Always catching up

Once again, I'm behind. Let me see if I can get caught up here.



First off, let me start by saying how incredible my friends are. Last weekend was my birthday, and everyone got together and threw me a bash I won't soon forget! Tons of yummy food, lots of Corona, mix in some Crown, work some dogs, hang out by the fire, and laugh till your sides hurt. Besides that, they gave me a bunch of very cool gifts and really made my day very special! I cannot thank you guys enough! You're the best!



I've been working Echo pretty intermittently, trying different things so I can understand why she's coming up short on the comebye side. Fixing it is really testing my timing, forcing me not to use my body pressure, and consuming my thoughts. In fact, I think I might be over-thinking it, I think. Whodathunkit?



Anyway, several of us went out to Dianne's today. She is just incredible. Listening to her and watching her work with the other students is really teaching me a lot of very subtle (and some not-so-subtle) things. What an experience!



Susan came out today to help set sheep for us. Thank you, Susan! You're awesome!



I took some photos, so let's see if I can make some sense of this. Rhonda (Belle's owner - 1/2 sister to Echo) and I traded outruns, so there are no photos of Echo or Belle working, but I did get a few still shots of "the sisters."



Here's Echo:















And Belle:















And our wonderful host and trainer, Dianne, with Rose:







And a couple of shots of Rose:











Here's is a shot of Susan and adorable little Vangie!







And a couple of Vangie doing a wonderful job helping us out.











Here's Colleen discussing strategy with Reena:







And she's off ...!















Jaenne and Mo are making great progress!



















And finally, here's Rob. Rob is staying with Ellie, who is doing a great job handling him! Ok ... we'll start with the photo Rob probably doesn't want you to see.







Ok, now that that's out of the way ... let's get to the more serious stuff, shall we?



























Not bad, eh?







And last but certainly not least ... Katy and Scout. I took a couple of short videos of Scout, and I left the audio in instead of putting music over it. Too lazy, I guess. But I thought the conversation in this first clip was ironic considering what happened.







And here is another clip of Scout having a much better go of it, all the while I'm chattering away, but promised I would update my blog! So here I sit at 11:22 p.m. on the eve of an icky Monday morning fulfilling my promise!







So as soon as I have a fresh head, I will see if I can put into words the progress I am making at understanding the issue of Echo coming up short on the comebye side, and the process we're using to fix it.



Thank you for everything, Dianne and Susan! A great day was had by all!

(And shhhhhh! Let's not mention that I do not have ONE photo of any of those adorable little puppies we were playing with. And we all made it out alive!)



Happy tails,

JD