EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm a little behind in my blog postings—Amanda and Bev are pelting them at me fast and furious.  I'll try hard to do better as they post from the Finals.  Apologies all around!

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I hope these pictures can convey the beauty at the Connie and John Fontaine's trial.  The irrigated ranch scapes of southern Oregon, with the whopping Ponderosa Pines, lining all the productive watered ground.  Big cattle country.

Connie Fontaine

On Friday night, there was a cake contest between Emil Luedecke and someone else.  At first I thought Emil had baked the cake, which would have required me to discuss marriage with him.  But he only provided the recipe, so no marital status changes were needed.

We ran Pro-novice and Nursery today at Fontaine's.  The sheep were tremendously difficult, no easier than they had been the previous two days.  Part of their difficulty could be attributed to disparity within the flock: they were all Cheviot/Romney crosses, but some clearly favoured one breed or another and they just behaved differently.  We were running on five, which gave them five different directions to go with varying resolve.

Esther ran well the first go around but made one radical error of flank direction at the second drive, which made the rest of her run not so good.

Monty penning

Monty ran well in both and stayed with his difficult sheep at the pen, nearly penning, and time ran out.

The second go was better for both of them.  Monty particularly since he won, but Esther too, because she was second.

We moved on down to Klamuth.  Sandra and I are onto Howard's in the morning.  We are all strangely fatigued.