Rock N' Roll Stockdogs

08/03/2025

Weight lifting with Lennon 💪 Hard to overstate how hard this is.

04/03/2025

Hendrix doing a gather with strong sideways pressure to the left with minimal instruction.

At 7 years old he’s getting better every day.

23/02/2025

Lennon moving a group of fats back to their pen after helping during a big load. I think there’s is sometimes a lot of talk about “real working dogs” and “trial dogs”, or cattle dogs vs sheep dogs, or bite vs precision and feel… but I don’t subscribe to any of that thinking. I think it’s excuse making (on either end).

I just want to make dogs that can do it all, from the big field on a few sheep to an arena trial or the feedlot. Ideally in the same week. Won’t claim to have cracked the code but every day I see the results coming into focus, hiccups and all.

And you tell me what you see here, but I see a dog that moves big heavy fats, in deep mud at times, and stands up to their pressure while staying laser focused on the job without needing to look back at me (count how many times he does), or needing “bite him up” commands every 10 seconds.

I see confidence, power (not aggression) and calm. Not for 20-40 seconds at a time, but for 11+ minutes after already having worked for a fair bit on other groups.

22/02/2025

First warm day in a few weeks was an opportunity to take some sheep out into the big field to see where Lennon & Hendrix are at in the wide open.

Needless to say plenty of rust to polish off ahead of the upcoming sheep field trial season. Especially after a few months of cattle and sheep arena trials.

Lennon is coming along pretty good though I think at just over 2.5 years old. After going a bit rogue at his last trial been happy with his listening lately.

One downside of working in undisturbed snow though is it mercilessly outs the wobbles in your fetch line 😂

20/02/2025

Ended up sharing some thoughts (some that maybe are a bit controversial... who knows) in an episode of 'Trent on the Loos' that was shot at last months National Western Stock Show.

There's room for all kinds of thoughts and opinions in the world of stock dogs, and a viewpoint should always evolve with time... but some of the ideas I talked about included:

-I think dogs should be able to work whatever stock is put in front of them, and the best ones have the experience and knowledge to adjust as needed

-I don't think there is a right or wrong answer to what's harder to work with dogs: sheep or cattle. In fact, I think there's wide variety in both species that sometimes overlaps. I think, personally, there is lighter and heavy stock, harder or easier stock, and it's not divided just by sheep/goat/cattle/etc.

-I think we sometimes as dog trainers over-value dogs that are more biddable/quicker to learn at a young age, potentially to our own (and stockdogs in general) detriment. Personally I'd rather have almost insatiable desire and intensity at the start and put the burden on me as a trainer to harness it over time (and not be in a rush to do so)

-I think we need more people, not fewer, to be curious about and give stockdogs a try (whether or not they ever go to a trial)

--

The episode also includes some great conversations with some top handlers and stockdog community members (Jan & Bob Wagner, Kent Herbel).

Take a listen!

INSIDE THE NATIONAL WESTERN STOCK SHOW: STOCK DOG COMPETITIONS AND THE HANDLERS WHO MAKE IT HAPPEN - In this exciting episode of

19/02/2025

Inside pressure work with Lennon — won’t say the honey badger is fully tamed yet but confidence is never his weak spot 🤷🏻‍♂️

09/02/2025

Lennon's third place run from yesterday's Nursery 2 class (25 dogs).

Up until this run (his last of the trial), we hadn't looked like much.

But in this run, after a few 'heart to heart' conversations on the way to the entry gate... Lennon when he's at his most competitive form showed up to the trial at long last.

Really liked his work here, though thankfully they didn't have the mic on during this part of the nursery class so you won't have to hear me hollaring lie-downs and stops at full volume almost the whole time. 😅

21/01/2025

Just messing around with a lull between trials.

15/01/2025

New home base. 👌

Let training commence under the watchful gaze of the local cat population lol

15/01/2025

Three weeks.
Three big trials.
Thousands of kilometres.
Some big wins.
Some big losses.

I left Ontario on Dec 24th with two dogs and a plan to hit the Arizona National Livestock Show, Cache Cattle Challenge Dog Trials and National Western Stock Show with Hendrix and Lennon before moving into a new place over in Alberta.

Since then Hendrix and Lennon each had some epic moments. At each trial they pulled cheques, including some big ones, running against some huge classes full of top dogs and big hat handlers I admire a lot. On cattle and sheep (though not today on sheep for my crew😂).

But social media as we all know is often just snapshots of the highs and triumphs, and it can be easy to think that’s the full picture.

In reality though, at least for me, to win the big cheques and the banners and the buckles with a smoking run or two you also find they come with plenty of runs that just go sideways. Plenty of moments where you had a chance to win and felt confident you could keep rolling, or others where you stumble in an early round and are sure that it’s going to just be a long drive to the next trial empty handed.., only for in either case to have a reversal of fortune that takes you in a different direction.

Hell, even with all the results from the last few weeks it’s a lot of 2nd places, Reserve Champion titles and placing payouts. Meaning big room for improvement, lots to reflect on and plenty of runs to want back for another shot at fixing critical mistakes… wishing that if you had a chance to do them over you could maybe turn some Reserve results into Champion ones.

But it also occurs to me that that’s kind of the whole point: the lows and stumbles, and what you do next after them, are the raw materials that make the foundation the odd win can be built on.

So all this to say: nothing ventured, nothing gained. And as weird as maybe it sounds, the more I do this thing the more sure I am that success is rarely an orphan.

It’s more often the offspring of a dozen (ok let’s be honest, a hundred) failures that came before. And there is no finish line — they stay pretty mixed up together way off into the horizon.

So if you’re new to this world of competition, just know that any time you see someone’s triumphant result at a trial you can be sure that there’s a lot of more behind it. As many or more losses in the mix.

You won’t ever know when you’ve built up enough hard lessons to build a few big wins, or more consistent wins… but if you know it’s a road worth walking down maybe you’re half way there already.

14/01/2025

The highs and lows of dog trialing:

After 3 days of trialing Hendrix is the 2025 National Western Stock Show Cattle Dog Reserve Champion.

In today's Open finals we faced an extremely tricky course, pliable but ultra clever cattle and very solid competition including multiple past Western Stock Show champs from previous years.

Hendrix was in good form and, other than one small mistake during the barrel serpentine, carved out a 4:43 time which held until my buddy Mike Thompson and Dallas had an even better time with an awesome run in the 4:20's.

On Lennon's side was the low part of the equation. The little honey badger went into today's Nursery run in the lead and we just needed a 4 minute run to win Nursery Champ but we pi**ed off a red steer, couldn't really get her back onside during our run, and by the time we had got it through the course we were over 7 minutes. Full points but way too slow. He'll still pull a decent cheque from this weekend for his work in the first Open and Nursery rounds and overall in Nursery, but after a few weekends of success over three trials there are definitely some real rough edges in his work that have developed and are in need of tuning up.

But that's dog trialing!

Anyway, here is the footage of Hendrix's run from today. There's no sound because there was no commentator on the mic while we were running.