BevLive: The Bluegrass, Day One

Between the streaming video and twitter reporting on the Blue Grass feels a bit redundant.

We all spent the morning telling each other that the cool, rainy weather was good for the dogs and sheep. By this evening though we mostly didn’t care for either and all just wanted to get warm and dry. Just warmed myself up with a nice hot shower, I can now return to my previous state of weather tolerance. It was cool and rainy all day with periods of real rain. Good weather for the dogs and sheep. It’s now clearing so should be a cold night but a more pleasant day tomorrow. Nothing like being outside all day to make you care about the weather.

The sheep have been great on both the open field and the novice field. The open sheep were lovely, very fit lambs. They moved willingly for the dogs and gave very minimal trouble on the top end. Many years getting the sheep spotted and lifted has been an awful battle here. They moved the set out in about 50 yards and whether this helped or the sheep are more agreeable for some ovine reason it has gone pretty flawlessly this year.

The drives were made longer to compensate for the shorter gather. Each leg is about 200 yards –a very long drive indeed. The tricky part, however, has been the shedding. While some lucky/skillful folk have gotten their sheds right off most of us have really struggled there many times at the cost of running out of time at the pen or never shedding at all. Some beautiful runs have ended with no shed or pen.

I ran Meg early in the nursery. The novice field is using Vergil Holland’s sheep today and someone else’s tomorrow. We are never using the open sheep on the novice field. A Change and improvement from previous years. Meg was again an idiot at the start of her fetch and then a good girl. She had pups this winter and her coat has not come back in yet. I have had other bitches run hard during this post partum period but it’s hard to take from a girl as capable as Meg. Hope she gets back to her better self soon.

Joe ran well in the nursery. He was a bit too rough on his gather and had intermittent dyslexia on the drive but I think finished in the top ten. A good show given his level of training and experience.

Hemp ran in the open and was a very good boy. I misjudged the second drive gate and managed to just miss it. Hemp was very “on the muscle” in the shed and after two interminable minutes of circling sheep I opted for the first sheep on the butt, not quite “the last one on the head” the judges had stated a prefernce for. It gave us time to pen and finish with a respectable score but we won’t be in the prizes.

Nel is up early in the morning. They are running a bit behind time here so they are going to carry three dogs from today’s running over to tomorrow.

It’s been a really great Blue Grass so far. There are hundreds of handlers and affectianados here and about 500 dogs. There were over 50 nursery dogs and more then 70 pro novice dogs. This is such a huge event we are so lucky that people are willing to give up weeks of their time to give us all his great party.