I have been covered up like cat shit all day, on the go, stuff to do, and my schedule is booked until literally 11pm tonight, but I carved out 30 minutes to run out and work Savvy, (and make my journal entry here), because it is 47 degrees on January 9th for Pete's sake. It was nice out yesterday evening as well, but after spending 3 hours in the truck and sitting through two meetings for the HWASC, I just wasn't up for it mentally. So I decided to make up for it today.
I sorted off a group of 2 heavies, 2 ewes, and 5 very light lambs. It was a fun group. The older sheep kept them anchored, but the lambs reacted faster and showed very quickly when Savvy was affecting them on the outrun work.
Today I focused on large outrun work in the arena and really was a stickler on her not affecting the sheep on the way around, as well as being very black or white on her outs and downs. I paid close attention to how she left me, then focused on the sheep and when they alerted to Savvy and/or moved from her affecting them.
On her downs and outs, I made sure that I took the time to walk out and pet her when she did a good one and I also would look out ahead to where I wanted her to out to and I would walk after her if she tried to cut it short. (Which she did, of course.)
After being corrected with the d/o several times, she finally kicked out nice and wide and got to balance without following their movement. When I told her to down on balance, she took her down quickly, and when I asked her to walk up, she did it flat footed. It was beautiful, but it just took being consistent and sticking to my criteria.
I could have quit there, but I had her try another one on the opposite direction to pull them out of the draw they had escaped to. It took less d/o this time and once she downed on balance, I let her fetch them flat footed to the gate so that we could let them go back up to the barn.
It was a fun, quick little training session that took less than 15 minutes, but it was really worth making the time to do!
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