Dog Dayz: Paying attention

When I watched the videos from our last herding session, one of the things that I noticed about myself was how aggressive I was actually being. My body language and my voice were very overpowering when there was little need for that. I guess I'm used to working a dog like Lola after so many months and JC is just so much more , well, biddable. So today I paid particular attention to that and used a softer tone in my voice and much less hand signals (such as pointing like an angry schoolteacher). We had a great lesson and worked mostly our 'Lie down' and 'Walk up' commands. He's good with the lie down but doesn't seem to understand yet what I want from him when I ask him to walk up. He wants to walk towards me and leaves his sheep to do so. By the end of our lesson he actually walked the sheep to me, so I think he'll get it by next week. I stopped making eye contact with him and that seemed to help.

Friday we're attending an all day clinic with Elvin Kopp and we are very much looking forward to that.

Some of Elvin's accomplishments are:

World Sheep Dog champion 1987
Five time “Alberta Open International” winner
Five times A.S.D.A. “Cow Dog and Sheep Dog of the Year” in succession
“National Nursery Cow Dog” champion
Won many other competitions too numerous to mention
Trained 13 dogs to win major open competitions in both sheep and cattle
Judged all the biggest sheep dog competitions in North America
Instructs Stock Dog training seminars in North America and has taught over 5000 handler dog combinations through his clinics

Last night, Lola had a great agility training session. We ran some simple courses and again, as usual, our biggest challenge is me.
This time I paid attention to my cheerleading; there's no need to call her a good girl after every obstacle, and how much I actually call out her name. Lola, Lola, Lola. Totally not necessary and actually hinders our run as she turns to look at me each time and we both lose focus.