subsitute other equipment for livestock if you don't work stock with your dogs).

I have my own sheep again, finally after many years of being sheepless. My dogs are doing their darndest to rid me of them, but for now they are still there. I do have one cat too though. The dogs don't really try to herd Kitty though. He's not very herdable (is that a word?)