Last of the Summer Trials
Good grief it got hot for a few days! I'm so not a summer person. I love my summer vacations off, but there are some many things about summer that are icky. Rattle snakes, mosquitos, ticks, all the other annoying bugs, seeds in my socks, seeds in my dogs coats, being hot and sweating! Ew! Sweating. Ok, nuf whining!
One of the few good things about summer is swimming for the dogs. I went out to C Ben Ross Reservoir to the boat dock to swim the dogs. It was HOT, so I took off my shoes and waded with them. I found out that Rooster will jump off the dock, but Noodle has a different way of doing it. Such a funny little guy! Beep LOVES to swim and once he gets in, he doesn't come out until it's time to go.
Click to viewSaturday and Sunday were the last two days of the Go Dog Go summer series. It was a fun series and every time we made progress. I think back to last summer and where we're at now. Last summer we struggled to find the sheep and if we did it was usually a hot mess. One of these trials last year we nearly used up all of our 90 points! This year was a different story. Boy have we come a long way! We finally made all three panels! Yahoo! As I look back we incrementally were getting farther and farther through the course each run. First the outrun, then the lift and fetch, then we were consistently making the first panel and finally the third this weekend! The pen has been a crap shoot, but we're getting that too!
The first run he ran big and ended up at the set out pens where they keep all the sheep waiting to run. He called off and I was able to flank him over. He did that again on Sunday. As he left my feet, I stepped into him, which sent him wider. I saw him spot his sheep, but he stayed out and ended up at the set out again. He easily called off and picked up his sheep. I've been thinking about this and I think part of it is my fault for stepping into him. I don't even know why I did it. The other thing is last trial there, he went with me to help push sheep down the field for the set out person, so he had gotten to do some work there. The fact that he called off so easily on Sunday says to me that maybe he's figured out those aren't the sheep for working. Hopefully this isn't going to become a bigger problem. I've had situations where I've had to get him to choose the right stock. The good news is we seem to have skills where I can steer him over to find his sheep.
6th place. Just out of the money! 25 dogs in Pro Novice
4th place and $75 out of 27 dogs running.
We're at the point in our training that it's down to just fine tuning everything. I'm thinking I'm going to go ahead and move him up to Open this fall. Second cutting alfalfa is going down right now, so we'll be able to get back out into some big fields soon to stretch out our outrun. We are practicing our shedding skills as part of our practice every day. Our pen work at this trial was much better. I think there's two reasons for that. My mental management was so much better this time! I wasn't a fried mess by the end, which is probably why we also got that third panel. Since we were hauling sheep, putting them in the trailer was good practice for the both of us as far as pen work goes.
Off to go drive swather to make more $$ for dogs :)