Yesterday was Mother's Day, and Laurel and I put up a link on Facebook to an article that Karen London wrote in Bark about making Mother's Day more inclusive, adding in women who care for dogs into the picture. (Laurel is my social media queen; she helps me with Facebook and Instagram and I kiss the ground she walks on on a weekly basis for doing so.) I shouldn't be surprised at some of the reactions--motherhood is about as primal as it gets, and clearly the article hit a nerve. It also got a large range of reactions, from "I think of myself as my dog's mother," to "How dare you compare caring for a dog with raising a child!" As I often do on Sunday, I stayed off line most of yesterday, and focused on my husband, my dogs and my garden. (And oh yeah, the crab cakes I made last night. Read More

  This week is all about the Nippersink or Swim Sheepdog Trial, outside of Lake Geneva, WI. It was our first competition of the year, and given that training hadn’t been going well, I didn’t have much in the way of expectations. But it turned out well, and most importantly, Maggie and Skip appeared to have a wonderful time. If anything, I'd describe Maggie as elated after her first run. Be still my heart. If you're interested, I’ve included two videos, one each of Maggie and Skip’s runs. I should set the stage first: Nippersink is a big maw of a field, split by a deep creek (Nippersink Creek, thus the name of the trial), with flighty sheep who will run back to the barn given a microsecond of opportunity, as if snapped by a bungie cord. Tiny mistakes or slow responses result in Read More

  I've been thinking about Maggie a lot lately, and wondering whether she wants to continue to compete in sheepdog trials. She is always eager to work sheep, leaves the course (or did last year) as if eager to do it again, even when it went badly. She clearly adores the part she's good at (outrun, lift, fetch, and shedding), but struggles on the part she's not (driving). She likes to drive sheep who are easy to move, as long as she's within 100 yards of me. She hates, and I use that word with confidence, driving sheep who are "heavy," who would rather stand still, or who are pulled in another direction like a set of iron fragments to a magnet. She's brilliant at defense, and dislikes being on offense. She may look ready to go at any time, but once she's out there struggling, Read More

I wrote about Chirag Patel, as a rising star in the dog training world in July of 2018 (or, a million years ago, in the Before Times), and am loving the opportunity to write about him again. What he calls "The Bucket Game" has gotten a lot of attention lately, as well it should. I'm sure many of you know about it, but it feels worthwhile to talk about it now for several reasons. First, of course, not everyone knows about it, and second, it's helpful to see how it really works on a variety of dogs, and how to respond to actions that don't quite fit the mold. The Bucket Game allows us to do husbandry on our dogs in such a way that gives dogs a voice in the procedure. As Patel says, we can have a conversation with our dogs such that they learn to say "I'm ready" or "One second please, I Read More