Herding Day

Today Blaze and I went to a lesson. He did well. He's still got alot more maturing to do, but I think he'll be really fun to train.

But, you can totally tell I'm a newbie at this. LOL The sheep went between the pannel and the fence so Blaze needed to go around the pannel to the opposite side of me to move the sheep out to the other pasture. My trainer had the gate open about 5 feet, just enough room so the sheep could go through. And I was trying to make sure Blaze didn't go with them.
Didn't work.
He ran straight past me and my trainer dispite her banging the crook right in front of him. So he runs probably 800+ feet away chasing the sheep. So my trainer is standing there laughing -it was pretty funny- "you need to run after your dog". So I start running down there. Then Blaze stops still about 500feet still and just stands there like "Oh, wait, what AM I doing here?" So I use this time to yell at Blaze "NO!!! HERE!"

One good thing about having a punishment sensitive dog is that when you say "NO" he comes running. So he runs and hops like a mad dog to me through the pasture! Go Blaze!
We stopped with that and he played with her six month old pup.

It was SOOO much fun. I got to "work" her trained dog, Mazy. It was totally awesome. At first she was like "Uh, mom, that THING is giving me a command?" Then she was taking commands from me. It was really an eye opener for how much you have to put into it.

I have alot more respect now for those that do this.

Then we had some time to kill till my parents got back. So we got a "swimming group" together of about 8 other Border Collies and went to play in her pond. Haha, I was soaked by the time that was over. We took the dogs in the pasture and walked while the dogs roamped around and dried off. Blaze was having so much fun. He got along really well with every dog there and played with a few. And was great on his recall. Then we STILL had time to kill so we played with him on the dog walk and a-frame. He had no problems with either and we did a little SAR thing on the dog walk where he had to change directions on it.

It was lots of fun! Can't wait to go back. Sorry, I didn't take any pictures. We did alot of hands on things so it was hard to get any pictures.