Well, we’ve been back home for eight days as of tonight, and still processing the five weeks at Chicken Camp – that processing will go on for a long time, and I am hoping continuing this blog will help with that. I have been hugely disappointed that I did not blog regularly during the camp itself, but at least I can do some retrospective writing, including pictures and videos, and continue to write about where the Chicken Camp experience leads me in my training and other endeavors.

Here are videos of the final evaluations of my chickens for the teaching workshop. The person you see with me is my partner, Sonia, who is from Barcelona, Spain. She trained these two birds under my direction – or at least my attempts at direction – and at the end I had about ten minutes per bird to work with them myself before the evaluation you see in the videos. This was by far the most difficult, and stressful workshop to say the least, partly because of the nature of the tasks, partly because exhaustion had really set in after five weeks, and partly because I didn’t always think and plan clearly.

I’m starting with the video of the second chicken because that one actually did quite a good job of going through the course:

This next chicken deteriorated badly during the last day or day and a half, and by the last training period I could not even get her to enter the weave poles, so I threw myself on the mercy of Bob and my fellow students, and Bob actually walked Sonia and me through getting her to complete the course, more or less in bits and pieces, which, of course, was very instructional, and perhaps in some ways more valuable than if she had done it on her own. Who was responsible for the fact that she fell apart? Well, she was my chicken, and I was responsible for the training plan and for instructing Sonia as she trained her, so….

As exhausting and stressful as it all was I would do it all over again, and like a good book, it would offer new insights and new skills each time. I might, if I had the choice, choose not to do it all at once, though!