Best Medicine

The best medicine for healing your heart over a lost dog, is going out to the fields and working your other dogs. When I lost Bid at a too-young age, my trainer told me, "all you can do is focus all of your efforts on your other dogs." Even with the other dogs to take up the slack, the lost dog leaves a hole that never gets filled.

I'm so thankful for the weekend and some time to step back, and regroup around my other dogs. I've done a little bit of reorganizing, which has shaken up the remaining dogs a little bit but not too much, I hope. There were four dog beds in the bedroom, and now there are three. I downsized the crates in my pickup from four to three, and reorganized what is in there to be more useful for the upcoming summer dog training. There is space.

We got out to work on the sheep both Saturday and Sunday. Spot was very good, both days! wow! I am working primarily on cross-driving, with him. That is where I am re-building his ability to drive proficiently, and be sure that he can flank properly behind the sheep when they are moving away from him. I want to get us both completely competent, and confident, on the cross driving before we move into doing a whole lot more of the drive away. We are also doing our other exercises that Derek suggested that we do. I was super pleased with Spot, since the dogs have not been worked all week. Normally it takes a few days to get in synch with Spot, but not this time.

Coal is not in the best of shape, which I am trying to remedy, but he's a gamer. He listens part of the time and part of the time, he's on his own plan. Coal makes me laugh. :) We are old partners who enjoy each other's company. Coal is now (hard to believe) the old dog around here; he is 9 and will be 10 in August.

Ryme is a good worker close at hand but once again we decided he's not a trial dog. I asked to have someone hold sheep for him to pick up, just as a test, and it blew his mind due to the distance. Ok, so I won't put Ryme into a trial. It's too bad because he does know how to do everything. Ryme is a tremendous help though.

The fields are lush and green and damp from weekend rains. The dogs did not get hot because the temperatures were nice and cool; it was perfect dog working weather which is a gift for me because it is the medicine that I needed most.