Sneak Peek

            Behind the scenes - building a book

From Positive Herding 101

Back Story

Something different for this Sneak Peek blog. Instead of pulling a page or two from the first book, I thought you might be interested to learn how the books were created.

(If you want to skip my herding history, jump down to Book Story.)

It all started about 30 years ago when I was given an Australian Shepherd. Unfortunately, Raffles was afraid of sheep and lambs so he became a watchdog and I went in search of a border collie puppy. Puppy Brooke came into my life, grabbed my heart, introduced me to herding, and we were on our way. I have never looked back.

Over time, I transitioned from a proud Aussie owner to an open handler but I wanted a more dog-friendly way to train my dogs. Enter positive reinforcement-based training. Again I became a newbie and struggled to learn and then adapt positive training to herding.

I have trained dogs, horses, cows, sheep, and chickens. (My cats from years ago always trained me.) In 2015, I got Sir as a puppy. I was finally ready to train a dog using primarily positive methods. I had been working with Sally and Renn for several years by this time, with great success, probably due to Sally being a stellar student rather than me being a stellar teacher.

Book Story

I decided to keep a journal of Sir's training and that journal, as well as my previous years of training, studying, handling experience, and mentoring of Sally as she trained Renn, form the basis for the books. The set of two books started out as one but when I reached 600+ pages I realized I needed to break the book into two books.

These are the actual journals that I kept. They, along with hundreds of training videos, have been priceless, in that they are an accurate accounting of my positive herding journey.

The journal also grew and became two journals that contained training plans, successes, frustrations, and tons of diagrams. Once I decided to write a book I went through the journals and put each distinct idea onto an individual index card. I ended up with over 1300 index cards that I sorted into piles. These piles became the basis of my outline for the book, with each pile becoming a chapter in the book.

This bundle of colored index cards, divided into chapter sections with clips, rubber bands, and slips of paper, was one chapter of the book.

Once all of the chapters were placed into a grand outline, I began writing the manuscript at the beginning of 2018. Of course, there were several revisions, additions, and setbacks along the way. When I finally finished the manuscript I was elated! Then I realized I had only finished about a third of the work necessary to get a book published. BIG letdown!

Now it was time to add the pictures. I have hundreds of videos from my training but they are not all of the quality that would allow me to pull pictures from them. Fortunately, many of the videos were usable for images or I would have had to get a photographer to re-take pictures of training done years before. Thus, almost 100% of the pictures in the books depict actual training rather than staged training.

I did have a friend come over a couple of times and take pictures of my dogs for the full-page images in the books.

Then it was edit, edit, edit, edit, get discouraged, edit some more. Then send the manuscript off to some heroic beta readers and edit, format, edit, edit, get discouraged again and edit once more. Sally also did a LOT of editing, pointing out of things that didn't make sense, and adding comments and some levity along the way. ;-)

So there you have it. Over three years of blood, sweat, and tears later, the first book is almost ready for you!

If you found this blog interesting, please tell your friends and spread the herd!

Barb

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