I've been meaning to get to a trial at Dawn Boyce's for a couple years now and finally was able to make it to her January one. The weather turned out to be unseasonably warm with temperatures in the mid-70s and high humidity. Gabe was still recovering from his injury, so I only took Spain and Livy with me. The trial ran two fields at the same time, one for Novice, PN, and Nursery and then another for Open and Ranch. I was asked to work in the pens at the Novice field and was extremely happy that the work required a dog. Livy got 2 hours of non-stop work on Saturday and then 3 hours on Sunday, which was just the sort of thing that she needed. She started off too excited and I had to remind her what was expected of her, but she quickly caught on and figured out how to sort and load the chutes and crowd pen. She got into a good rhythm where I barely needed to speak to her. A thinking Livy is a very good Livy, and she is the kind of dog who gets better the longer and harder the work is. I was very happy that I had this opportunity with her!
Setout pens at Novice field
Liv is on a little hiatus from trialing at the moment. She is so keen to work that her first gather right out the truck is too fast and thoughtless. Her attitude is just not correct though her score would be fine. I'm working on fixing her attitude away from the trial field for now and will hold off on running her for a little. Having said that, I was curious to see what she would look like after working off that extra energy on Saturday morning, so I ended up running her last in the Ranch class. Dark was quickly approaching, but since I just wanted to do a gather I wasn't concerned about seeing the course. The Ranch/Open outrun was probably the most difficult she's done and I was extremely pleased with how she handled it...she walked the sheep to my feet with very little input from me. This was reassuring, but I'm still going to take it slow with her and let her mature at her own rate.
Spain ran early in Open and had a decent go. We got to run 3 hair lambs and my group consisted of 2 Barbs! They were really squirrelly and made it a fun experience for me. I need to practice more on super light sheep in order to improve my timing. Spain handled them well, it was my mistake that cost us the drive-away panel. There was a podium at the post and it actually didn't occur to me to climb back on top of it after the post-turn. Being up there definitely would've helped my depth-perception at that panel! Still, we got a respectable score and ended up 3 spots out of the placings.
Open field
Sleepy Livy
Sunday morning was spent in the pens again with Liv and then I hung around until it was my turn with Spain. I was super tired, had a headache, and not all that excited about waiting for my turn at #48. This time we we were running lambs and ewes, still light but not quite as feral as the day before! A 96 was leading, a 93 was put up shortly before my turn, and host Dawn ran a 98 the run before me. Not too inspiring. Spain had a hesitant lift but a great fetch, a little touch-and-go around the post, and then a beautiful drive. Finished with a good pen and shed, good enough for a 93 and tie for 3rd, but bumped to 4th on the gather. So between Livy and Spain, we really had a fun and productive weekend at the trial.
Spain had fun
