Trial stuff

I posted the results and photos on the Stockdog Blog.

Fun trial! The hospitality was great, the weather was good and everyone really seemed to enjoy themselves. The sheep were a bit tough, and it made for a really good challenge for the dogs, and gave both handler and dog some great experience.

First run, Echo had a nice outrun, took her down at the top (I think ... or at least slowed up enough for a proper lift), and then came the broken come bye flank. The sheep were drifting to my right, and I couldn't get Echo to take her come bye flank. But ... I kept trying to whistle it, corrected her, whistled it, corrected her, and while she finally took it when she got a lot closer to me, it still caused our entire fetch to be offline. Nice tight clockwise turn around the post, the driveaway was a little squirrely at first, straightened it out and then needed a big, wide come bye inside flank to turn the sheep to the right into the crossdrive. She took it! Nice and wide. I blew a down and she took that too! Woo hoo! So now we can just go merrily on our way into a crossdrive where she generally holds a line pretty good on her own. WRONG! She stressed out, and went and peed off near the fence, and lost her sheep. UGH! What did I do wrong? I'm sure 14,000 things. I was apparently not releasing the pressure ... probably with my body first and foremost, but I am also sure my whistles probably sound like constant yelling at her. So after she got done peeing, I sent her up to try to gather the sheep so we could exhaust them. I didn't want her quitting on her terms. The draw proved too strong as we were very near setout at that point, so I called her off. It's ok. I was very happy with it. We made tons of progress. Nothing went slicey dicey. She took the down at the top. The fetch, while offline, was not scary. She was working well off the whistles for the most part. And I kept the whistle in my mouth almost the whole time.

Second run, she had a very nice (very wide) outrun, although I think I overcompensated and pulled her up short so that we didn't have the come bye problem again. This time the sheep drifted off to my left. While we missed the center panel (again!), we got the fetch back online. Decent turn around the post, drive away was a little squirrely again, and I don't remember if we made the panel, as I was concerned about her taking my come bye whistle again on the draw. It was a little late and the sheep started to escape, and we went way off line, but she brought them back (right through the center panel! LOL), and we went to and got the pen. Overall probably pretty ugly to watch, but again, I whistled her most of the way through it, and I was very happy with the result.

Can't wait to do it again!

Maybe next time, I'll bring my camera to the post with me. Ha ha ha ha

Jodi