BevLive: Tabletop SDT, Day Two
My hero today was Alison Holmes. While she was running her first dog on the first leg of the drive my puppy got loose and in a slow motion disaster gaining speed all the time and with great ease beat me to Alison's sheep on the first leg of the drive and gathered them all up for me. On her rerun she easily scored an 81 in her second open trial with Rye.
Later in the day on her second dog, Chip, while fetching a loose horse came galloping onto the field. With complete aplumb Alison carried on and earned an 87 and fifth place with the horse being chased about the field by a rider all through the rest of her run.
The running was good all day with high scores placed at all times. The course was shifted to change both the outrun and the drive. This caused quite a bit of confusion to a lot of dogs on their outruns but none more so then my Mirk. He ran past his sheep and when I tried to redirect him misunderstood me in the wind and turned back ending up in another field altogether. I was not amused.
Fly ran very well scoring an 89 to tie for first with Jim Swift and Linda Tesdahl. Jim won, Linda was second, and we were third with the tie again broken on outwork.
It was another pretty day although it started out overcast this morning and is now blowing pretty hard. The wind was to our backs all day and while I think it had a definite impact on how some of the dogs occassionally heard it didn't seem to be a big determining factor. There were two really nice runs by Don Whittington and Don Helsley either of which would have been a clear winner with a reasonable pen but both failed to finish. Alasdair and Star came 4th with an 88.
BevLive: Tabletop SDT, Day One
Great dog trial. Five fresh range yearlings for each handler on a very interesting, pretty 12 minute course. Got off to a rough start as there was trouble getting the first few groups spotted. But the setout crew worked through it and did a great Job the rest of the day with each packet well spotted and waiting for the handler.
I ran early with Mirk and was very pleased with him. He pushed his often contrary sheep around with good authority. His outrun was dead on and not too wide as I had feared. We had a minute at the pen and just failed to get it. Herbert ran his new Irish dog. He ran very well also running short of time at the pen. The two of us led it until lunch time when Alasdair and Star had a very good run scoring 90.5, followed by Ron Burkey and his young Star/Don son who also scored 90.5. I'm not sure which of them won but these remained the high scores. The tie was broken on outwork and I never saw the final scores.
A short time later Charlie Torre got 80.5 for third and then Shauna Gourley got 79.5 which I think was fourth.
Fly ran in the late afternoon. She had a stupid outrun requiring a stop and redirect. We missed the first drive gate, which for some reason got much harder to get in the afternoon. I was pleased with everything but the outrun. Fly showed good authority on her sheep and finished strong. Hope the outrun is better tomorrow when the outruns get bigger for the next go around. I think Fly finished 5th or 6th, somewhere in there which wasn't bad for her first time on range sheep.
Was a really fun dog trial. Great sheep as I said and a very challenging and interesting course. The wind got up in the afternoon but it didn't seem to bother the hearing. Did tire out the handlers though.
BevLive: Let it snow!
All our good plans for today were ruined by, of all things, a snow storm. I got up this morning the wind was tearing through Colorado and it was snowing. So no final practice session for Meg. I packed up the camper in the snow and rain and wind, poor me, and headed down hill to Colorado Springs. A very windy drive through Monarch Pass. Happily on the other side of the pass the sun was out, so while it was very windy the twisty mountain roads were not icy
I pulled into the trial field around 1:00. Nice bright sun but tremendous wind. It's rocking my camper and whistling and rattling.Very unpleasant.
Trial field in Colorado Springs
Meg managed to get in one more outrun. The disadvantage of now having her looking 300 yards for sheep is that she took off after the whole trial flock with them 300 yards away. I was 20 feet away from her screaming and she never heard a word. Did a lovely quite gather.Grateful for small mercies. I was able to get Joe tied up and drive after her in the truck while she quietly fetched 200 sheep up to the campers. Not much chance anyone missed her performance. At least she didn't chase them. When will I ever learn?
Pike's Peak from the trial field.
No Phone coverage here so I will send in my blogs to Heather when I get onto town. Sure hope the wind quits by tomorrow. It's really bad.
BevLive: outruns
Editor's Note: Apologies for getting a couple of days behind in the posts. I plead general business and too much playing with my new Ipad!
Great day for Meg. We worked her four times today in an effort to prevent my having to buy a sheep at one of these trials that I ambitiously entered in the winter. She has finally begun to put the pieces together and looks great. However, I think there is very little chance she will manage the new locations, strange sheep and excitement of a trial without doing something for which we will both be sorry.
Practice sheep getting a break from the action.
Tomorrow we are planning to head up to the highest point on the ranch and see if we can stretch out all the open dogs a bit more before we start trialing.
Tonight Paul grilled pork ribs and we had a great dinner. Going to be hard to leave this good life and get back to trialing. Still hard to beat a good dog trial. Tomorrow back on the road.
BevLive: water, water
Anyone who is reading this and lives in the west can skip tonight's blog. I find how people make a living from the land very interesting.The whole irrigation thing is very foreign to me as I come from a place that gets 30-40 inches of precipitation a year. Terri spent some time today and explained their gravity irrigation to me. I found it really interesting so I'm going to share it with all you lucky folks.
Foreground irrigation gate and ditch. In the lower field you can see several irrigation ditches and along the top of the next ruse.
In the 14,000 foot mountains near here the snow melt runoff is caught in a reservoir. This water then flows down to this lower elevation in a series of ditches and pipes. When it gets to Paul and Terri it's diverted into ditches that are spread all over their ranch. The big ditches are about two feet deep and a foot wide. These big ditches seem to sometimes feed into smaller ones that can be as little as a few inches deep. The water flows into the ditch where it is backed up by closing off the ditch using one of Paul's clever gates (see photo) or otherwise blocking the ditch. The ditch then overflows and the water flows down the slope irrigating the land until it hits another ditch. When enough water has over flowed to water the ground enough the obstruction in the ditch is removed the water flows into another section of ditch and the whole blocking and overflowing is repeated.Very ingenious and labor intensive. Rain is a good thing. When I am next sitting at a dog trial in the rain I promise to remember that it's a good thing.
This is the old railroad bed for the narrow gauge rail that ran through Black Canyon along side you can see an irrigation ditch and gate.
The ditches were a little scary the first two days with dogs tripping over them on their outruns. They have learned to pay attention and now seem to jump over them with ease.
We worked dogs this morning in the lower field and then when Paul and his helper, Tom, had finished using the 4 wheelers on the morning irrigation rounds we took the dogs on the bikes up the old railroad grade to a nice long field and did a few big outruns. In Mirk's case too big, as he managed to overrun the sheep Terri was holding for him and bring the whole flock from where we had them hidden behind the hill. It was really windy by then and I had a very hard time calling him back.
View above Ouray
By the time we had half a dozen outruns done the wind had become pretty unpleasant so we quit and went to Ouray up in the mountains for lunch. After we ate Terri drove me up toward Telluride and we saw some great Colorado scenery. I'm afraid my little iPhone camera can't do it any sort of justice, sorry.
Ouray from the road above. All the photos are a bit hazy. The wind today has been blowing Utah's soil into Colorado and it's so thick sometimes it looks like fog.
Just another day of retirement. Can't recommend it highly enough to you folks who haven't tried it yet.
BevLive: The Perfect Life
Perfect Colorado spring day. Started off in the 40s and by late afternoon we were in the 80s. Clear, bright blue sky all day with big fluffy clouds. A really pretty and very pleasant day. I'm really liking Colorado.
What's not to like. Terri seems to spend her whole day making sure I have the perfect sheep and just the right field to work my dogs.
This afternoon Terri and I went to town for a late lunch and then she took me on a tour of Black Canyon. The canyon is over 2,000 feet deep and very narrow. Quite a sight.
Black Canyon
BevLive: sunshine and long outruns
Absolutely lovely day. Bright and sunny and not too much wind. We went up in Terri's highest pasture and did longer outruns. We only got one per dog before we wore out the sheep but we both had enough success to feel satisfied with our dogs.
Nell and Fly wait for their turns
Mirk bringing up the sheep. Terri's house is in the background.
Spent some time on Meg and actually got her to do some good outruns before we finished. Too little too late I fear for these upcoming trials but at least some progress.
BevLive: make and mend day
A bit of a "make and mend" day. Morning started out with rain and wind so goofed off. Cleaned the camper and took a long walk along an abandoned old railroad grade.
Terri's ranch
In the afternoon we did outruns with the open dogs, Terri and I gathering back and forth. Mirk ran way too wide for my tastes and didn't lift the way I wanted. Fly is still too tight on her outruns.This had been a problem since I got her in December, I think it's better, but still not right. She is trying much harder for me then she did a month ago, a sure step in the right direction.
Nel was great. Perfect. Wonderful. Do Igo on too much? All of her tentativeness from the previous day was gone. She got right in behind the sheep and shoved them straight down the field to me. She made up for everyone else's shortcomings.I'm a happy camper.
Terri with Nel and her Ross
Later I got to work Meg in a smaller field. She was pretty bad. Not a bad dog just inadequately trained. I have no one to blame but me. I doubt I can get her trained in a week. But I'm going to at least see if I can get her to do a good outrun before I leave.
BevLive: Back in the saddle!
I'm on my annual spring fling and was actually asked by several people at the Blue Grass if I was going to do a blog this year. I hadn't planned to, thinking folks were maybe tired of my travelogs. But as has been pointed out to me it will be different.
Road to Terri's
So I'm starting this sort of mid-trip. I have just spent two and a half days driving from the Blue Grass in Kentucky to Terri Warner's ranch in western Colorado. It was an endless trip not helped by having a blown trailer tire between Fetterman's trial and the Blue Grass and then another one yesterday in Kansas. I finally just replaced my last not-new trailer tire and hope I can get home without further incident. I keep looking in the rear window to try and see if my tires are still there.
Terri seems to live between two mountain ranges in a great river valley at 7500 feet of elevation. It's a great ranch, was a sheep ranch before she and Paul bought it and it's really pretty with all of the great wooden builings and corrals they have restored. She has a flock of 70 practice sheep. So I think the drive may well have been more then worth it.
This year's trip is especially important to me as I am running the two new girls I bought in Scotland in an attempt to determine which two dogs should be on my open dogs for the next bunch of years.
I want to run all three, Nel and Fly (my two new dogs), and Mirk and see if I can figure which will be the most successful at the important fall, western trials of Meeker and Soldier Hollow.
Nel (aka Awel)
Terri's is a good start for us as she has lovely range sheep for us, lightly dogged and quite fresh. I worked all three briefly when we arrived and they all looked okay. Mirk looked great but these sheep are familiar to him. Nel, at two the youngest and least experienced of the trio, showed a bit of eye and didn't walk up as strongly as I would have liked but clearly gained in confidence, so I'm hopeful. Fly looked pretty good but was less obedient then her norm so they were bothering her. Early days yet but I have a week here which is great for them.
Meg
I'm also working a half-trained nursery dog, Meg, hoping to have her ready to run next week, and Joe. Those who read last fall's blog will remember that Joe is the puppy I got from Dennis Gellings off his great bitch, Jan. Joe has done a lot of growing and I have just started training him. So far I like what I see but very early to really know anything.
Fly in the foreground, Joe behind her.
So those are the players in the blog. The plot is if I have anybody with me who is going to make a great open dog. I can hardly wait to see how it turns out.
In the category of “cool” and “cute”
Michele Brothers has set up a wonderful CollieCam to monitor her recent litter over the Internet. The web cam didn't load for me in Firefox, but it worked fine in Internet Explorer (I haven't been able to test it in Safari yet). Check it out–these are cute pups, and mother Snap is very attentive!