Nan, Lucy and Roo at Whidbey Island Trial

Here is the Open course we had to run last weekend. To the far left is the setout. To the left of the setout is the setout pens so the draw was very heavy there. The dog had to be stopped at 10:00 then walked straight into the sheep to then make the first dog leg, which is to the far right. You can see the red cone. You had to do a come bye turn at the first dog leg red cone. Then swing wide to make the fetch panels. At the first dog leg, the sheep wanted to run over the hill or slip past the dog to go back to the setout pen. At the fetch panel, they wanted to run back to the setout. It was not easy at all.

click on the pixs for a larger view

See Nan has taken the sheep around the first dog leg. She also made the fetch panels.

You had to do your post turn at the tiny red flag in front of you. Nan did it quite well. Actually all of my dogs did the post turn quite well.

Nice line to the first panel.

She made her panels, although she was hard to stop and on the muscle. She placed 4th. She tied with Roo but based on outwork, she placed 4th and Roo got 6th. There was a three way tie for 4th,  5th and 6th.

Setting up for the shed. We timed out.

Lucy waiting for her run.

Lucy did her outrun quite nice. At her lift, the sheep faced her off and we had to work to get her to walk into the heads of the sheep. This took a bit of time, but she did it. She got the Z leg fetch. He drive was slow but pretty much online. At the pen as we were closing the gate, we ran out of time. So needless to day, we lost 20 points for no pen or shed. Aside from that, she had a very nice run. She placed 11th but had she got her pen, she would have placed quite well.

Roo was actually the first dog that I ran.  He stopped where I told him and had the best fetch of the four dogs that I ran. He downed where I asked him and was very cool. He handled the sheep quite well. He had a nice drive, a bit high at the first turn. At the pen, we had it but one ewe lambs was flighty and busted out. We got her in for a pen.

We had the sheep all line up for a shed then time was called. I was very happy how Roo ran that weekend.  Roo and I have been running very well.

I ran four Open dogs and placed 4th (Nan), 6th (Roo) , 8th (Scott)  and 11th (Lucy). I was wore  out then had to run an Ranch dog, Faye, and placed 1st in that class. Lucky for me, Janet helped me quite a bit by driving the truck, to handing me dogs at the gate so I could run them, take these photos so you could see them and making sure that I was ok. Much thanks to her for all of her help.