Friday, May 9, 2008

Off a'trialing

(Photo by Denise Wall of Ben on the fetch at the Bluegrass 2003)

Final preps are underway to head to the Bluegrass trial on monday. The dogs are all either working terrible or lame, so it must be the biggest trial of the year for us! :-) I'll catch up the blog with a full trial report when we get home. Right now i plan to run Spottie and Zac in the Open, with Jet on standby in case Zac doesn't stop limping or Spottie seems to have trouble keeping up with the fresh sheep at the trial (she is 10 after all). Moss will be running ProNovice wednesday and thursday, and Nursery on friday and saturday. Hopefully he'll decide he can take a right hand flank by then - we've been having some technical difficulties on that this week (ah, the joys of young dogs!). Bart and Billy will be busy being cute and working the crowd socializing, and Gael will be on laying-around-the-camper duty.

It's the best trial of the year, even if my dogs don't end up totally on their game. Lots of good dog work and it's a real SHEEP trial, where the fresh sheep mostly sort out the dogs, at least on the first round, before they get more dog broke. I love watching this kind of trial, where you get to see so much more of what's really in the dogs and it's less about who handles best. I'll be glued to the sidelines for the first round, that's for sure!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hope everything goes well! I am promising myself to make SURE I can go next year!! I'd love to be there for sure. Travel safe, run well, and have a ball!

Debbie P said...

Have fun and good luck to you and your doggies. I'm hoping that I can go again next year. It's a lovely trial.