Shaker Village Wrap up

Yesterday was another dreary weather day at the dog trial but the running continued to be very good for the most part. Kudos to the trial organizers and sheep provider - it really was another nice trial this year, with a great field and good, workable sheep.

I ran Zac about 15th and decided he was getting up the field in a proper fashion rather than that straight up the middle business. He left my feet well but locked in and i saw him leaning the wrong way so stopped him and gave him a good voice correction. About halfway up the field he seemed to be doing it again so i repeated the stop and correction. I wasn't trusting him to kick out on his own this time since he never had on saturday, and we have lots more trials coming up. He got around well, lifted well, had a drop dead gorgeous fetch, very nice clean drive. We blew one attempt at the shed. I wasn't quite in tune with Zac after him being sort of a jerk the day before and managed to not get out of his way when i called him in on the shed. We had a second attempt but i didn't trust him to not grip on the dicy hold i was asking for and it fell apart again. He ended up with a 69 and i ended up with some homework to get done on Zac before we hit the road again this week.

Jet ran 37th and had another sweet run. She pulled up quite short again and this time it really wasn't necessary so the sheep lifted a bit crooked. But the fetch and drive were very good, and shed and pen clean, i thought. I had a hard time understanding where Jet and I lost points on the shed and pen this weekend and never did put my finger on it. It's unfortunate as i thought we were pretty clean both days on our inbye work and yet the points off kept us out of the double lift yesterday afternoon. Jet finished with an 87, good for 8th place for the day. We were one spot out of the double lift, by 2 points.

It was a really good weekend overall. I thought Jet ran spectacularly well and it was a very good growing experience for Billy. Zac had a few rough spots but for the most part ran quite well too. Now we have a couple of days to recover from the long drive home last night and to plan and pack before leaving again thursday.