BevLive: The Bluegrass, Day Two

Day started out fairly foggy making visibility on the open field tough for the start of the gather. It has since cleared and warmed to be a beautiful day. I ran Nel fourth and didn’t have much luck. A ewe challenged the set out and Nel. When facing off didn’t work she made several big breaks for freedom on the drive and I finally retired.

Bruce Fogt and Cam had more luck. Cam was a nice nursery dog last year and looks even better this year. I missed Scott Glen’s run with his young Don but heard it was really nice and he’s still leading the pack although there are more to run.

The pro-novice was very tough. The fetch gate was very close to the setout allowing one flank between the lift and the gate. Today’s nursery sheep are much lighter than yesterday’s and much less forgiving of youthful impetuosity. Alas, Joe had plenty of that in his PN run. We were actually not doing too badly until the sheep split up and one jumped out of the field.

Nursery went much better for us. Meg ran very well with a crappy pen. Joe too was a very good boy also with a poor pen. Guess I need some practice penning. There have been some lovely nursery and open runs. Not by me, unfortunately but still pretty to see. The sheep persist in being very difficult to shed in the open. On the novice field about 3/4 of them run right into the while the rest resist any attempts to force them in until all the pen points are gone, then they too pen.

Was a fun day. The novice field is not very good. It’s small and hilly and very hard for the young dogs as they need to be constantly flanked to control the sheep and never really get a chance to take charge. But it’s nice to get to see so many young dogs at one event.