Not a good lesson

Well no matter what dog training discipline you do you must have had one of those sessions where you find yourself saying"why do i bother". Then following that you wonder why you are doing this and basically feel rather glum. Well this was the feeling i had after Pogo's last herding lesson with the sheep. I even stopped on the way home for some well earned comfort food, some might say i should have more bad sessions if i actually ate something as everyone is always telling me i don't eat enough!
The previous two sessions Pogo had done well but this time she was just wasn't listening at all and it felt rather like a step backwards. Now if i wasn't a dog trainer of other disciplines i could see how people give up but after the initial glumness i looked at things from Pogo's point of view. At the moment there is at least a few weeks between seeing the sheep, so if she saw them on a regular basis progress would be much better. Also my ducks have been too young to work her with and we have only just started to condition them to be worked so Pogo really has not had much work since the last lesson. As we all know if you don't keep things going on a regular basis then faults can creep in which in the case of Pogo is not stopping when told.
It is easy to forget how far she has come from never having seen sheep at four and a half years old to being able to round up a group of sheep or ducks and be able to move them around, perhaps not good enough for trials but good enough for a farm dog.
On the positive side Whizzy loved her second attempt at sheep work and is getting stronger although her attention span is not more then ten minutes at the moment. Since the lesson we have had small training sessions with both dogs on the ducks and they have been really good so fingers crossed its just a blip.