Sunday, July 07, 2002

 
Just to throw a little character-building discouragement into the mix, Phyl and are back from a frustrating trial (Lynch Mob SDT in Turbotville, PA). Thursday was hotter than Hades has ever *thought* of being, and we were the first team in the first class of the trial. The field was big, and the outrun was almost 300 yards--longer than we'd ever encountered before. I decided to send her come-bye (her bigger side), reasoning that she'd need to go *very* big to get where she needed to go. She didn't see her sheep before I sent her, and as a result she *did* go very big--too big! She ended up stuck somewhere behind the setout pen, and I couldn't see her at all (handlers couldn't see much of anything on that side, which I'd probably have known if I hadn't been first). I couldn't help her at all, and eventually she came back to me. *Sigh*. So we retired without ever getting to try out the course. The next day the weather was much better, and we were toward the end of the class. I sent her away-to-me, and she did a pretty nice outrun and a good lift. (They'd moved the outrun in about forty yards, since quite a few other dogs besides Phyl failed to find their sheep.) The upper half of the fetch was leaning too much into the pressure, but Phyl finally (after a couple of attempts to persuade her) took an away flank enough to get the sheep through the fetch panels, and the lower fetch was fairly straight. A little trouble at the turn around the post--one of the sheep squirted to the wrong side--but nothing serious. I had a *lot* of trouble on the driveaway: the sheep drifted a little off-line into a dip where I couldn't see Phyl and could barely see the sheep. As a result, I couldn't tell how to flank and where to stop her, and she kept heading and bringing them back to me. We finally gave up on the drive, cut up to the cross drive, did about half of the cross drive on a nice line, made the cross drive panels, and got a good pen. (For what it's worth, the field was very challenging, with long clover that was very stressful to the dogs. Phyl handled the long grass pretty well, better than quite a few of the dogs.) Our score was 19 for the outrun, 10 for the lift, 10 for the fetch, 2 for the drive, and 9 for the pen, for a total of 50. We didn't place--that score would have put us 12th out of 27.

I suppose this run was no worse than some of our other runs, but I'm starting to get impatient, to want more: we've had pieces of really good elements at various trials, and I just want ONE RUN that puts all those pieces together at once. Maybe it'll happen at our next trial in two weeks; hope springs eternal!

posted by Heather Nadelman