I went out to shoot a video this morning, and I hit the slow-motion prompt by mistake, I was about to delete the video but decided to watch it instead, and I’m glad I did, it was a surprise,  it seemed beautiful and arresting to me, a chance to see this explosive and keen dog in slower motion, it was a beautiful to me a kind of ballet. I love new perspectives, and this show’s Fate’s extraordinary energy and drive. Fate is increasingly responsive to me in the pasture, she keys on Red or Chloe, sometimes me or Maria, so I am working with her alone more.

I am learning, as always, to be calm, clear and consistent.

Fate still can’t really move the sheep so Red comes in, works, gets the sheep where they need to be. I don’t want to cut in on his work time, he loves it as much as Fate does.  But we are doing very well in our long-distance commands and directionals. Next, a campaign to slow her down and do less circling of the flock, she needs to develop her eye and herding confidence, she can’t do that on the run. One step at a time, I’ve learned to do this with border collies.

Watching the slow motion video has been helpful to me as well as interesting, because I see her getting ahead of the flock, stopping it and turning it, and giving some of the ewes some eye. I hadn’t quite seen that as clearly.  She is very confident out there, and we are communicating very well. When the sheep challenge her, she just moves on. More and more, she is challenging them.

I love this slow motion perspective, it’s understandably a bit longer – five minutes – but it was worth it for me.

I’m building up my You Tube channel again, these small videos have gotten 10,000 views in the last week or so, glad to add this to the story-telling repertoire. (And thanks to the new people who are supporting the blog by subscribing, much appreciated. It helps. Thanks for supporting my work.

Fate moves so quickly, I sometimes don’t quite grasp her amazing athleticism and agility. Come and see, this was an interesting accident. I’ll do more slow motion videos from time to time.