BevLive: CHP Stock DogTrial, Day Two

Novice day. We ran two of what this trial calls Pro-Novice but is elsewhere called Open Ranch and one Nursery today.

The course was pretty near the same as the open.The outrun was shortened a bit so you could see the sheep at the lift. The cross drive was also about 30' shorter. It was very hard for the nursery dogs and moderately hard for the ranch. Much more failure then success.

At the end of the day more and more groups of sheep were going past the pen and off course. That may bode very ill for tomorrow's Open when the sheep run once again.

This outrun has not been nearly as long as the Table Top outruns that most dogs had little difficulty handling but it's has proven much more of a puzzle for many dogs. I think the abundance of obstacles on the field have been a major problem. There are about ten cross country jumps for horses and six huge hay bales at the top end (also horse jumps we have surmised) on the course as well as much local flora some of it fairly tall. Combined with nearly invisible sheep and a steep hill it's proven a real test for the dogs.

Nel ran well in both Ranch classes. She decided the sheep were too slow on the crossdrive on the first run and gave them a little heel nip. This increased their speed so dramatically we missed the panel. I handled her very poorly on the top end of her second run but she worked very well.

Meg never got up the hill. Confirming my opinion on the difficulty of the outrun and her lack of preparedness. She runs again tomorrow, but as she still has no idea where the sheep are I'm not expecting a different outcome.