Fishy Health

Congrats to Vicki on her new car!

Well, much to my surprise, the yellow tang was alive when we got home last night. He actually looked fine, and it didn't look like the puffer had bothered him any further. He was eating, and seemed pretty interested in the seaweed I put in there for him. So he may live after all, yay!

I went after work yesterday to the fish store to look for a blue/hippo tang, but with no luck. Apparently, around this time of the year, they're all fairly large. But the store owner was going to see what he could do about finding me one. They also had a Royal Gramma, which I'm thinking of getting, since we need a fish to replace Nemo 1.

Decisions, decisions.

Agility Stuff and Herding Stuff

Last night was another agility class, and Bandit had a little more difficulty this week than last week, although he got better towards the end. We split up into two groups again, and the instructor started to put this one dog in our group. This dog is totally dog aggressive, and he and Bandit almost got into a fight once. Luckily, another lady in our group told the instructor it was probably better that that dog not be in our group, because it was still aggressive towards HER dog (it's aggressive to nearly every dog in class, and the guy spends half his time trying to control it). So the instructor (I still don't know her name) asked us which dog we'd like to have join us, and all of us said, "Jenny" at the same time. Jenny is a really sweet dog, and her owner is a nice older guy - Jenny is probably also the most well-behaved dog in the class as well as the best one so far at the sport. We were grouped with her last week, and had fun watching her, since she's so enthusiastic. We joked that now we were all going to be shown up.

We had one tricky exercise where we had the dog start at the table, run through then tunnel, and then we had to call the dog back to the table. Bandit's recall, to put it bluntly, stinks. We've been working on getting him to come when called at home, but he still blows us off whenever he feels like it. Amazingly, when he came out of that tunnel, he came to me when I called, and even went back to the table when I pointed at it. I just about fell over from shock.

I've been thinking a bit about herding, and how I still don't really understand how it's supposed to work. So I've been Googling it and reading up a bit on it, and I think I'm starting to grasp the concept. Basically, the way Border Collies work is that they're supposed to be a balance with their handler. The handler is one one side of the sheep, and the dog is on the other, and if the two are perfectly balanced, the sheep shouldn't move unless the dog pushes forward to move the sheep towards the handler. It's kind of like a clock, with the dog at the 12 o'clock position, and the handler at the 6 o'clock position, and the sheep in the middle.

When I'm in the pen with the sheep, Bandit is supposed to move around the sheep in a wide enough circle, to keep the sheep pointed to me as I'm moving, but not so close that they start to pass me on the side. That's currently Bandit's problem, in that he moves in on the sheep in the middle, and so they split and pass me on either side. It's why I'm dorkily waving that flag in those videos, to try to push him back, so that he goes wide around the sheep. If he does it right, those sheep should be pointing their noses at me and not moving. When I back up in a straight line, he should move up slowly on the sheep, to keep them with me, but not to overrun me.

The dog is also supposed to run in tandem with the handler, in that if I start to move clockwise, he should also move clockwise to keep the sheep with me, and the same goes for counterclockwise. Now that I know this, I can see how he's progressed in those videos we've taken, where at the start he just kind of goes around the sheep in endless circles, but in the later lessons you can see that he's really starting to follow what Jan is doing.

Now I just have to figure out what the heck I'm supposed to be doing!