Sheepdog News

BevLive: ducks ain't chopped liver

I'm sorry to have to report that I'm  developing way more character here in Utah than anyone needs. Bill ran great, but we just didn't get it done. Hope we manage tomorrow.

It was very hot today, topping out in the mid 90s and not cooling until we finished running and the sun set. There were good runs all day.

Amanda ran early and had a really tough ewe who repeatedly challenged Ethel. Ethel handled her perfectly, taking her on the face when she really asked for it and otherwise getting on with the job.

Amanda's 79 remained second to Barbara Ray's great run with Queen. A nearly perfect go that got a well-deserved 89.

It's dark now and I'm out walking dogs in the cool evening after yet another great meal at Amanda'a. Big storm forecast for tonight followed by cooler weather. I run both dogs tomorrow and am hoping for a better outcome.

Hemp makes his move . . .

On a more positive, note Hemp reluctantly agreed to work the ducks in the first go around of that trial. In spite of spending half the run looking over the fence for sheep he's leading the field. Nice to be good at something!!!!

. . . and they're in. Duck soup!

BevLive: on character-building and pizza

I'd sure love to report that Amanda and I covered ourselves with glory after all our practice, but I'm afraid this was one of those character-building trial days.

I ran Mirk 14th, and my having visualized the run of a lifetime didn't help our performance. Between over-flanking and catching the eye of the sheep and not liking to walk up when the sheep were stamping at him, Mirk was in trouble from the lift. At the first drive gate I decided we weren't doing it and retired.

Amanda and Clive rounding the post.

Amanda ran late in the day. It was hot and the sheep were not any easier to get on with. Clive ran out really well but just wasn't quick enough on his flanks. In spite of a valiant effort on both their parts she just didn't score enough to make the cut.

Amanda and Clive at the pen.

We both have three more kicks at the can. So we are keeping our spirits up, aided by the great hospitality here. Tonight is free beer and pizza for the handlers.

There are few greater optimists than dog handlers. Five handlers got in today. The rest of us are sure we'll get in next time.

The standings, Day 1.

BevLive: tantalizing potential success

Amanda and her team, full of optimism before the terrible practice session

After all of our very successful practices, today's was pretty disasterous. We spotted the sheep about 200 yards out on the hill so we could run uphill, as we will at Soldier Hollow. Unfortunately, the sheep blended into the brush and tall grass so successfully that our dogs all ran out about 400 yards and totally missed them. We spent a frustrating hour at this, finally got in a couple of moderately good 100-yard gathers, and called it quits before it got any worse.

Amanda attempting to locate Clive, who was trying to find the nearly invisible sheep. Major frustration for dog and handler.

We were met at the bottom of the hill by a women in a big flatbed truck who had a herd of cattle coming down the road toward us. It seems three fields of cattle had gotten mixed together and loose. They had them all rounded up and were putting them in the field next to our campers, until they could get them sorted.

Cattle coming down the road

So Amanda, Marie, and I guarded the possible escape routes while 150 cows and their accompanying bulls and calves wandered past. 

A nice photo op for the tourists.

Once the excitement ended we headed out for Utah. It's only a 250 mile, drive but it's mountainous and secondary roads, so it's a hard haul. 

3:00 though and we were parking at Soldier Hollow. It's always so exciting to arrive at a trial, with all that potential success so tantalizingly close.

Herbert Holmes called me to say that he and his wife Alison had lost a wheel on the camper and were running late. So I held them a parking spot as it gets a bit crowded in the handler parking. Nice to see friends I only get to visit with once or twice a year.

It's 9:00 now and handlers are still pulling in. Been out to see the field. It's the driest I've ever seen it here. Today was quite warm--80s--and tomorrow is forecast to be even hotter. The sun here is really harsh and makes it feel about ten degrees warmer than the thermometer thinks it is. The shade is usually pretty comfortable, but of course the poor dogs will be running up that big hill in the hot sun.

Soldier Hollow trial field

Soldier Hollow has a web site so you can follow all of our fortunes tomorrow. We start running at 8:00 mountain time. Wish us luck.

BevLive: time to get serious

I am writing this blog on my iPhone and emailing the entries to Heather, who is cleaning them up a bit and then posting. Since each entry Is done on a 2" x 4" keyboard, typed with one finger, they are tending to the short side. Aren't you all lucky. On a positive note, I'm getting to be a brilliant one-handed typist. (Note from Heather--I'm the one adding the goofy titles, so please don't blame Bev for those!)

Today was pretty much a reprise of yesterday. We got a bit of a late start but again took the ewes up to the big field and did long outruns, with Amanda and me on opposite ends from yesterday. Today's top performer was Amanda's fifteen-month-old Star pup, Roz. She handled both the difficult, rather heavy sheep and the outrun with aplomb. Very impressive.

My two Open dogs weren't nearly so clever, both wanting to run way too wide. Bill wasn't stopping well , which on the next-to-last practice is not very reassuring.

Mirk waiting for his Outrun turn next to my dirt bike.

After running a bunch of errands in town, we spent the afternoon helping our wonderful hostess with a bunch of odd jobs she needed done.

At 3:00, finding ourselves hot and tired, we grabbed our tubes and headed back to the river. This time Amanda and I left our bikes a mile downstream and floated down to them, then biked back to the truck while Marie guarded our tubes. Perfect plan.

Camping in Colorado

Just finished the evening with some perfectly grilled ribeyes at Amanda's. I don't know why everyone doesn't park next to her--she sure is a brilliant camping companion.

Amanda

I'm all hooked up again, and we take to the road tomorrow after running the dogs one more time. I'm going to try and get Bill stopping, which will certainly increase my confidence. I'm really looking forward to seeing how Mirk performs at Soldier Hollow. Keep your fingers crossed for us. He runs on Friday morning, so I won't have long to wait to get a fair indication of how the rest of the trip is likely to go. It's sure started off well.

BevLive: rollin', rollin' , rollin' on the river . . .

Not unexpectedly, my activity level increased considerably with the arrival of Amanda.

We took all the sheep up the road to a huge (read: hundreds of acres) field and traded outruns for about an hour. After we finished with the first group of sheep, I left them behind the fence of the hay yard where we were holding our fresh sheep, figuring they were tired and would hang with their buddies. Wrong. When we finished working they were nowhere to be seen. Amanda finally spotted them about half a mile away trotting toward the mountains with a lot of determination. 

The fields were full of irrigation ditches and round bales, a hopeless outrun from our distance. So I grabbed Hemp, jumped on my trusty dirt bike, and got as close as I could to them. After running about a mile and getting about twenty re-directs, poor Hemp finally found the sheep and saved us a lot of embarrasment.

After our morning's entertainment, Amanda decided we were all going tubing on the White River. She claimed to be primarily motivated by a desire to provide photos for this blog.

We bought three tubes, took her Bart and my Mirk, and headed for the river. We had a blast, although we did decide tubing is perhaps not a dog sport! Mirk rode on my tube all the way down the river, until Amanda's tube developed a leak and our hostess had to come and rescue us.

I anxiously await Amanda's next contribution to the blog.

BevLive: Living the Good Life

Lovely day--maybe it was worth the drive, after all.

Met my hostess in town and followed her out to her ranch. Hundreds and hundreds of acres of outruns. Lovely!

Hemp did a great job sorting off five of the big western ewes and bringing them across the road to the nearest field. It's always tricky moving someone else's sheep around. You hate to put something through a fence (or in this case down the road and through someone else's fence).

I did short outruns and a little driving with Huck. He really enjoys the way the western ewes move off, and I think looks his best in the west. (See photo above.)

Mirk of course is my biggest concern: these are going to be tough events for such a young dog, not helped by our short acquaintance. Did a little driving, but since much of the field was under water and it was quite hot I concentrated on shedding. I tend to spend a lot of time practicing shedding, as it involves the sheep looking at the dog and is the phase of work that really requires instantaneous  handler/dog communication to work. Mirk wasn't coming in as fast as I would have liked, so I put him up and worked Bill a bit while Mirk rested. 

After Bill finished I tried Mirk again; he looked quite a bit better, but still not as good as I have seen him.

Spent the rest of the day getting the camper set up , reading and just generally goofing off, as it was too hot to do much else. Good recuperating day.

In the afternoon it cooled off, and everyone got some more work. Mirk was shedding better but still seemed a bit diffident about it, wonder what that's about?

In the evening Amanda and her traveling companion Marie Cashen arrived with treasure troves of culinary delights from Amanda's shopping in Denver. I have a great camper, but I have never really gotten over my many years of roughing it at trials. I always view camping as a sort of wilderness experience. Not so Amanda. Grilled salmon, tomatoes from her garden, baked potatoes and key lime pie. Canadian hospitality at its best.

Just walked the dogs for the last time. The big Colorado sky is full of the Milkyway, not a sight we see often in Connecticut with all our lights and pollution. No traffic at all this far out from town. Lovely!

 
 

BevLive: Welcome to the West!

Big excitement today. It rained in Wyoming. I'm not sure what was more exciting, driving down the Interstate at 65 mph and suddenly not being able to see twenty feet in front of me, or finally being in the "West." I think the latter. The rain passed in about ten minutes but I'm still out West.

What a long drive: 2200 miles. I arrived in northwest Colorado around 7:00 tonight. I'm camped in a little local park. It's quieter then Walmart, but much more difficult as they have a leash walking rule on the dogs. Hopeless. I'll drive out of town in the morning and walk them. Poor dears they must be as bored with all this as I am.

But tomorrow we begin on the payback. I called my Colorado friend to tell her Amanda Millikin, who is about eight hours behind me with her camper, and I will be there tomorrow. She assures me that her sheep are great and that the irrigation had been turned off and the field is dried out. I'll finally be able to work my dogs.

The good thing about three days of inactivity is that Mirk seems to have recovered from whatever was bothering his front leg. He looks completely sound now. Whew!

BevLive: a long, dull road

Boring. The trick to driving across the country is just doing it. That sounds easy, but it's very dull, and I find the temptation to stop can be nearly over whelming.

I stopped four times today for fuel. At over a hundred dollars a stop, that was plenty of entertainment. I also stopped twice to grab something to eat. But since it was in the upper 80s and lower 90s all day, I left the dogs in the truck with the air conditioning on and just grabbed some take away and ate while I drove.

The dogs got four 10-15 minute walks. That's it--the rest of the time we drove. I'm in York, Nebraska now at 11:00 pm. Another lovely Walmart. 

Doesn't look like I went anywhere today: same store as last night, same parking lot. I'm just $450 poorer for having run my truck all day.

Still, it was very uneventful which on a long drive is always the best scenario. I can also report that the only state that actually gives any value for the charge on their turnpike is Ohio. They have a good road, great places to stop and walk dogs, and some reasonable food at their service areas.

BevLive: on the road

Short message today. Left work about 1:00. Drove until a little after 11:00. Made it to 50 miles inside Ohio. Stopped at a lovely Walmart. 

Love sleeping there: much cleaner and quieter than truck stops, although that isn't any great praise. Still this one has a good place to walk the dogs, security cameras for my peace of mind, and is half a mile from the highway.

I'm walking the dogs now and will be back on the road by 7:30 . Best case scenario is a long, boring day with Iowa or Nebraska at the end of it

BevLive: Duck, Duck, Goose . . .

Left work at 5:00 and got to Denise Leonard's a little after 6:00. Denise kindly put three ducks in a 50' round pen for us, and I tried to get Hemp to work them. Since the round pen was in the middle of her field, which contained 5 or 6 sheep, we didn't have much success.  Hemp couldn't seem to see his way out of the duck pen and into the sheep field. But he sure tried to get to those sheep. I gave up on Hemp and went to his younger brother Huck (Huck and Hemp are the same way bred, out of my husband's bitch Emmy by my dog Bill).

Huck didn't like the duck thing either. But Denise worked the ducks up against the fence for me and I stood in the middle of them, calling to Huck just as I would if I were trying to get a puppy to work sheep for the first time. This worked the charm, and in a few minutes Huck was a duck dog. (See picture below.) Unfortunately (for the ducks!), they were pretty heavy, and Huck tried to get them to move along at a speed more appropriate for sheep. I didn't want to discourage Huck's newfound interest in duck herding, so I'm afraid the ducks got a bit of a workout.

Denise and I tried a couple more times with Hemp and got him to show some interest, but his heart was never really in the effort. So after about 45 minutes of "serious" duck work we called it a night and quit.

This morning I drove over to my friend Carol Campion's to drop off two dogs. One, a yet younger repeat of the breeding that produced Huck and Hemp, Devon, Carol is taking for a month of training. I have no round pen, and Devon is pretty much just chasing my sheep all over the field. Instead of getting after him, I decided to give him a month in Carol's round pen and then move him into my bigger field. He is quite promising looking, and I don't want to ruin his chances. The second dog, Esther, is going to spend a month with Sue Schoen. Sue owns a littermate to Esther and kindly offered to take care of her for a month and try her out and see what she thought of her prospects.

So back to the house, wash the last two dogs, load up the camper and here I am at work. I will leave around 2:00, and my next report will be from the road somewhere west of Connecticut..