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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
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
In which we ponder the days of auld lang syne
Michele Higgins's Swift
I’ve never been one for New Year’s Eve: I can’t stand crowds, hate parties, don’t drink much, don’t like glitz and glamour, and basically have never seen the point of dancing the night away just to celebrate the passage of time and our inevitable downward spiral into oblivion. (I’m funny that way!) All of which is to explain why I’m sitting at my computer at 9:45 on the evening of December 31, entirely alone except for the company of two border collies and two basset hounds, reflecting on things past and things to come.
Since I tend to exist more in the yesterdays than in the tomorrows, I’ve always treated the turning of the year as a completion rather than a beginning. And in many ways, 2003 was a wonderful year for me: Phyl and I started trialing in Open and we’re actually sometimes finishing in the middle of the pack. My elderly basset Connie is still hanging in there. I have far better friends than I have any right to have. I also have a cool new car, a mouthwatering stack of books I haven’t read yet, DVDs to watch, an Ipod to listen to, and a TiVo to keep me plugged into the televised world. Life is pretty good. (On the other hand, 2003 is also the year that saw the demise of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I can’t say it was a perfect year. But we learn to take the good with the bad.)
A few weeks ago, I’d have said that my dearest wish for 2004 would be to place in an Open trial with Phyl. (I don’t think it’s going to happen--we’re not close at all yet. But as a wish, it’s a lovely one.) But now, I’m not as focused on that as I used to be. Some of you know that Michele Higgins lost her bitch Swift this past December. Michele bought Swift as a puppy and did much of the training on her by herself. Swift was a good bitch who tried hard for Michele, but there were training bumps in the road for both of them. Nonetheless, Michele believed in her and worked hard to overcome those bumps: Swift was her pet, her companion, her favorite dog. Not working with her, not trying to turn her into a sheepdog, was simply unthinkable for both of them. This past season, their hard work bore fruit when Michele was able to enter Swift (at the age of six) in an Open trial for the first time. The two of them did credibly, and if the gods were at all just there certainly should have had more Open trials for them to look forward to. But a week after that trial, Michele thought Swift was acting a little lethargic and noticed that she also had a somewhat distended belly. She took her to the vet, who recommended a specialist. The diagnosis was both instantaneous and devastating: Swift had a rare form of peritoneal cancer, and the specialist gave her only a few weeks to live. Swift, in fact, lived for two more months, a tribute to her will to be there for Michele and to Michele’s love for her.
Michele and Swift’s story has made me just a little more grateful that Phyl is happy and healthy, and a little less fixated on how straight our lines are as we go around the course. It’s made me a little less frustrated as I try to learn to shed, and a little more thankful that I have a dog to shed with at all. It’s a feeling that I hope I’ll keep as the new year progresses. The fact is, I’m foolishly goofy about Phyl: I love simply watching her work as much as I love competing with her in trials. So, to honor Swift’s memory, my New Year’s resolution will be to try to keep that sense of joy and wonderment in my dog, to be thankful for any tiny progress that might be imperceptible to outsiders, and not to get too worried about whether or not we can earn a slip of silk ribbon for our efforts. We’re all fortunate that our dogs have graciously made it possible for us to experience the joy of sheepdogging, and it’s not something that any of us should take casually. All of us who have the honor of watching our dogs zoom away on an outrun are among the luckiest creatures on the planet.
(36 minutes and this whole damn New Year’s Even thing will be over. Happy 2004, everyone!)
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
In which we recover from too much turkey and brace ourselves for the dark holidays ahead
I see that I haven't posted for a couple of weeks, and that I ended the last entry with a cliffhanger. Let me hasten to assure everyone that Connie is fine: she took a turn for the better, and she seems to have earned a stay of execution, at least for the present. Connie is a complicated dog, and there's no reason why the end of her life should follow a traditional path when nothing else about her has ever been traditional. Since putting off unpleasant things is always much better than facing them squarely, I'm in a pretty good mood these days.
Since I've begun by drifting away from the topic of Phyl's adventures, I might as well damn the torpedoes and meander even more.
Ok, now I feel better. :-) So, what of Phyl? The last major thing that Phyl and I did was attend Sam Furman's Frontrunner trial (yes, the very same Sam Furman made famous by her stint as the inaugural LittleHats "expert"!). Frontrunner was held on November 15-16 in Richmond, Viriginia, at Sam's farm. Alasdair Macrae was the judge, and the course that he set up was very challenging, especially for depth-perception impaired people like me. Phyl did a wonderful job in both her runs: good outruns, nice lifts, lovely fetches. I, as usual, was the weak link in the chain: she did whatever I told her to do, but all too often what I told her to do was inappropriate. On the first day, people were missing the drive and crossdrive panels repeatedly, because the angles were so difficult to see and because everything seemed to be so far away. Phyl had a beautiful driveaway going, and I knew that I had to let her push the sheep a lot farther than it looked, because so many handlers turned their dogs too early. I let her push them back to what looked practically like the setout point, and then I gave her the big flank to start the crossdrive. To my shock, even that was too early, and we turned in front just as everyone else had. The crossdrive went a little high, and I had a hard time figuring out where the line was to correct it (it was one of those diagonal crossdrives that cause me so much consternation). We missed the panels, but it was close. We had a shed before the pen, and even though Phyl came in and the sheep didn't regroup, we didn't get the shed called: I didn't have Phyl walk up on the singled sheep, and I was too confused when Alasdair didn't call the shed to figure out why he wasn't calling it. (That's what people who sleep through handler's meetings get: apparently he made a point of saying that he wanted to see the sheep moving off before he'd call a shed. It was dopey, since we could have had it easily: as I remarked to someone at the trial, chasing a single sheep back to the exhaust is something that Phyl does really well!) I'm still at the point of being astonished when Phyl comes in and the sheep stay apart--when I get a shed, there's no room in my head for anything but (callitcallitcallitFUCKdidimissit??damnyouwhyaren'tyoucallingit??callitcallitcall!!). I wish I could have realized that if he wasn't calling it the obvious thing to do would have been to have Phyl work the single a little, but for some reason my so-called mind simply froze up until we ran out of time.
Everything was better the next day: we made our driveaway panels (no thanks to me, really: I thought we weren't through, but I suddenly could tell from Phyl's body language that she was expecting a big flank. As a result, we got one of the tightest turns we've ever had at trials). The crossdrive line was decent, but we missed the panels when the sheep inexplicably failed to do what they were supposed to by doing. :-) This time we had a pen before the shed. I bobbled the pen (I think I pushed the lambs too hard), and it took a few passes to get them in (I think we only had a two-point pen, when all was said and done). I let Phyl cross her cast as we went from the pen into the shedding ring (I always spend too much time fiddling with the damn rope!), so half our points dissolved before we even got to try anything. I think I missed one opportunity, had to regather everyone, and then made a hole and called her in--and in she came! This time Alasdair did call it. It was only a little two-point shed after all the trouble we had, but it was a completed run nonetheless. I haven't had enough of those that I can take any of them for granted yet.
As an aside, Phyl's litter sister Jen (owned and trained by Gene Sheninger) won the trial on Saturday and came in eighth on Sunday. Jen is adorable, with a lot of heart and talent. It's fun to be related to success stories!
I'm not currently entered in any trials, although (weather permitting) I might go to a one-day trial that Bev Lambert will be holding at her place in Connecticut on Saturday. I'm determined to spend as much of the winter as I can working on my ability to see crossdrives. I'm very pleased in general with Phyl: her pace has really come along, and she's taking a lot of responsibility on both the fetch and the drive for covering her line. It's a wonderful feeling to see your dog getting more mature and knowing that she's better than she was last year at this time. I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop and everything to fall apart, but for now we're remaining happily shoeless.
