Blue Grass Day 1

It's been a rrreally long day so I'll try to give a quick report. Sheep set 450+ yards on horseback, running 3 5-month-old Sufolk/Rambouillet lambs from a flock out of Texas. Right hand drive, single, then pen. The lambs were essentially feral this morning for many of the runs, spooked by both dog and person. Set out had lots of trouble settling them. During most of the morning runs the sheep were wild and uncontrollable. Then some hideous storms rolled in, with the worst thunder and lightning I've seen in a long time. Rae was a nervous wreck! Finally the storms moved on and we got back to running dogs. At this time the sun came out and the temps skyrocketed, as did the humidity. The sheep became very heavy, but were pissy if you pushed on them too much. Rae's tongue was dragging before we even got onto the field.

For the last 2 weeks I planned to send left. She fought me the whole way out to the post to go right. I finally got her to give in to me and sent her. She had run out about 75yds when I saw her head turn in. Not like her wide-running self at all. I waited a second for her to fix herself, and when she didn't, I downed her and re-flanked her. Which she did, til she turned in again after about 50 yards. Downed, corrected her, re-flanked. Turned in again, corrected her, gave her a get out. Next time she turned in I gave in and just let her have her right hand outrun. Turned out beautifully, and even though I lost sight of her for a bit and she lost sight of her sheep for a bit, she came in just where she needed to be. The set out person didn't back her horse out of the way as is usually done, she just sat there with the horse right on top of the sheep. So Rae was juking and jiving around the horse trying to get control of her sheep who were glued to the horse. It took a lot of work but she finally got control of them and brought them down the field, listening pretty well to me. Missed the fetch panels but I was OK with that since we had decent control of the sheep at that time. Finally started to get into a groove after making the driveaway panel when she just ran out of juice. The sheep stalled right behind the panel and Rae couldn't get them going again. I whistled her up, called her up, shouted encouragements, flanked her on either side of the panel, flanked her to the top side of the field...and she just couldn't do it. So we retired. Rats. The exhaust dog had a tough time getting them off the field and had to bite.

A big highlight of the day was seeing Livy's dad lay down a smokin run. He had some sweet moves at the pen on some very challenging sheep. And Denise's young dog May ran her heart out for her and really did a nice job.

We don't run again til Saturday, so the next 2 days will be spent socializing and enjoying the runs :)