Last But Not Least: Lexington SDT

Lexington was the third of the VA fall series, my first time at this trial, and it was very enjoyable.  David and Cheryl's Montadales were quite nice to work and the field certainly has it's extra challenges due to the various horse obstacles strewn about.  Tom Wilson judged, a unique treat for all of us.

When sending your dog, the left outrun allows you to see your dog the whole way out, but the dog loses sight of it's sheep, whereas the right outrun, you lose sight of your dog until almost the lift, but the dog can spot it's sheep well en route.  In that situation, it was so nice to be able to feel confident sending Rae right and knowing that she'd be fine.  There's not a whole lot to say about our run.  It was a little tricky keeping one lamb with the group, she seemed a bit of an independent thinker, but Rae listened really well and we got the group around with good lines and made all of our panels.  It took me a minute to get a good shed set up, but she came through well and we continued on for a clean pen.  Turns out our run was good enough for an 87, which put us in 5th behind three-89s and an 88.  We were awarded the 6th place ribbon and check, but according to the trial host, the results on Sheepdog-L, and the local newsletter, we took 5th.  There was a three-way tie with 87s, so I guess it was a bit unclear how the tie was broken.  Whatever the placement, it was a good run for us, and luck would have it...I have it on video!  I have always been leary of video-taping my runs for fear of jinxing myself, but this time I just bit the bullet and had someone tape for me.  At 10.5 years, Rae isn't getting any younger, and I *really* wanted to have video of us.  So here it is!  (Thanks to Nancy S. for filming)

Our second run was pretty good, too, though I didn't think it felt as nice in the moment.  Nearly identical in score except that we didn't get our pen: I let them circle once and then took my sweet old time getting them in.  We timed out as I was closing the pen door.  We wouldn't have placed after the pen mishap, anyhow, but I still should've been more aware.

Rae keeps the line on the return leg.

Working the split

 Pen

Gabe put in some good work on the exhaust field.  There was a dog taking sheep off the field and then relaying them to us to drive away to put in a holding pen.  He worked a couple hours there over the course of the weekend, some tricky work plus you couldn't whistle or otherwise make much noise.  A good experience, but maybe not so good for his trial runs.  He was way overly excited and couldn't listen, a definite disappointment.  Both his PN runs were retires since he wasn't quite remembering that I was a part of the equation.

Gabe's no dummy: when I told him to "look" he first turned around to spot the sheep in the other field that he'd been working all weekend.  Good thing we've been working on spotting sheep,

I was able to get him going for the *correct* ones.

(All photos courtesy of M. Dobbs)