Empire Ridge Ranch

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Empire Ridge Ranch

Helping you build your dog’s best life

13/07/2025

I’m so heartbroken! The north rim lodge was lost to wildfire today! We were just there! These old lodges are so special.

13/07/2025

I thought I’d share a photo of our beautiful little goslings. ❤️❤️

12/07/2025

We got our photos back from the finals. Unfortunately, something went wrong with the memory card with Tagg’s photos, so we only got two. We got great ones though of Cody, and some nice ones of Brisco. Andrea Layne Photography

11/07/2025

Bingo finds the world outside her house terrifying. Believe it or not, offering to jump up on the cot, and then on her own choose to relax on it was a huge unexpected step. We move really slowly with these types of dogs, and then, all too often, they sprint ahead and surprise everyone!!

Great job, Bingo!! ❤️❤️

10/07/2025

Herding, herding, herding, herding!! ❤️❤️❤️. My neighbor watched up play with the tending dogs yesterday and got these great photos.

Last two photos are 🔥🔥. Yep! We finally got photos of her in action today! She’s moving along nicely!

I love starting these dogs, watching them figure stuff out.

Thank you Sarah for the photos, and Sue for helping me with the monster!

08/07/2025

We are excited to be offering a THREE Day Workshop with Bob Deeds. Bob is an NACSW judge, and was a FEMA search and rescue trainer. He and his dogs were deployed to 9-11, Katrina, and other disasters.

Day one will be focused entirely on search and rescue. We will work on Mt Lemmon because it will be cooler. If you are interested in the SAR day, please sign up ASAP, because if I don’t fill it, we’ll cancel it.

The next two days are all about scentwork. Foundations, clear communication, competition, and all-clear signals will be covered.

The costs are all listed on my website. There’s a an option for SAR only, two-day scentwork only, both, and audits for either or both.

Please tell me what you’re signing up for so I know.

We’re taking $160 now. Anything additional will be due in a few weeks - please read the website carefully.

Dates: SAR Sept 5, and scentwork will be 6 and 7

08/07/2025

We’re trying an experiment. We try to take breeds that were very loosely considered herding breeds (the dogs of the pastoralists, the the Canaan Dogs, the Samyoed, Finnish Laphund) and we try to fit them into the gathering box for herding (border collies, Aussies, kelpies) and then we either find there’s nowhere near enough instinct, and give up, or we teach obedience in the presence of sheep and call it herding.

I thought, why not see if the instincts required for tending are more aligned with these more primitive dogs.

So. Sara, the bestest girlie Canaan dog has decided to be our guinea pig. Today we introduced the boundary and we’ll see if she starts to see the picture in a few weeks.

Carrie, Sara’s amazing mom, played Little Bo Peep for Trigger and I to show her how to move alongside them.

By the time we were done, it was too scorching to even take the sheep out with one of the advanced dogs. Hopefully it will cloud up and we’ll get some rain this afternoon to cool things off.

07/07/2025

Can you guys do me a favor? Either my phone or my website is being wonky. Please pull up my site on your phone and see if you can make the drop down menu appear by hitting the three bars on the right. I cannot make it happen on my phone and need to see if this is a me problem or something I need to contact my website builder about. Thanks!

07/07/2025

Drop in rally is obedience tomorrow. Pick a skill and we’ll work on it. Great group, fun training! 3-5 pm - come whenever, leave whenever; work as much or as little as you want. Work on the skills that matter to you! Dogs at all levels of training are welcome!

04/07/2025

🔥🔥Let’s talk about this creature and herding sheep.

Right now her idea is to fling herself at sheep biting and flailing. This, obviously, is not what we want. It’s not safe for her, the sheep, or the poor human (me!) who gets freaked out sheep run over their head!

To get her off the sheep we have to apply pressure that she respects; however, in her adrenalized state the amount of pressure required, the amount of running necessary, and the inevitable times when she blasts through the pressure and grabs a sheep or one flies headlong into a round pen panel are untenable and inappropriate.

So, what do we do?

If we thought she’d get better with age, we’d put her away. But she won’t. This is genetic far more than it’s maturity.

Put her in a very small space where we can control all the variables (leashed dog, someone on the sheep, etc…) which is what we did yesterday and while this is valuable, it’s also a ton of pressure for a young dog.

So, today we went old school and tried something I’d heard about but have never tried. We put the sheep in a tiny pen in the arena, and put her on the outside. We still had a long line, and a second person, just in case, but this allowed her to open up and feel the space as well as keeping the sheep present but safe.

It worked great! (We suck at getting video or photos!) she cast out and stopped pretty reasonably, sure she needed some pressure to prevent her from flinging herself at the sheep, but nowhere near what she would have needed in a round pen with loose sheep.

Without sheep to protect I was far more relaxed! And because the sheep weren’t running, chasing was off the table.

I think it’s cool that we’re able to find techniques new and old to ensure a good start for my monster! She had a great go! I’m so happy with her! Next time we’ll try to get some video, I promise! ❤️🔥🔥🔥

03/07/2025

Spark started training in herding today. I have no photos because it took both Sue and I to keep her off the stock. I keep picking these crazed over the top cattle bred dogs (Tagg I’m looking at you!) that are ridiculous in their intensity and dismiss human input as so much pointless noise.

Starting these dogs is like training a tiger! She’ll be a great dog in a few years, but right now is the hard part that gets us there

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Opening Hours

Tuesday	11:30 - 17:00
Thursday	11:30 - 17:00

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+15209404453

Website

http://www.empireridgeranch.com/

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