My Fair Lady

The Echo Monster.

AKA ... Donut-Ass.

She's in full blown heat.  Standing heat.  Porn doggy heat.  And we were entered in the Western Idaho Fair stockdog trial.

Gorgeous gorgeous day.  Tomorrow is supposed to be the same.

Runs were going along like clockwork.  In fact, we got to run twice due to low entries. 

Pro-novice course.  Outrun, lift, fetch, round the post, drive, crossdrive and pen.  Not huge.  Cooperative sheep.  No problem, right?

Ha.

Outrun. 

C'mon Echo.  Outrun.

Echo...

Quit sniffing the ground.  You won't find them at the exhaust.  Yes, there's hot guys here, but that's not what we're here for.  Go get the sheep.  THAT way.  Go.  Now.  Hurry.  Everyone is waiting.  Echo ... please don't make me go all the way down there.  Go on.  Away to me.  Quit it ... that's not a rest area.  Away to me.  See those sheep right there?  Bring them here, ok?  C'mon.

Nevermind.  I'll go get them myself.

***************

Second run.

I told her ... "I hope you're all sniffed out ... and pee'd out ... and poop'd out ... and got your head screwed on straight ... because if you don't, I'll run Zip tomorrow instead."

That seem to have worked ... sort of.  After a long pause at the top of the outrun, she finally got around them and fetched them.  Because the top of her outrun was very flat, it caused the sheep to go sideways way off line, and then once she finally lifted them, her fetch was straight as an arrow ... but about 30 yards to the left of where we needed to be.  I left it alone.  Was just glad I didn't have to hop my fat ass down to the setout again.  We drove to the first panel, and missed it by "that" much, crossdrive was effective, but nothing to write home about, hit our second set of panels, and then moving to the pen.  I had my back to the pen as I was walking over there so I could make sure she was holding the draw, and all of a sudden, I was at the pen.  The pen was just an open pen with a wing on one side.  Everyone stood at the wing and put the sheep in that way.  When I got to the pen (unknowingly), I was already standing on the opposite side, which turned out perfectly, and the sheep went right in.  I took it.  Couch told me he hit me for a couple of points for not standing on the right side of the pen.  I called bullshit on him, and said if we weren't allowed to stand on "that" side, he should have told us.  I'm left-handed, you know!

Not like those couple of points made or broke THAT run.  Ha.

The good thing is ... we didn't send sheep into the fair.  We didn't chase any.   We didn't eat any.

That ... made it worth it.

More tomorrow.

J