Thank you very much.  A little background. I have been working cattle with dogs for 40 years.  I have been to many clinics and trials. I have learned a lot at them many of the things have been helpful but it is just not what I do with dogs in real working situations. My dogs were too mechanical and lost their ability to think on their own. I mostly use my dogs to gather and pen. I have problems having dogs that are strong enough to fetch the cattle  so  sometimes they hold them up and I have to move the cattle myself. Some of this maybe due to the fact that many of the methods I have been taught back the dogs off in the early training. I have never been to one of your seminars but I have purchased some of your videos and studied Bud’s methods. The stock dog articles just make sense to me. For example you can spend hours downing a dog to teach rate and some of them just don’t understand and if they do it takes forever. Yet a dog that learns a job when to push and when to back off understands rate. At many of the stock dog clinics people tell you that working sheep and cattle is the same when in my experience this has not been true.  When I am called to pen cattle for people the biggest problem is stopping the spoiled cattle from running off into dense timber etc.. To me this is a totally different situation from cattle that are in a group and you just need help moving them. When my dogs locate cattle out of my sight that are trying to run off knowing commands doesn’t  do much good. It is just a different deal when holding up cattle that are trying to escape than it is with cattle standing in an arena or open field while you work a dog on flanks , walk up , down , get out etc.  At a trial more points are awarded for the outrun , lift and fetch  with maybe 5 points for the pen.  In real life if the dog makes a perfect outrun and lift but you don’t pen you don’t get to market which is what it is all about if you are raising cattle to sell.  I’ll get off my soap box just glad to find information on working a dog in real life situations . Thanks again for the website and information.