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WANNABE STUFF
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APPRENTICE STUFF
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MASTER STUFF
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And for our former harrowing adventures, there's always the archives
Thursday, October 23, 2003
In which we discover a glimmer of hope
Last weekend I slogged back to Virginia to attend Lena Bailey's ABC Magazine trial. It's a *long* drive from New Jersey to Lovingston, Virginia (south, as I'm told!), almost two hours longer than the long drive the week before to Edgeworth. But I'm glad I went. First of all, the event itself was very nice: it was held on the field where the Seclusival trial had been held for so many years, and it was interesting and challenging. Second, Lena and her daughter Gita hosted the most pleasant trial potluck dinner that I've ever attended: they provided grilled steaks and baked potatoes for all, and everyone brought good side dishes to supplement. Best of all, as far as I'm concerned, was a roaring campfire around which we could huddle. (I'm kind of a fire nut: I understand pyromania so deeply that it worries me. I don't have a fireplace myself, so I actually purchased a $500 fake stovelike space heater that shoots holographic flames: I sit around it and pretend to hear it crackle in the winter.) There were even marshmallows! Even s'mores! (I have to say, however, that s'mores--for those who don't know, a s'more is a graham cracker sandwich of two toasted marshmallows on one side and half a plain chocolate bar on the other--seemed to taste a lot better in my memories of childhood than they do in actual life. When I was a kid, I spent a couple of summers at a cheap YMCA camp in the Connecticut Berkshires, and they gave us s'mores only once every two weeks, since they were expensive. Later on, I was sent to an expensive fat camp in the Catskills, and they never gave us s'mores at all. Go figure!) And after the trial, I stopped off in Charlottesville to have brunch with Sally's daughter, who's a sophomore at UVA. Charlottesville, hands down, is simply the nicest college town I've ever seen, and I was glad to have the chance to hang out there for a couple of hours. So all in all, it would have been a pretty nice weekend even if nothing at all good had happened to us on the trial field.
So what DID happen at this trial, wonder those impatient with the travelogue? The first run was very raggedy. The sheep were held in the woods on the edge of the field: the outrun was only around 300 yards or so, but the sheep were virtually invisible to both dog and handler, and that made it tricky. The good thing was that Phyl never stopped on her outrun, even though I'm quite sure she didn't see her sheep until she was almost on top of them. The bad thing was that what I thought were sheep at the top of the outrun turned out to be a bush, and what Phyl eventually lifted were quite a few yards off to the right of the spot on which I had been fixating. That mistake rattled me, and I never really recovered throughout the run: the fetch was offline (even though we made our panels), the drive was choppy (we made the drive panels and missed low on the crossdrive. We penned, but I was even more inept than usual in the shedding ring. I think our score ended up a 50, one of the lowest of the day except for those who DQ'd or retired.
After that, a friend sat down with me and gave me a shedding lesson using animal crackers to illustrate. What she told me seemed very clear, and (because I want to internalize it), I'm going to write it down in this blog right now. She broke up the steps to getting a shed into the following discrete components, warning me that (of course) all of this might happen very quickly in the shedding ring, and certain steps would be collapsed or eliminated entirely:
That all makes sense to me, and I think I finally have a glimmer about how to set up a shed.
The second run was much better than the first: good outrun, good lift, and Phyl's fetch was lovely. (She did it almost entirely on her own: I just sat back, slowed her down so that the pace was right, and gave her a tiny bit of help here and there to make minute adjustments. Tom Lacey gave it a 19, and I think Phyl deserved it.) The first leg of our drive was pretty good, and the sheep went right through the panels. The crossdrive was a pullthrough, and I always have a hard time figuring out exactly what the line even *is* in that situation: how far "high" do we have to be to be right? We more or less seem to have hit what others considered to be the line, but we didn't quite make our panels. We had a slight bobble at the pen (two went right in, one didn't, so I had to take all of them out and put them back). We didn't get our shed, but I was told that I looked much more professional setting it up. (Thanks to my friend and her animal crackers!) We ended up with a 72, which seemed pretty good to me, considering everything. It was nice to end on a good note. So I came away from this trial with two good things to take home with me: Phyl did two tricky outruns without stopping once, and I have more understanding of what shedding is than I did a week ago.
In about ten minutes I'll be off to Carol Campion's place in Connecticut: I'll be taking a lesson this afternoon and tomorrow morning with Julie Simpson, and then Carol's trial will be on Saturday and Sunday. I hope to have lots to write about when I return, and I hope that some of it is good!
Friday, October 17, 2003
In which it is neither the best of times nor the worst of times
I'm sure that all three of you reading this blog have been waiting with baited breath to find out what happened to Phyl at Edgeworth. (Then again, two of three of you reading this blog *went* to Edgeworth with me, so they alredy know the end of the story. I have a very, very tiny fan base!) Edgeworth, for anyone who doesn't know, is a trial held on Florence and Tommy Wilson's achingly beautiful farm in Gordonsville, Virginia. The outrun is about 600 yards, up a hill, with at least three ridges on the way up that can bring a hapless dog in front of his sheep. And Phyl, for anyone who doesn't know, is a dog who has been plagued perpetually by outrun problems of one sort or another.
In preparation for the Big E, I went to a couple of places where Phyl could do some 500-yard outruns. I helped her through them, and I think she benefited. But no number of 500-yard outruns could have prepared *me* for what Edgeworth looked like: the sheep might as well have been tiny dots on the moon. The course itself was also considerably more challenging than I'm used to: the cross-drive was very long and hard (for me, at least) to judge. Two of the five sheep we were given were wearing collars: we had to shed off two uncollared ones before the pen, and then single off one of the collared ones after. But I was pretty sure that we were never going to get past the outrun, so the course was the last thing on my mind when I slunk up to the post with my dog.
The amazing thing was that she DID get behind her sheep on that first run! She tried to come in at each of the ridges, and stopped at one point, but she immediately took my whistles as informative and ended up at the other end of the field, far, far away from me. Even when I saw the sheep lifting I wasn't totally sure that *Phyl* had done the lifting--I was pretty much convinced that she was frozen somewhere on the field and that the setout dog nudged the sheep on. It wasn't a good run by anyone's lights: Phyl lifted crookedly, the sheep pulled hard to the exhaust the whole way down that huge fetch, and she never quite caught them until they were almost at my feet. I didn't handle her properly on the drive--for some reason I kept stopping her a little early, before she could fully cover them, and as a result it was impossible for her to get them on a straight line. We missed both of our panels, but at least the approximate path of the drive wasn't embarrassing. The split came very easily: two uncollared sheep were inclined to stick together, and Phyl came in on them when I asked her to. I had a slight bobble at the pen, mostly because I couldn't get in position fast enough, but after that they went in nicely. Then, unfortunately, I had a full five and a half minutes (it was a fifteen-minute course), and I never got my single. I really don't have the first clue about shedding, when it comes down to it: if I get my shed, it's all luck. These sheep were eminently sheddable, and it made me realize that I need to get serious about learning how to do this if I'm not going to humilate myself and let my dog down constantly.
Day Two was short and not-so-sweet: Phyl ran out big and confidently, but I decided to give her a big come-bye whistle early, to make sure she kept on. For whatever reason--maybe she misunderstood my whistle, maybe she would have done it anyway--Phyl followed the crest of the first ridge (the handlers can't see the dogs who do that until it's too late) and ended up on the other side (and very far short) of her sheep. I tried to give her a look-back command, but she clearly didn't understand what I was telling her. So I called her in, and that was that. *Sigh*. I'd give anything if I could just take that whistle I blew back, and see what she would have done on her own!
Edgeworth could have gone a lot better for us, but I'm grateful that Phyl got behind her sheep the first day, and that I got to try the course with her. I think (I hope) that she gained from it, and I know that I did. Edgeworth is really the most beautiful trial that I've ever seen; it feels the way trials *ought* to feel, and it makes everything else seem a poor imitation by comparison. It really *is* a thrill just to be allowed to be the bottom of the barrel at a trial like that. Next year I'll hope to do better. Sometimes it's hard for me to believe that I've had Phyl for two years, but then sometimes I'm also stunned at how much I've learned from her already: two years ago I didn't know a thing, and now I've graduated to being the worst person at Edgeworth. And that's pretty cool! :-)
