Wednesday, January 11, 2006

In which we make some New Year's resolutions

 

After a long, long hiatus, I'm b-a-a-ck! I have every intention of keeping up this blog regularly from now on. Why, you ask? Well, two main reasons: first, my dog life is about to get extremely terrifying, which means sleepless nights for me but good fodder for writing: Joss is six months old now, and I'm slowly realizing that I'm actually going to have to TRAIN her somehow, starting in the next couple of months. And second, after a crazily busy period, life at work is slowing down enough for me to steal a moment here or there on company time to do some blogging. (Luckily, I think the intersection between ETS corporate suits and sheepdog trial enthusiasts is the ever-reliable empty set!) So here I am, for better or for worse.

I'll start by bringing everyone up to date on the four pups, who all turned six months old on January 4:

• Salt: Salt ("Sparky" as a puppy) was the only male in the litter, and he went to Eileen Stein in Shady Side, Maryland. Salt has turned into a handsome (well, *I* think he's handsome, anyway!) white dog with prick ears and a very intelligent, thoughtful expression. He turned on to sheep quite early, and right now he's very, very keen to work but not serious enough to start. I've always had a lot of confidence in Salt, and I'm going to be very interested in watching him develop.
• Nickie: Nickie ("Summer") , the puppy who looks most like Phyl, is owned by Sherry Smith of Church Hill, Maryland. I haven't seen Nickie for quite awhile (I'll be seeing her this weekend at Sherry's winter trial), but I understand from Sherry that she's very big and very mature already. Nickie, like Salt, turned on to sheep very early and was very keen to work. Sherry took her to a Patrick Shannahan clinic about a month ago, and apparently everyone was quite impressed with her there: Patrick had her going around the sheep to both sides, looking bold and keen. Sherry's plan is to start Nickie formally this month, with some help from her friend Linda Tesdahl.
• Fever: Fever ("Liberty") went to Amanda Millken, mostly because I thought she looked very much like Amanda's side of the family. So far, Fever is looking extremely promising (or at least she was when I last saw her at the end of October). Amanda is snowed under right now, but when her sheep were workable she had little Fever going around her sheep nicely, balancing, and looking much more purposeful than I might expect of a four-month-old puppy. Amanda seems quite pleased with her, and I really expect great things from the two of them.
• Joss: Finally, my Joss ("Belle" in the early days). I can barely keep myself from talking about Joss all day long, to anybody foolish enough to express even a passing interest in her. (My colleagues at work have all learned never, never, NEVER to ask the innocent, polite question of "How's your puppy doing?" if they expect get their various projects out on time.) Joss is beautiful. And sweet. And altogether wonderful. I'm fairly daffy about the dog. She was the slowest of the pups to show an interest in sheep, which worried me even though countless numbers of people who ought to know told me that early interest really didn't mean much. But by now she *is* interested and seems to have a nice attitude: she's keen and happy when I take her out to see the sheep, but she's never frantic. I haven't done any real training with her yet, but I've taken her out with a biggish group of sheep and had Phyl hold them to me, just to see what she'd do. From what I can tell so far, she's not really ready to work yet (her tail is down, but she's not really working the sheep as much as getting among them), but I see glimmers of her using her eye and wanting to drive (she might be a natural driving dog like her mother), and I also see tiny little indications (unless I'm kidding myself) of some of the smoothness that characterizes both her mother and her father. I plan to start her for real in March or so, when she's eight months old.

So that's the pups. Right now my plan is to read and reread everything I can get my hands on regarding starting pups, planning for the big, inevitable day when I take Joss onto the field and try to get her to go around her sheep and find balance. For now, I'm contenting myself with working Phyl more regularly than I usually do, in preparation for some winter trials we have coming up (oh, yeah--other big news is that Phyl and I are going to the Florida trials next month, which will provide even more fodder for posts before my angst-filled training Joss series begins). So stay tuned, and again I apologize for the long delay in writing!

posted by Heather