Is my freestyle mojo back ?

The last couple of months has seen me really not be as enthused as normal about freestyle. Normally by now i have all the props and routines worked out for next year but for various reasons i haven't got round to it. I of course have been doing a lot of displays of the entertainment show which means after a weekend of doing that you don't feel like doing much.
Anyway i think i have now finally decided on both pieces of music for Pogo although the HTM one might change but i think we should be ok. I eventually found the props that i needed for the freestyle routine and now i just have to make sure they fit in the van!! Plus i need to get some other props made but having rigged up the props as a trial Pogo seems to work ok with them.
I have been doing a little more with Whizzy as she has a competition coming up but i really need to listen to the music a bit more. Fingers crossed she behaves herself and unlike the May competition i hope my handling is better as i feel i let her down.

Is it freestyle or a trick show ?

Recently i have been contemplating what freestyle should be and what i think it might be turning into. When i first came into the sport there were routines where the moves were all relevant to the theme or music. Nowadays it seems that routines are turning very much into a trick show with not that much relevance to the music. You might have a costume on and do a couple of relevant moves but really is that good enough interpretation of the music ?
Now you might think that i am having a go at others but i will hold my hands up and say that i think some of my routines fall into this category. Why have i done this well its probably because in order to get good content marks you seem to have to do loads of moves. The trouble is i think some judges are marking down how many moves are being done and giving a mark for content on that. Whereas we should be looking at whether that move is relevant to the theme and not just registering how many tricks are performed.
So if judges do judge on the amount of moves performed and not whether they fit with the music then how are things going to improve. If you want to be competitive under these judges you have to make sure you have the content so it becomes a vicious circle.

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.

A nice weekend

The first weekend in July saw us making our way to Ardingly as we had been booked to perform at the Smallholders show. I was looking forward to this event as i am now the owner of four ducks and was eager to get some good advice.
Just like the previous weekend the first day was very hot and not the ideal conditions for running around doing routines. After the first display is was time for a well earned Pimms to quench my thirst. Whilst relaxing between displays it was nice to meet Mo with Breeze and Topaz who anyone that competes in HTM will know from the show circuit.
The weekend went really well with lots of people coming up after the displays to meet the dogs and tell me how much they had enjoyed it. The rest of the show had everything and anything to do with smallholdings and i resisted the temptation to come away with a few chickens ! There were plenty to choose from with the ones that look like a fuzzy white dish mop being one of my favourites.

The four duck-a-teers have arrived

For quite a few weeks i have been trying to find some young white Indian runner ducklings as this breed is very good for sheepdog work. As the name suggests they run and don't fly plus they flock together well. After a few frustrating false starts i contacted a lady who had some 5/6 week old ducklings which were a bit older than i originally wanted.
We chatted on the phone and i agreed to have two white crested runners and two coloured ones. Duck breeders love people who want ducks for sheepdog work as drakes are hard to get rid of, you don't want females in case the eggs break inside the female.
As we were both going to be at the same event that weekend i arranged to pick them up there. When i first saw them i cannot say i was that impressed as they looked quite scrawny but you can see that they are going through a bit of a moult. The little black and white who is the youngest has not started to moult so is very cute and its going to be interesting to see him grow up.
The information on the breed does say they can be very skittish and nervous which these are especially compared to the other two ducks i used to start herding work with. I have also now made an enclosure where they cannot see the dogs at all as the others bonded a bit too much with the dogs as they could see them whenever the dogs went out into the garden. Hopefully over the next few weeks their feathers will grow and i can get some nice pictures of them plus of course start working them with the dogs.
If you have viewed the online video of our first attempts at duck herding you will have seen Whizzy having a go. When i went for my last sheepdog training lesson with Pogo i let her have a go with the sheep. As i thought at first she was scared of them but as i got them moving she got into her stride. Im not going to say she is the next big thing in sheepdog work but for a 50 % poodle she did quite well.

A busy time

The display season has really started in earnest but i have still managed to fit in a couple of workshops. The last was a very busy day as i had a morning workshop, afternoon workshop plus a cabaret evening, so by the time i got home at 12.30am i was ready for my bed. Pogo was a little weird on the cabaret evening and not her self at all but it wasn't till after the evening had finished that i had been told there was thunderstorms outside. Now i don't know if this was the reason but the day before and the day after she was totally fine so perhaps just the noise upset her.

The duck herding has been coming along well and i am looking forward to my "Ferrari" ducklings ie Indian runners which i hope will be arriving soon. I spent an interesting few hours at a local sheep association event recently where there was lots of different breeds of sheep. Its not until you attend an event like this that you realise how many breeds there are and i came away quite liking the Zwartbles ! fingers crossed a piece of land comes up for sale around here soon as i could do with my own area to practise.
There also was a sheepdog auction at the event which was one of the reasons i had decided to attend as i have not been to one before. Basically each dog is run on the sheep and then sold to the highest bidder if the bid is high enough. The sheep they were using were not easy at all and were running straight at the fences and then either going smack bang into it or over the top. There was one bitch who i could have easily bid on as she had been well trained and looked of a nice biddable temperament. Although i like the really up for it dogs i know the confident but a little sensitive type of dog suits me better.

More displays over the next few weeks plus another couple of sheepdog lessons so i hope to update the blog as things happen.

Duck herding freestyle !

I have had a break for the last couple of weeks from freestyle as i have been rather distracted duck herding ! if you haven't seen the new video yet of Pogo at work then go to the sheepdog blog page on the website. I have been pleased how Pogo has been working but just as she did with the sheep she is getting more confident with them so i have to be on the ball when working her.

Whizzy is the one that i am surprised at as i took her down the garden to the ducks basically to use her to try and get the ducks to move away from a dog better. Whizzy though had other ideas and found her inner collie, moving around the ducks in both directions. Sometimes it almost looks like she wants to play with them but then she concentrates more and moves around well. Unlike Pogo, Whizzy has not been taught big circles in freestyle yet so its interesting for me to have a dog to work who does the circling around the ducks naturally and i am putting the command to it as she does it.

Although freestyle has been taking a back seat i have i think (fingers crossed ) decided which pieces of music i will use next. Trying to come up with something different is always hard but hopefully the pieces i have chosen for Pogo are different from this years routines. So i have started to teach some moves which Pogo has not done before and am off soon to buy the relevant props.

The next few weeks will be busy with lots of displays and workshops to teach so i hope the weather is good. Below is a picture taken at the first outside display of the year in May, as you can see Betty was full of life : )