BevLive: EID Classic, Day One

I had such a great day today. Beyond the usual fun of running dogs with friends I get to see too seldom was the delight of my nursery dog, Meg, having an "Ah Ha" epiphany. Meg has been a struggle for me. She is super keen and in her enthusiasm frequently forgets to listen or can't obey. I was hoping this trip would give her the experience and seasoning she so dreadfully needs. At 18 months she is still really young but I feel she can do much more than chase sheep. Today it all came together for her. She was great. Took every whistle perfectly and except for having no idea what sheep and a pen should have in common was a total delight. I feel like I just got a new dog.If you can't tell I'm really excited.

We started the day with open and ran about 45 open dogs. Five fresh sheep for each dog. The sheep are really fit but a very mixed bag of cheviot and Suffolk and whatever you might get by mixing the two. You for sure wanted to have the Suffolks when you got to the pen. Running was good all day as it never got hot and the BC smoke kept the sun away. Lee Lumb and Chica posted an early 89 which about mid way through Hemp and I tied. These scores stood until near the end when Scott Glen and last year's nursery champ, Don, scored a 93 for the win. Except for the variety provided by an occasional difficult cheviot the running was always good. The sheep were spotted on horseback by Chris Schmaltz, which was good, as the outrun was much the hardest part of the course. The dogs had to traverse several hills to find the sheep who were spotted in a lowish place on the face of a hill. Really tricky, confused a lot of dogs including my Nel who covered way too much ground and got herself lost before finally finding her sheep.

The Open was followed by nursery with nine dogs and very tough sledding as the dogs are young this time of the year. Meg ran great to win the class and my heart.

The PN is still running. This is a western Canadian version of PN. It's run on the same course as the nursery, sort of a US ranch class I think. The older dogs in this class are having a lot less trouble than the nursery did, but still plenty of wrecks mixed in, mostly caused by the shortened but still difficult outrun.

We do it all again tomorrow starting with the PN and running the classes backwards to finish with the open. The top 12 combined open scorers run in the double lift final on Sunday. There were 12 scores over 80 today so we will need to pay attention to the details tomorrow if we are to make the finals.