Friday, April 29, 2005

In which we begin a new adventure

 
There's lots to report on since my last blog entry, and there's going to be lots to report on in the immediate future. Here are the exciting highlights:

• Phyl and I have been in a couple of trials since I last posted--nothing extraordinary happened in any of them, but we had fun and didn't disgrace ourselves. We're entered in a bunch more trials over the next month or so: Old Chatham (this weekend); the OVSDA Chinquapinwood Farm SDT (May 7-8); the Bluegrass (May 11-14); and the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair SDT (May 27-29). I'll try to report on each of those in turn, as they occur.
  
• Phyl's CEA DNA came back, and she's a carrier. It's not a big deal--I had half-expected that it would happen, since I'm pretty sure it's coming down from her father's side--but it meant that I had to find a dog who had tested clear of the CEA gene to use as a sire for her litter-to-be.
  
• At long last, I have decided on the father of Phyl's puppies: I'm breeding her to Amanda Milliken's Bart. I chose Bart for the following reasons: (1) I've watched Bart come along from adolescence, so I feel I know him better than I do many dogs who were already very much finished products before I ever saw them run; (2) I want to double up on Phyl's natural ability with sheep, the ease with which she can be handled, and the ease with which she was apparently trained. Bart has all of that himself; (3) I want to improve on Phyl's outrun and lift, which is idiosyncratic at best--Bart, by contrast, is almost always a 20/10 dog and has been since his Pro-Novice days; (4) Bart is well bred: his father is Stuart Davidson's ## Craig (whom Amanda imported and bred for the last couple of years of his life) bred to Amanda's Grace, who herself is the daughter of Amanda's Hazel. Hazel and Grace both came along very quickly, and both gave Amanda years of trialing success and enjoyment; and (5) Bart has tested clear of the CEA gene, so he's not a carrier.
  
• Phyl is in season! I plan to breed her to Bart after Old Chatham and then go back with Amanda to stay in her bunkhouse and finish up the breeding. (Naturally, I'm much too controlling and nervous ever to leave Phyl on her own!) Hopefully we'll finish up in time for me to run her in the Kentucky trial the following weekend; if it's too close to when we bred, I'll just skip that trial and run her in the Bluegrass.
  

So that's the news--I'll have a lot of driving and a lot of excitement ahead of me. Stay tuned!
posted by Heather Nadelman