BevLive: Back from the Dead

Heather met me at the Borders on Paradise Trial and the first event on my spring trial junket and asked me so nicely to blog that I was flattered into writing yet another tale of my adventures.

I’m currently at my first event in Pennsylvania. This is a really nice small farm trial that draws a serious field of competitors including Tom Wilson and Scott Glen along with Lori Cunningham, Carla King, yesterday’s winner Viki Kidd and fifty other dangerous dogs. There aren’t a lot of sheep so we need to rerun them but they handle very well. The weather has been perfect, all good auguries for my trip.

Yesterday was the first open with a tie between Tom Wilson and Viki Kidd ending with Viki winning a run off.

I’m traveling with good old Hemp who is getting some age to him but still pushing on hard when he gets a chance. I have young Joe, my nursery dog, as my second open dog as Nel my usual second open dog is home with pups. I’m running Meg in ranch and hauling two yearlings to give them some extra attention and experience.

Borders on Paradise, Day Two

Second day of open running was more perfect weather. The biggest complaint of this nearly perefect event would be that this was the first hot day of the season, reaching 87 degrees. I think the sheep, with some notable exceptions were a little better than yesterday.

Sue Schoen and Esther had an early run that set a high bar at 86. It was a very clean run with some shed trouble. The shed proved to be the most difficult part of the trial all day, with many nice runs ending with no shed.

After lunch Joe and I had a good go to score 90 followed immediately by Tom Wilson and Sly also scoring 90. Late in the day Scott Glen and Don had a very good run that would have beat us but the sheep just wouldn’t cooperate in the shed. That left Tom Wilson in his second run off of the weekend for first. Happily for me Joe proved his good run wasn’t a fluke and made another good trip around to win his first trial.

Carla King’s young dog, Sage, ran well placing both days in her second open trial. My Hemp was a good boy but we just never really got things together and then capped our mediocre run by failing to shed.

Tom and Sly won the over all with Lori Cunningham and Matt reserve.

We finished running around 5:00 and after the prize giving a group of us went to a local hotel for dinner. It was apparently prom night somewhere so while we were a tad under dressed we soldiered on and had a great dinner.