Canyon County Fair

Mark and I went to the Canyon County Fair after work on Friday. The ISDA was putting on a stockdog trial / demonstration. It was a non-sanctioned trial with open, pro-novice and novice. It was held in the horse arena. The course consisted of outrun, lift, fetch, around the post, drive to the first panel, crossdrive and drive through the second panel the same way as the first (creating a figure-8), back to the handler's post, into the small door of the trailer and out the back, and repen. (I'm sure for open there was a shed involved, and for novice, it was fetch entire course, only one drive leg and put the sheep in the large part of the trailer).

We got there a bit late, so open was almost finished. (There were only a few dogs in each class.) Zip ran pro-novice and did very nicely. His outrun sucked, I re-directed him, but it didn't matter. It's a time and points trial ... my first one ever ... and I even forgot it was time and points and didn't care. After his outrun, the entire run was pretty uneventful. He drove very nicely, held his lines, got all the sheep through all of the obstacles, apart of one that squirted around me at the trailer and quickly pointed out that I wasn't doing my job! Sorry Zipster.

Also ran Echo. That was nothing short of a trainwreck, which I expected. The outrun was way too far, and despite that I walked out halfway between her and the sheep, she came in way too tight, split them to holy hell, and the chase was on! I tried a couple of times to get it back under control, but decided it wasn't worth it and called the run, told her what a good girl she was and how proud I am to work with her.

All in all, I was very happy with the turnout. To top it off, Zip won the "pro novice" class. Woo hoo! All the handlers were given a big bag of good dog food as well.

Mark and I walked around the rest of the fair, ate some Chinese food, checked out all the show sheep and goats, etc. and eventually headed home. A very nice evening. We're going back to the fair tonight to see Sawyer Brown. Should be fun!

Happy tails,
JD