Weekend Report

Not much to report around here. I'm still waiting (very impatiently, my friends will attest) for Gael and Zac to get busy making puppies. It's got to be getting close to time.

The weekend was very busy and very full of dogs (my favorite kind of weekend!). Saturday started with a few lessons. Mary Ann came out with Zac's sister Nan, Lauren was out with Mac and Ghyllie, and Becky and Tim brought their dogs Zee and Cooper, along with a friend of theirs and her dog for a first time exposure to sheep. All of the "regulars" did very well, both human and canine. On Sunday, i went over to Julie's to do more lessons. Julie had Pip and Phoebe out, Darci had Bear and we tried Hank to see if he was ready to start (nope!), Beth came out with Wisp, Pam with Hope and Fly, Kelly with Jen, and we checked to see if Laura's Linc was ready for training yet (maybe). It was a really good weekend with a bunch of really nice dogs, which always makes the full days that much more fun. All of the dogs are making nice progress!

After wrapping up lessons on saturday, i got Billy out and fooled around with him for a good while. I wanted to put him in some different situations and just see what i have with him. I stuffed a small pen chock full of sheep and worked him in there and he was great. He likes hitting hocks and bites noses as well, and is tough and confident. Sheep were stepping and falling on him and he'd just shake it off and get back to work, all very calm and cool. Since he was handling that so well, i had him put the whole flock in the chute system and had him pushing them through there. Again, no problem and he was cool as could be, chomping on heels to push them through when they'd clog up the chute. I'm really liking the maturity and confidence he's showing. I'm still not pushing him along very fast with his training, just trying to wait him out a bit and let him grow into the work. So far, so good.

Now back to the waiting game on Gael and Zac...