The last day of the trial was the ProNovice, Ranch and Nursery. Sava and Taff were the only dogs that I was running. Sava was first up and the course had a blind drive again. I set her up to go wide but she flipped and ran up the middle and flared out at the last minute. Nice lift then an very offline fetch and even thought I tried to flank her, she was on the muscle. Out drive was not pretty but at least this time, she was listening, abet a bit slow and we timed out at the pen. She was on the muscle and slow to stop so that will be my homework. We almost had the pen and as the sheep were entering the last foot, the timer went off. She did have nice wide flanks but ran through her downs.
Taff, sigh……he had a nice outrun, lift and hard lift but didn’t loose that many point. However on the drive she blew through my down and was very slicey so I ran up the field at him and that was a retire.
So then I watched the rest of the PN runs. Janet ran Roo and had a rerun since the sheep bolted before he got to the top. She took the rerun right away and he had a nice outrun. She managed to give him an away and come bye whistled all at once and got to choose the flank he wanted. It was the wrong choice and he drove the sheep up the field. She pulled it together for a tidy pen and placed around 12 or 14th out of about 40 dogs. I bet Roo was so happy when she blew the two flanks whistles in one command and he got to chose. Janet handled him with finesse at the pen to recoup from the drive.
Scott was slow to cover and it didn’t help his sheep bolted down the field. The drive was a bit off and he sliced at the pen. For some reason, probably old age, Scott felt like he had to cut corners to cover the sheep. But he handled the sheep quite well and still has a lot of power for a dog that is almost 12.
Janet also took Rainey to run in PN. For some reason, Rainey was spooky and she refused to go very far up the field. She finally did cast out wide on her outrun and lifted the sheep, stopped to say hello to the setout crew and then had a nice fetch. Her first line was dead on and the she got upset. We couldn’t figure out why but Janet retired. Rainey is very biddable but very sensitive and something that day spooked her so running was not in the cards for her. (Janet has been working with her since then and it looks like it is fixed now)
Getty showed up so we grabbed the dogs and went back to the trailer. We quickly broke down camp and headed out so we could miss the holiday traffic. We did manage to hit a wee bit of traffic on I-5 but most of the drive was easy. We got home n plenty of time for Getty to unpack the trailer and then I let the dogs who did go as well as the ones who did go, for a extended playtime in the pond pasture. I did take Rainey out to see about her spookiness but she was quite good at home. Go figure.
It was a nice weekend being off the grid for a while and just hanging out with Getty and the dogs. Getty got lots of Disc Golf playing time in so he was happy. I managed to see what holes that I have in my dogs as well as what areas they shone in at the trial. I will be doing some serious homework before the next trial.
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