Several months ago, Skip began leaping up and down in front of me while we walked up the hill, in anticipation of getting the toy that he and Maggie play tug games with. It was cute for a few weeks, and then became irritating. I'm trying to walk forward up a steep hill, and he's pogo'ing himself in front of me, impeding my progress. I tried ignoring it, but he kept it up, no doubt because eventually he would get reinforced when he got the toy when we arrived at the top of the hill. So, what to do to stop the behavior? I could teach an incompatible behavior, one of my favorite ways to deal with this kind of an issue. However, I took another approach, which worked so well and so fast I had to spend some energy getting the behavior back over the last few weeks so that I could video it for Read More

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