BevLive: Shuanavon SDT

A beautiful summer day. A little breezy in the afternoon but not too hot. Mirk ran first and had lovely sheep with which we did an adequate job ending up 4th. Dale Montgomery ran right after me and had a bit better run. Later Norm Sommer and his young Lexie beat him and finally Scott Glen beat us all with a nice run with Dan. Nel ran very well missing a really difficult flank command at the second drive gate, but pleasing me all around. Hemp too did a good job but his sheep started running before he finished his outrun and never stopped making for a difficult job.

The sheep were good although some groups were a bit nicer then others. There was a strong draw to the exhaust all day which undid many of the ProNovice dogs who just couldn't get themselves over to cover the pressure. Meg ran next to last in the PN and was a bit too much for me and the sheep. She pushed too hard and while we got everything 3 minute of frantic running by Meg wouldn't pen the sheep. She was a good girl a bit on the muscle but we got what had become a difficult fetch gate and we'll have to be satisfied with that. Scott won with Sweep and I think Randy Dye was second with Tuck.

The sheep ran hard with little encouragement especially whenever they thought it might work toward the exhaust. They were nice to shed and tricky to pen but always very workable.

Jamie VanRhyn managed to garner quite a bit of local support for the trial and had a variety of prizes from local sponsors as well as cash for the top 4 places in each class.

Tomorrow I'm going to run two open dogs and then leave to drive to South Dakota for the next trial. I hate to leave Canada except for the Mosquitos it's been great weather and really fun people. But time to hit the road again and put another 600 miles on the truck.