Herding in Mud

Due to Christmas, and blizzards and floods in northern Virginia, Bryna and I hadn't been out to herd since mid-December. Sunday, February 11, 1996, was comparatively warm--a high in the mid 40s. It was very windy--gusts were strong enough to knock you off balance if you were unprepared. The sunlight intensified, and more ice and snow began to melt where it remained in shady or low places. We drove to the farm. I should have been warned when I nearly got my front-wheel drive car stuck in the mud as we tried to make it up the driveway. I left the car down by the road, and skirted the mud baths to go to the barn. In retrospect, I am not sure why I bothered to walk around them. . . .

Since we hadn't practiced for a while, MJ Wylie (my teacher) said not to try any of the things we worked on last time, like squaring corners, but just do some straight lines, and walk around the panels. I should let Bryna blow off steam, and basically fall back a few lessons. About 10-15% of the field (especially the 2 corners most popular with the sheep) were full of squashy, squishy, squooshy, boot-sucking mud, and one end of the field (about 5-10%) was a series of patches of hard ice. Bad sign.

What I did not realize was that I needed to fall back a few lessons too. I was not turning into her as I ought to get her to flank properly, and I had lost somehow the steps that I needed to help her get the sheep out of the corners. In addition, while I had on good sturdy boots, they were the pull-on, pull-off kind. And I do emphasize "pull-off." In many instances, I nearly walked right out of my boots in the deep mud. As Bryna and the sheep went rollicking around, I was missing my footing, and so were they. I fell on my bottom early on (squoosh #1), and after that it was one long mud bath. Sheep slid into me on several occasions.

Probably my second most spectacular move involved falling over a moving ewe, palms and crook in the mud, feet just off the ground, and being carried along by the ewe before I slid off. The sheep fled from that, and Bryna very nicely brought them all back to me (at top speed) just as I got to my feet, and was wiping my muddy gloves off on my pants. The very strong wind was spooking the sheep, so that they wanted to move fast once started, but once jammed into one of the corners in 6 inches of boot-sucking mud, they were next to hopeless for us neophytes to get out. Due to her excitement, Bryna was ignoring me more than I like to see, but she was also much better than she had been in past lessons about ignoring sheep in an adjacent pen. Wanting to get ALL of the sheep, rather than working on just the ones I wanted her to work on has been a problem in the past, and this was her best effort at that so far. She even did fairly well about ignoring beardies when Diana and Ken Clayton's 2 beardies, Bosco and Chauncy, arrived for their lesson.

My very most spectacular move was a combination of Ice Capades Show, and Super Bowl football. Bryna was bringing the sheep around me nicely as I changed directions, when I realized that I had made my turn right into the sheet of ice. I slowed down, but Bryna (who has, of course, 4 paw drive) did not, nor did the sheep. One ewe lost her footing in the turn (at least I think that is what happened), and slid downslope right into my feet. All of me was at least 2 feet off the ground at one point, and I came down on the ice sheet on my left hip, followed by both hands. I discovered that the ice had about 1/4 inch of water over it. The sheep high-tailed it away, even my tackler, and I hobbled after them.

We finally got in some nice s-turns, and occasionally got the sheep out of the corners. Bryna had a swath about 6 inches wide from her eyes to the base of her tail that was NOT covered with ice/mud. It took a walk through a creek and 3 shampoos to get her more or less clean. I had fallen more times in that one session than I had in all previous lessons combined and was beginning to wonder if I was too old for full contact sheep herding. I had to put some plastic on the driver's seat in my car before I sat down. But we may have worked ourselves back to where we were in December, and I hope we can make some progress next Monday (a holiday here in the US for some) when we go out for our next lesson (or do I mean lesion?).

Later, in the privacy of my bathroom I discovered a welt the size of a grapefruit, which this morning looks like the handiwork of a lunatic tatoo artist.

I woke myself up every time I turned over in the night. Most of me hurts, and I stagger when I first get up from sitting for a while.

We had a wonderful time. You should try it.

Cheers.

Lynne and Bryna (the Mud-puppy or Briarpatch Impromptu, HCT, CGC)