Winter trialing

      Winter practicing on the Nevada ranch, sharpens us up for gaining trial experience.  Weather is the wild card this time of year.  The winter trials also test your sense of adventure, or maybe sanity, with taking driving risks to far off places to try your hand.

     Quite a bit of my winter (no daylight before/after work) practice has been watching shedding/penning vids.  Then going out at lunch and working on timing and reading sheep over and over.

     Winter trialing has begun.  Over the Thanksgiving Day Weekend we took the opportunity to be rookie pilgrims and follow the yellowbrick road to Bonanza, OR and to Klamath Falls, CA area to partake in the SOJ Fun Turkey Trials.  

     Shane and Molly hosted a beautiful trial in the gorgeous still green Bonanza Valley, nestled at the foot of the Cascade Mountains(I think).  It was a great test of skills on a tricky field.  The field wasn't huge, but it held a blind outrun. Smallish rises, draws, trees, rock outcropping, and ditches added to the test of technical skills of the dog and handler.  The sheep were a nice combo of black faced (well behaved) Suffolks and Cheviots.   We enjoyed cool winter day with low clouds, misting rain, and jumping rainbows.  

     Dogs did well.  Feist had a solid run.  We still need to practice at hand work.  Tane' had the chance to run on the Open field as a Nursery dog.  He did well, minus being led astray by a draw, in which he missed a redirect and crossed.  The drives were long and he held his line like a champ.  Kiri-puppiness also came along and had a little mini go on Shane's puppy sheep in the indoor arena. 

     Sunday we journeyed to trial #2 SOJ at Geri Burns home.  Super cool that this group put on two trials at two entirely different venues, with completely different sheep.  It was exactly the experience that this group of rookies were craving to put time and distance on our tires.  

     The weather had taken a turn and especially in the morning we had snow flurries and low visibility. It was a blessing that both trials had a bon-fire to keep handlers warm.  Not quite as frigid as the sledding and shedding trials in ID, but seriously bone penetrating chilly none-the-less.

     Geri's field was a wide expansive bowl.  Raw and big - just like you would expect in the wild west. Not as big as Dry Lake, however, but a good test of distance skills.  The sheep were from a commercial fine wool flock - young replacement ewes.  Good sheep.  Different.  Bubble pressure - different.  Not similar, in my opinion, to the true western range ewes.

     Scores are so fickle.  Ha.   Feist and I ran 6th.  Our visibility was very low from the post.  She did a magnificent outrun.  And then it was difficult to see what was going on at the lift.  I could tell some form of ruckus.  I knew that there was a loose guard dog, Salt, up at top.  A friend told me later viewing through binoculars, that the guard dog got between the sheep and Feist several times.  The set out got between the sheep and Feist to run the guard dog off.  All the while I would now and then tweet a communicative whistle to let her know I was still there.  She was all about work, and finally lifted four sheep and a guard dog.  Good girl.  The guard ended up flanking our fetch to about the fetch panels where finally she drifted away up the bowl. I thought about retiring...but since no scores had made it to the board yet, we continued.  Sadly, we timed out just before our drive points counted.  I loved it.  It was a fun trial for experience, and boy howdy it was experience we got.  I will never doubt my little dynamo at the top. Clever and patient.

     Tane', nursery boy, handled the sheep well, and got his pen.  No cross-over this time.  Great miles on the little man.  I am sure, even though he has been on range ewes, that he hasn't met sheep of this nature.  Nor have I. 

     Would like to thank both Shane/Molly and Geri, along with all the helpers it takes to pull off two trials of quality, making it look effortless.

.....and nothing makes me happier than the view of sleepy dogs on

the ride home.

Dunnigan Hills SDT

      And the next weekend to Dunnigan Hills SDT.  Must say that I may well have over extended my abilities this time.  In between the two weekends, work was insatiable with seasonal insanity, home had  neighbor dogs murdering about 20 chickens in the night coop, and a mild case of walking pneumonia to boot.

     My desire to log time with the dogs won out over good sense.  This was a solid-good trial fairly close to home.  More importantly, it was a great chance to have the dogs on hills with a good predictable farm flock sheep.

     The young Tane' (Boy in native NZ) had a chance to figure out redirects the first day, fortifying our trust in each other.  It was dusky and hilly, great conditions to learn to trust me to help him find his sheep without crossing over.  Adolescent teenager who now thinks he KNOWS, teamed back up with his handler.  The next run was a good one!  No redirects or cross-overs.  Nice distance running out with intention coming in nicely while reading the set out draw.   Extremely biddable with nice presence.  I was over the moon.