Friday, November 08, 2002

 
Old Chatham was interesting and less depressing than Rhinebeck. The sheep were tougher than anything I'd ever experienced before: they were lambs, used to being worked in groups of about 100 but never worked in groups of three or four before. They were very heavy and very tough, challenging dogs that leaned on them too much and not moving for dogs without enough push. Phyl did very very credibly on the drive, getting them moving (with a grip or two, and grips were allowed in some cases) on a reasonably straight line. (Several people whom I respect told me that she did very well with those sheep, so I was pleased.) Her outruns were beautiful, which was a relief after some of our problems on that front. The dark part of the trial (on both days) was her fetch: there was heavy pressure to my left, and Phyl just didn't want to take her away flank to cover it. As a result, we had very wild, off-line fetches on both days. The one good thing about all that is that it brought home to me the fact that Phyl *does* have a tendency not to cover on that side if I don't practice it, and I'm going to have to add it to our tune-up routine. Sally suggested that I do some fetches and send her around on the away side so she has to head the sheep and drive them away before they reach me, to keep her guessing. I've tried that a couple of times, and she did well. (Of course, now I'm dying to go back to Old Chatham and try my hand at those heavy, determined sheep on that fetch again, now that I'm "tuning," but you can't go back in life. I'll just have to wait until April, when they're probably having another trial!)

Tomorrow I'm off to the finals in Lebanon, to watch the real dogs with their real handlers. Hopefully it'll be inspirational rather than depressing!

posted by Heather Nadelman