Champion of My HeartA real-time memoir about life with a fearful border collie, by Roxanne Hawn

Starting in spring 2009, life around here got increasingly complicated with medical / health worries and looming grief on several fronts. The changes to my daily reality often feel beyond grim. I wade through life with a conscious bubble of gratitude around me. Yet, while tossing and turning the other night, I compiled a list of things I miss.

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Since we have no herding news of our own, after a long lapse in lessons due to non-stop work and family demands, today Champion of of My Heart looks at how someone else uses some clicker training in a herding context.

Herding is often taught using mostly pressure and “corrections.” And, when you ask about how clicker training might fit into the process, you’ll hear some grumbling about things like:

• The livestock are their own “reward.”
• Clickers make dogs focus too much on you and not on the task at hand.
• It’s a natural, much more dynamic process than teaching another kind of trick or easily segmented task.

So, when our pal Anna from Happy Healthy Pup, who recently relocated from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Atlanta, Georgia, suggested I talk to Astrid Smith from A Dog’s Journey … well, I sent and email and got on the phone.

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Despite having ZERO time to read for pleasure lately, I’m making my way through a sheepdog book that our herding trainer recommended. It’s called Talking Sheepdogs: Training Your Working Border Collie (by Derek Scrimgeour).

While the book primarily deals with training a working / herding dog from puppyhood, I figure its good to know things from the ground up.

I still have a lot more reading to do (even though it’s a short book, just 128 pages, with lots of illustrations and diagrams), but here are two things I wanted to share.

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Yesterday, I reported on What Went Well in Lilly’s second herding lesson. Here is a recap of what didn’t go so well.\

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Last Thursday, Lilly and I hauled ourselves out to Valdemar Farm for our second official herding lesson. This I know … I’m probably the worst goatherd on the planet. Lilly loves bossing goats around.

Because no one could come with us and because we don’t (yet) have a TV crew following us around (ha!), I have ZERO video to show you. I did take a couple pictures, and I’ll again to my best to convey the outcome.

Today, I’ll explain what went well. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you what didn’t go so well.

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Over the last couple of weeks, I had the chance to glean insights about Lilly’s recent herding lesson where (at least in my mind) things didn’t go so well. This slow-motion herding pressure video shows some of what I’ve learned.

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Now that you’ve seen all the videos, read my accounts of other herding lesson events, and considered my ideas on possible causes of Lilly’s relatively poor performance in her first official herding lesson, I’d like you to vote in this poll.

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Let’s resume our discussion of Lilly’s herding lesson with some reflections on the overall experience. As promised, I’ll also clue you into to a couple of details that may shed light on how things went.

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The third and final time Lilly worked the goats during her one-hour herding lesson, we tried something different. Oh, I still played the role of newbie goatherd, but we asked Lilly to FETCH the sheep and bring them to me.

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After taking a break, during which Lilly smiled and panted wildly but refused to drink any water, we took her back into the training pen. EXCEPT, this time I got the chance to be the shepherd. Goodness help us and the goats.

Clearly, I could not muddle my way through my first attempt at herding with Lilly AND shoot video footage at the same time. A friend who had hoped to meet us out on the farm for Lilly’s herding lesson ended up stuck in a meeting, so there is no video coverage of what came next.

I’ll do my best to paint the tableau.

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In today’s goat herding lesson video, Lilly works the goats in the larger training pen. Again, I don’t want to influence your impressions of what you’ll see, so I’ll let the video footage speak for itself.

This is the third chunk of video (about 2 minutes) from Lilly’s FIRST herding contact in her one-hour lesson. She did all the work in Monday’s video, Tuesday’s video, and today’s video … before taking her first break.

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Our herding story continues this week with a video showing Lilly chasing and/or letting the goats go hither and yon. Yes, they ended up spread across three pens, so we asked Ben, an experienced herding dog for help.

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Between bouts of silly cold and small-ish snowstorms every 1-3 days, we finally squeezed in Lilly’s second herding lesson on Friday. The weather was clear, with temps in the 60s, which was great. So, all this week, we’ll be talking about herding.

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We’re still on herding overdrive here at Chez Champion of My Heart, 10 days after Lilly’s big herding instinct test on 7 or so boer goats at Vademar Farm in Fort Lupton, Colorado. On our long drive home and in the days since, I bet I’ve thought of 100 things I wanted to remember to tell you.

I suspect I’ve forgotten at least 90 of those. Some ended up as text slides in the three videos, so here are just a few final important things…

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Following a break to rest and drink, Lilly entered the round pen for the third and final time in her 1-hour herding instinct test. The task of working livestock is one of the most mentally taxing things a dog can do. Lilly showed tremendous stamina of body and brain. Still, she went a little wild on her third try.

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