BevLive: Tabletop SDT, Day 2

Tough day. Rained last night and this morning with some nasty thunder storms. Then it began to hail and thunder and lightening at which point the trial was stopped for a while to save the great set out crew from electrocution. In the afternoon the hail finally melted but the wind came up and blew down the fetch line at about 25-30 mph. I spent most of the day huddled in my camper with heat on. It has now cleared a bit. Still very cold with a nasty wind. Tomorrow is predicted 60 mph winds and sun.

The road into here is a morass. The last one out got stuck and no one has tried to leave since about 3:00. I expect a day of 60 mph winds and sunshine will dry the road out. The people staying at the local B&B are walking up the hill and leaving their cars here.

In spite of the difficult weather there were some great runs. Robin French and Bill laid down the gauntlet about 20 runs in with a 86. Not long after Dan Keaton scored 89 with York. The 89 stood until one of the last few runs when Nel (Awel) and I got a 90. She really handled the sheep well today which was nice after her struggle with them yesterday. I guess she just needed a day to think about it. There were multiple runs in the 80s.

These sheep are still difficult milling about and needed some push to get around but they are already a lot wiser then they were yesterday after only one run. They are especially fun at the lift. They are being spotted on horseback by two riders and no dog. So they spread quite a bit while they wait for the next dog, perhaps as much as 20-30′. It means as the dog comes over the brow of the hill he needs to see all the sheep and really tuck them in. The strong head wind meant that most of the dogs had to do on their own as there was very little possible communication.



Tomorrow we will run the young dogs. There was to be a nursery tonight but we were all shot after the pounding we have had from the weather today. No one objected when Lise sent the poor set out crew home and canceled the nursery.