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.
First, it was peaches. Then, we had to do a banana intervention. And, now … what kind of fruit and/or vegetable heist do you suppose resulted in Ginko making this “Who me?” face?
Yes, I understand the dog learning process that conditions dogs to expect and/or react to the things we say, the things we do … even the things we wear. But, the other night, I cracked up when I realized a very strange thing Ginko, in particular, has picked up.
A couple of weeks ago, I got a funny voice-mail message from Kim Sporrer, who handles communication stuff for the Humane Society of Boulder Valley (where we adopted Lilly in October 2004). She asked me to call her and, in the meantime, to keep the evening of February 24 open. She was a little cryptic.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
