BevLive: Dutch Open, Day 1

Editor’s Note: Bev will be also posting on Facebook, but we’re duplicating the posts here for those who want to read them this way.

First day of competition at the Dutch Open. The sheep are mixed bag of some kind of red and white breeds. They are smallish and light boned and moderately active. There aren’t a lot of them. They needed to rerun them at least three times and maybe four, we aren’t finished yet. They improved with the rerunning in spite of the increasing heat. It was about 90 by mid-afternoon and fairly windy. The humidity is pretty extreme even for a Connecticut girl.

The two fields are separated by a canal and their respective seating areas. Field one is a less then 200 yard outrun. Field two is quite a bit bigger I think in excess of 300 yards.

The sheep dictated some of the low scores as the occasional group could be quite difficult especially at the pen. Mostly the same problems we see everywhere, missed gates and poor outrunning.

Derek had a good morning run marred by a bad pen that cost him the shed. Scott and Joe Haynes both had trouble on field 1. Joe redeemed himself on field 2 with Pepper, scoring 86, currently 5th with only 60 dogs to go. Scott had a good go with Alice on field 1 getting 82. Derek had a good field 1 run as well gaining

My Joe ran well but didn’t please the judge so much, scoring a respectable 78. Nan was more to the judge’s taste earning 87 both on field 2.

Every dog runs twice on each field. The dog’s three best scores are combined and the top ten compete in a double lift final Sunday. There are plenty of scores in the nineties especially on field 1 the smaller field. I’ve run both dogs on field 2 and ran Joe last on field 1 where he was an idiot. Scott and Now Haynes had good runs on field 2 to finish out the running.

None of us brought chairs, obviously, and find ourselves standing more than we want. A shopping trip is certainly in our futures. As hot and muggy as today has been the forecast is for a week of rain. Nice for the dogs buts going to be wearing for the handlers and horrible for the rental car.

Day is done we are back at our really good restaurant to rework our performances.