Me and my Spätzle-Ass

You may recall that a couple months ago I bought a Spätzle-Ass while visiting Adelboden. Last night I tried it out for the first time, and it was a bit of a mess. The dough is super easy to make-- just water, eggs, flour and salt-- but somehow it became such a production. Maybe I was doing something wrong, because it seemed to be more complicated than it should've been. The Spätzle-Ass just fits over the top of a pot (like a lid) and you push the dough through the little holes on the lid so they fall into the boiling water and cook. That's really all there is to it. But the dough was sticking everywhere, and it was getting completely caked onto the lid which made it difficult to push anymore dough through, so eventually I just gave up and we ate only the stuff I had already made (leaving half the dough in the mixing bowl). It tasted OK, but it was really nothing special, so from now on I'll stick to buying the pre-made, ready-to-cook stuff at Coop. Anybody know any good tricks to aking Spätzle?