BevLive: Canadian Finals, Day 1

So the bad news is it turns out the posts from Canada are costing me a small fortune from AT&T. So no more pictures until we get to the States. Amanda will try and put some up on Picassa if she can find a WiFi site

The good news is we are all safely arrived. I pulled into the trial site around 4:00 last night to find Amanda, Kate, and company already here.

The trial site, indeed this whole place, is beautiful. We can see the Canadian Rockies beyond many rolling foothills of pasture and forest, all green and gorgeous. The actual field is reached after a torturous trip with the camper down a steep entrance road (I sure hope I can get out of here) and through two hay fields. The field is huge. We are using only a very small part of it. The nursery outrun was about 300 yards of flat, with the sheep spotted at the bottom of a steep hill at the top of which the holding pens are located.

The sheep are a mixed flock of Suffolk, Dorset, Columbia  types. They were a bit heavy and hated the pen. The course was fairly straightforward except for the second drive gate, which was in a low spot behind a long swell just to the handlers side of the crossdrive line. It was very tricky.

Kate and Salt, Amanda and her two, and Esther and I all had good first round scores, with Esther leading thanks to a lucky pen. Alas, we weren't quite so fortunate on our second run, missing both the second drive gate and the pen to come second to Scott Glen and Don. Kate and Salt were third and Amanda and Roz were fifth.

Would have been nice to win, but still not too bad for a little girl who ran in her first dog trial at the end of June. I was very proud of the way she stood up to some very mean sheep and got them where I needed them, most of the time.

We started the open at 5:00 with the intent of running 20 dogs. The course was the same, except the outrun was moved about 50 yards up the hill. We ran four sheep in the open instead of the five we ran in nursery, with a split to follow the pen.

I love feeling I have a special relationship with my dogs. I'm especially fond of Mirk and consider him my special buddy. Except when there is a bitch in season around. Then he makes it very clear we are two different species with very different aspirations. That was the case today as we were waiting to run. Happily, when we went on the field we again found ourselves on the same page. A commonality of purpose that lasted only until Mirk was back through the gate.

Mirk managed to pull himself together enough to have a pretty good go.  He made a too-big outrun, no surprise there, but he didn't stop and come in when told to.  This was a disappointment, as we had practiced this at Stormy's and I thought I had this particular problem licked. Oh well. The rest of his run was great except for my calling on a no-hope shed and then his being hesitant on the next one. We got a 77 which was a good score when I got it. But Amanda and I went out to dinner, so I don't know how it's standing up.

The plan is to run all the remaining  first go-round of the open and start the second go-round tomorrow. We will finish the second goes on Saturday. The top fifteen combined scores go through to the double lift final on Sunday to determine the Canadian National Champion. Amanda and Kate and Viki all run tomorrow along with Hemp and me.

So a good day for the Easterners. All  of our nursery dogs ran very credibly, and little Esther came in second. What a good girl. Now for the open.