Amanda: The Big One, Day 1

The poisons of 25 hours of the last day’s air travel were washed off on Wednesday night at a hotel, just across the US border in in Plentywood, Montana. That not washed off in the shower was cleansed away with a good night’s sleep.

The prairie south of Regina was water logged—rows of big hay bales had water half way up; no planting done, water water everywhere. Lake Wascana is always a joke among us eastern Millikens (whose father comes from Regina) but it was no joke this year. And there were replicas of Lake Wascana all over the normally arid grasslands. We thought we had it bad.


I woke up in the dark and carried on to Bowman, an easy five hours from my resting place. The trial had been trouble already. The outrun is the biggest of my dog running career. 8000 yards up a bute to get four newly shorn yearling range ewes. The wind was the type that got prairie women of yore committing suicide. Full in your face so you could list into it and it would hold you up. No scores outnumbered the scores. My two dogs were in the majority with no scores. I really do not think they could hear for the wind and that jerk, Clive, after a perfect outrun and lift and a great start to his fetch , asked where the hell I was and came down the field to me. Great. I sent him back and then he repeated on the second time he fetched. I walked.


Dale Montgomery and Lyle Boyer tied for first. Joni was in there and Jean Gellings.