BevLive: Bluegrass Classic, Day 3

Another sunny, dry day in Kentucky. I almost slept through my morning nursery run it was so nice and cool. Helped by the fact that the generator parked next to me left yesterday. Joe ran strong in the nursery which scared me a little as the nursery field is very small and I had him to run in the big open field in the afternoon.

I was right to be worried. He ran like a train with no brakes on the fetch. Too bad as the rest of his run wasn’t too bad. I took a cheap shed as they were very hard to shed and it was almost ninety degrees. After yesterday’s unfortunate shed I wanted him to succeed which he did. Still the hard pushing was a little worrying.

The nursery was won by Lyle Lad and Lucky. Joe hung on for third. The running there was all pretty good. The lambs are leaning on the dogs some but mostly have given up on fighting.

The open still has a day to go and was tough sledding all day. Don Whittington got the day started with a very good run and was still hanging on to the lead when I left for dinner. The sheep are testing the dogs on the top and the first leg of the drive going past the exhaust. The look pretty doable to me watching but seem to be pressing all the buttons on a lot of dogs. They have become even more difficult to shed and many low scores reflect fairly good runs with no pen or shed. At the shed the are very hard to split and once split not shy about going over the dog to rejoin.