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And for our former harrowing adventures, there's always the archives
Friday, June 27, 2003
In which we learn that Virginia is south of New Jersey
Hello, my devoted fan base! Phyl and I have returned from our trek to Alasdair's, our first lesson with the handler who is considered by many to be a combination of Moses, Maimonides, and Fred Astaire. (Well, a combination of some great figures of wisdom and athleticism at any rate, and those three just popped into my mind for some peculiar reason.) Anyhow, here's what happened: we drove down without incident on Tuesday and located the (quite comfortable and dog-friendly) Village Inn motel. (For dinner, I finally got to try the new Wendy's southwestern chicken Caesar salad that I've been seeing so many commercials for--it's far and away the best salad-type product that I've found from a fast food establishment. I give it four stars!)
I had signed up for a half-hour lesson, which was supposed to consist of three ten-minute runs in which Alasdair commented on what he saw without having to do anything very physical in the summer heat. Alasdair's farm is about twelve minutes away from the motel, and Phyl and I arrived in plenty of time for our first ten-minute session, which was scheduled at 9:00. It was VERY hot: after being cool all summer, the temperature churlishly decided to spike up to a glowing 95 in honor of our lesson. For session one, I sent Phyl on his full Open outrun, about 450 yards over tricky terrain. (Even worse, only an away-to-me outrun is really possible on his field, and that's Phyl's tighter side.) Needless to say, she messed up the outrun and needed quite a bit of redirection and restarting before she found her sheep. When she did, she did a very nice fetch (blind, because everything was hidden behind dips) but was utterly exhausted: that was too much work in the heat. Alasdair commented that I needed a system to help her through the outrun, that she didn't seem to react well when I yelled "keep off" and that she reacted fine when I stopped her if the outrun started to go wrong and then calmly gave her a big flank command, via either whistle or voice. He suggested that I reserve "keep off" only for cases in which Phyl is at least at 3:00 in her outrun and is coming in too tight at the top. So that was useful advice, and I'm definitely going to try to do all that. (He said that he thought the outrun wouldn't ultimately be a problem and that she could be a tremendous outrunning dog, because she runs out fast and is wide in spots, but that I can't take away her confidence. I hope I don't!)
Run #2 consisted of a much smaller outrun, so I could drive through a whole course despite the heat. Even though Phyl could see the sheep fine, she went too big when she arced out and seemed to be thinking about her first outrun rather than her current one. (That's one of the weirdest things about Phyl: she always seems to be working on the last outrun she did, even when she can see the sheep perfectly well. There's some bizarre disconnect in her brain when it comes to outrun arcs, I think.) After that, things went well: her fetch was good, her drive was excellent, and her crossdrive was a little raggedy but still ok. at Alasdair's request, I tried (and failed) to shed the sheep. His comments were the following: Phyl needs a little work on keeping a steady pace on her drive (which I know and have been working on): she's a little pushy and needs to be slowed down, so her sheep are often speeding up and then slowing down after I stop her, rather than moving at a nice steady rate. My handling was ok (yay!) but I need to see the crossdrive line better (not news to me!) and I'm a little "too aggressive" at panels. As far as the shed went, Alasdair told me that I walk straight at the sheep without the proper "courtship" ritual, and that I should work on moving either parallel to them or backing up in order to make the hole (and if it ever cools off again, I'm going to try all that). And he reiterated his advice about the outrun, saying that I should have a stepwise system and make sure that Phyl is gaining confidence about big outruns rather than losing it. Overall, he said he liked her a lot.
Run #3 was the same course, but the sheep were much less cooperative than the sheep we had in Run #2, and Phyl and I were both getting really hot and miserable. I don't think Alasdair learned anything much about us more from that run, although he said some nice things about our "good recovery" at various points during the run. After that, I cooled Phyl down with a hose and started the long trek back to New Jersey. . . .
. . . made even longer, because I somehow managed to turn SOUTH on Route 29 and not NORTH on Route 29. Further, I didn't notice what I had done because I was thinking about the lesson and listening to a gripping Book-on-Tape. (I did wonder why I wasn't seeing any signs for Charlottesville, which I thought was a major enough city for signs to tell me how many miles we were from it.) To make a long story only a tiny bit less long, I didn't wake up from my fog until almost Lynchburg, at least 45 minutes in the wrong direction. So I passed our starting point a good (a BAD!) hour-and-a-half from our start time, and that put us on the DC beltway at precisely 5:00. How dumb am I, really? So endeth our adventure. I liked Alasdair, and I enjoyed the lesson. Luckily, I also didn't think that I absolutely HAVE to have regular Alasdair lessons--luckily, because he's seven hours from me (sometimes eight-and-a-half hours from me!) and charges $100 an hour. I'm glad I did it, and I might sign up for his shedding clinic in the spring, but I won't become a regular down there.
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
We are the champions . . .
. . . But only of Ranch class--don't get too excited. There was plenty of suckage about our Open runs, and (for that matter) about our Ranch runs. But on balance, the Hop Bottom sheepdog trial was a positive experience for us. (For any readers who don't know Hop Bottom, it's one of the longest-running trials in the northeast; this is its twenty-second year. It takes place at Walt Jagger's Sheepyhollow farm in Hop Bottom, Pennsylvania. The field is narrow and presents challenges because of dead spots that seem to crop up at the most inopportune times during a run; the sheep are Kahtahdins, and are mostly pleasant to work.) Phyl and I took advantage of the NEBCA rule that allows double-entries in Ranch and Open until the first Open placement occurs (and *that's* not happening any time soon for us!). Here's a rundown of how we did:
Thursday: Ranch: Good outrun (I never get tired of writing that in this blog!), lift, and fetch. The first leg of the driveaway was fine, with the sheep going nicely through the panels. The crossdrive, however, was as horrendous as a crossdrive can be: the sheep dipped way low, and Phyl got herself into a dead spt and wasn't able to hear my attempts to get things straightened out. I made some wild attempts at the panels, and if I were a better handler, or one with a cooler head, I might well have just retired and called it a day. But I finally got the sheep close enough to the panels so I could collect them and pop them into the pen, which they (nice, dogged sheep that they were) obligingly did. Our score was a generous 69--the judge gave us an 11 on the drive, and many judges would have given us a 3. I assume that J. P. LaLonde (the judge) must divide the course into thirds, which worked in our favor this time. Incredibly, even after all that mess we ended up second, our highest placement to date. (That Ranch class had a lot of young dogs in it, and many of them succumbed to the problems with the dead spots near the crossdrive panels.) So we ended up with a very attractive red ribbon to add to our fairly meager collection.
Friday: Ranch: Overall, I think this run was better than our run on Thursday, even though we ended up with exactly the same 69 at the end. Phyl's outrun was a shade tighter than it had been the day before (a 19 instead of a 20); that seems to be common for her on the second day of doing a course--I guess she gets a little lazy. She brought them on a straight line to me on the fetch and was holding the pressure very well on her own. Unfortunately, I *really* messed up my handling there--I gave her an unnecessary flank, then had to flank her right back to correct for it, and in the end I somehow forced her to miss her panels. :-( So we only had an 12 on the fetch, even though it was very nice and straight both before and after the panel miss. The drive was much more controlled, but I managed to miss the crossdrive panel again. The pen was clean. This time we ended up with a pink fifth-place ribbon (I like pink!). (The nicest thing of the day was the fact that my friend Eileen Stein's bitch Gyp won the Ranch class with a resounding 78. Gyp is an extremely fast, extremely keen, extremely talented bitch who isn't at all easy to run, and Eileen is trying to do the impossible by running her on opposite whistles from those of her other dogs. Three cheers for Gyp!) So in the end, even though we didn't have any spectacular run, or even any run with all of the major elements completed, we finished as the overall two-day champion. (Success is odd: I still don't think we really did well enough to have earned something as grand-sounding as "two-day champion." But there you have it nonetheless.) For the curious, here's what we won:
I thought it was quite an impressive haul myself. Unfortunately, Open is a completely different kettle of fish . . .
Saturday: Open: This one was definitely our worst run of the weekend. Phyl's outrun was only an 18, with an 8-point lift. (I assume she thought she was doing the same Ranch outruns that she'd been doing for the last couple of days. I missed the damn fetch panels *again*--I thought this time I was doing everything right, making all the proper corrections and adjustments as the sheep came down the course. (It was a very different feeling from my Friday Ranch run, in which I knew that I was doing all the *wrong* things even as they were happening.) I even thought to myself, "Ah. What a fine handler I am. Watch how deftly I correct these sheep." Some fine handler--I made the sheep deftly blip around the panels just as I had the day before, and I'm not even exactly sure why. I had a good, clean driveaway, and we made *those* panels, at least. The crossdrive was odd, set at an obtuse rather than a right angle. I missed it by a lot; I guess I was low the whole time, but I didn't see it right. Instead of a pen and a shed, we had one twenty-point maltese cross, something I'd never tried before. I tried to bring the sheep to the cross very slowly and carefully, but I didn't have Phyl flanked quite enough to guard against the pressure to the exhaust. I saw one of the sheep think "exhaust" and motion to the other two; I tried to flank Phyl in time, but it was too late. We circled the cross aimlessly until time was called. We ended up with a very unimpressive 54 for our efforts.
Sunday: Open: This one was pretty exciting, because it was our best Open run to date. Phyl actually broke her pattern and did better on the outrun rather than worse--she got a 20-10! Her fetch was really a thing of beauty, with nice control all the way down (and this time, thankfully, I didn't manage to mess up the panels in spite of her best efforts). We received a 19 on the fetch. Unfortunately, I really butchered my handling on the drive: I had them moving nicely toward the drive panels and then managed to turn them right in front--it's possible that one went through, but I can't be sure of it. The crossdrive was messy: it worked for a lot of people simply to stop the dog on the crossdrive line, since often the sheep would run most of the way toward the next panels. But Phyl's sheep dipped low, and it took her a beat to hear my entreaties to catch them with an inside away-to-me flank. We got them back closer to the line by the time we approached the panels, but again I turned them in front: I was low, and I hadn't realized it. I found it very difficult to see on that field all weekend. Phyl brought the sheep to me in a nice, controlled manner for the third leg of the drive, and we got them in the pen without incident. But the most exciting thing of the weekend was . . . we got our shed! Granted, it was sort of a pathetic shed for which we only received six points: Phyl turned to the wrong group before turning to the right one, and it wasn't the last sheep on the head. But unlike my other shed, I actually had to make a hole here, and I did! :-) :-) I felt like flying coming off that field; being able to do a shed makes me feel a little less like an imposter in the Open class. We ended up with a 76, which is far and away our best score in Open to date. I wish I hadn't been such an incompetent handler on the drive, but I'm so happy with everything else that I'm not going to obsess over it.
At least we'll have a breather from trials for a little while; I might or might not be going to a trial over the July 4 weekend, but there's nothing before that. And that suits me fine: I've had enough cheap motels and indifferent food to last me a couple of weeks. (Not to mention bad television: this past weekend I watched (a) two Saved by the Bell reruns, both featuring Screech; (b) a Lifetime Original Movie about a fifteen-year-old boy who managed to sire a child but shouldered his responsibility nobly; (c) another Lifetime movie about a woman who had a one-night stand in a small town that resulted in a child. She moved away and then came back 18 years later with the child as a high-school senior, and his biological father was still hanging around as the school principal. Wacky highjinks ensued.) I'll keep the blog updated on any major things that happen to us between now and then--Phyl and I will be going down to Virginia for an Alasdair Macrae lesson next week, so I'm sure there's going to be lots to report there. (Alasdair will just be watching runs and offering criticism; three ten-minute runs for $50. It seems a cheap way to find out what the fuss over Alasdair is really all about--cheap, that is, if you don't count two days of vacation from work and the seven-hour ride each way!)
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
Neither the best of times nor the worst of times . . .
We're back from Newark Valley, a trial in upstate New York put on by Roger and Heather Millen. (The town of Newark Valley is really beautiful, surrounded by mountains and pleasant countryside; I really like this trial. The only thing that I *don't* like about it is the fact that Heather Millen has the audacity to have usurped my first name; I got whiplash over the weekend from so much turning around when I wrongly thought people were talking to me!)
The good news of the weekend was the fact that Phyl did two more perfectly confident outruns (the outrun was on the small side, only about 225 yards. But still, every little outrun helps!) Our run on Saturday was the better of the two: good outrun, straight enough fetch (making the panels), a nice driveaway, a good crossdrive line with a panel miss (thanks to my poor handling--I thought we were high, then when I brought the sheep down I realized that we'd actually been on the line, and then there wasn't time to get back to the place where we'd been all along in time to make the panels). I also messed up my handling into the pen: the sheep all seemed to be going right in, so I stopped Phyl too far back without flanking her enough to cover the sheep fully. As a result, two of the sheep went in but the last lamb didn't; I had to pull everyone out and push them all back in again. That little blunder at the pen cost us six precious points! No shed, of course, and I really can't imagine how we're ever going to be able to shed the sorts of dogged Kahtahdins we encounter at trials. But at any rate, the run felt decent and we finished in the top fifty percent of the class, which is as good as I can hope for at this point.
Sunday's sheep weren't nearly as cooperative as Saturday's: they never stopped running. We managed a straight enough fetch but lost them at the turn around the post: they zoomed around the wrong way a couple of times before I got things straightened out again. We did a decent driveaway through the panels, but the crossdrive was low and I never managed to correct it. The pen was harried, with two sheep running in and one sheep running around before I managed to close the door on all of them. No shed, natch. The kerfluffle at the post seemed to have cost us mega, mega points: we ended up with a 1 point fetch and a 3 point drive. Still, it really wasn't as bad as it looked on paper, and I think Phyl did a good job keeping her head and trying to listen. If I had better reflexes, we'd have done a lot better. I just don't seem to think well at super-sonic speeds.
Our next trial is this weekend, in Hop Bottom, PA: I'll have two ranch runs (Thursday and Friday) and two Open runs (Saturday and Sunday). I'm really hoping to get a lot out of it, since it's a ton of time to invest. Stay tuned!
Wednesday, June 04, 2003
Yes, yes, YES!!
Finally, good news to report in the blog! Not once, not twice, not three times . . . FOUR glorious times did Phyl whoosh up the hill at Stephen and Kathryn Paxton-Hill’s Steppingstone Sheepdog Trial in Havre de Grace, Maryland. Steppingstone is really a lovely trial--I’d think so even if I hadn’t done well there. It’s only in its second year, and it really has it all: a nice field (made even nicer with a clear view of the Susquehanna River glittering in the background), challenging sheep, great prizes (Kathryn is a talented artist, and the trophies are all hand-painted ceramic), and (the most important element of any successful trial!) edible food. We’ll definitely be back again.
But now, on to the details! We ran a total of four times, twice in Ranch (on Thursday and Friday) and twice in Open (on Saturday and Sunday). The Open course was somewhat bigger than the Ranch course--the outrun was about fifty yards deeper, and the drive and crossdrive were longer--but all of my runs felt challenging. Here’s what happened:
Thursday: The McDonald’s guy told me to “have a great day” when I stopped by the drive-thru window, which added a level of pressure to the whole thing. A GREAT day? Not just an ok day, not just a within-my-own-private-goals day, not just a build-on-it-for-the-future day, but an actual GREAT day? Sheesh. So I went to the post with a certain level of trepidation. I shouldn’t have worried--Phyl ran out (I sent left, as I did all four runs) as if she had wings, as if she’d never had a thought in her life of stopping prematurely. She went nice and deep, lifted straight, and had good control of them on the fetch--we made our panels pretty easily. The driveaway went well, but I lost them a bit on the crossdrive and missed the panels. The sheep balked a little getting into the pen--I was told later that I impeded their progress by not opening up the gate far enough and standing too close (duh!), but we got them in. Our total score was a 67, which included a 20 point outrun (psych!) and was good enough for fifth place out of 35 dogs.
Friday: The McDonald’s guy told me to “have a nice day,” which again made me worry. If yesterday was a “great” day (and it felt pretty great at the time), would today be only a “nice” day? How much of a dip was it from “great” to “nice,” anyway? And it actually seemed as if it might end up being sub-nice: just as I sent Phyl on her outrun, one of the sheep broke away from the setout person and took off back to the pen. I had to call Phyl back (praising her madly so she wouldn’t think anything was wrong), but not before she was close enough to the escaping sheep to turn into the setout pen to try to follow it. (Damn that sheep! And damn the McDonald’s guy!) We had a rerun, of course, and I sent Phyl with fear and trembling. I shouldn’t have worried: she ran out confidently, turned in, and lifted well. I goofed up my handling and missed the fetch panels (the sheep always pulled a little to the right before drifting hard to the left, and I moved Phyl over farther right than I should have). We had a very nice (but fast!) drive, making both of our panels. The pen was clean this time, and I didn’t stupidly block the sheep’s path into the pen this time. Total score: 69, and ninth place.
Saturday: I didn’t stop at McDonald’s, because the whole “have a --- day” thing was freaking me out, and because I thought it might be a good idea to eat the granola that I carry around with me to trials, instead of feeling smugly self-satisfied that I could eat the nice, healthy granola anytime I wanted to eat it. Saturday was our first Open run, and I worried that the fifty extra yards of outrun would confuse Phyl if she weren’t paying attention: I half-expected her to end up somewhere in front of her sheep. But she didn’t! She ran out, came in a little at the Ranch outrun distance, saw that they weren’t there, and kicked out again. This time I handled the fetch properly, and Phyl brought them nicely through the panels. We had a really nice drive: Phyl handled the sheep beautifully, our lines were good, and we made both sets of panels. I had some trouble at the pen--these were not one of those sets of sheep that just meekly walked in--but after some circling, we finally got them in. Our stint in the shedding felt endless (the run was very speedy, even with the pen-circling), and I was exceptionally incompetent: I couldn’t get the sheep stopped, and Phyl spent an exhausting amount of time circling them to keep them in the ring. Making any sort of hole was out of the question. But all in all, I was very pleased with the run: we got a 65, which included six points off the pen and no shed, and put us solidly in the middle of the Open class pack. Solid mediocrity in Open is about the best we can hope for right now, and I felt great about the run.
Sunday: We ran at an ungodly hour, fifth in a class that started at 6:30 in the morning. (Nobody cares about my circadian rhythms!) The weather was about as bad as it could be: lots of rain, and a whipping wind that made it difficult for dogs to hear and made the sheep nuts. The outrun was and lift were fine, but the fetch was wild and wooly--the sheep never drifted over to the left the way almost *every* other set of sheep had drifted, and as a result we missed the fetch panels on the right. At the turn around the post, one of my sheep inexplicably ran to the exhaust and had to be collected by Phyl, who did it very professionally. We had a good driveaway (through the panels), but they bolted toward the exhaust on the crossdrive and I never managed to grab hold of them enough to think about pushing them through the crossdrive panels. Clean pen. No shed again, but at least this time I looked slightly less doofusy (I think) than I had the day before: I actually almost had a hole just as time ran out. We had a low score (a 50), but some people had lower scores, and many people retired because the combination of frenetic sheep and a semi-hurricane were too much for a lot of dogs. So I wasn’t unhappy.
The most important lesson that I learned over the course of the weekend was the following: stay away from a new McDonald’s breakfast sandwich called the McGriddle, which seems to consist of eggs and breakfast meats sandwiched between fake, overly sweet pancake-ish rolls. If you’re not quite virtuous enough for granola, go for the classic Egg McMuffins every time.
