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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
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
In which we report on some Kentucky adventures
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It's the day before the Bluegrass, and right now I'm sitting in a Red Roof Inn in Lexington, feasting on a nutritious diet of Ramen soup and twinkies, waiting for time to pass. Since I borrowed a clunky laptop from work (which comes complete with a dialup modem, an almost forgotten dinosaur to me), I thought I that might as well update the blog to help pass the time. Phyl and I went to the Hanley's OVSDA trial this past weekend in Lexington. We had a wonderful time: the Hanleys have a lovely farm, and they had brought in some nice, undogged commercial woolies for the event. Bruce Fogt judged the first day, and Linda Fogt did the second. And, miracle of miracles, we did well: we came close to placing on the first day, and we actually *did* place eighth on the second day, adding another 2.6 USBCHA points to our meager little total. Here are the details of our runs for the curious:
Phyl did a nice outrun to the right (it's been so long since I've sent her right in a trial that I was glad to see that she still *had* a right outrun!), and lifted well, for a 19 and 9. Her fetch was really beautiful (many dogs had trouble with the various pressures on the field, but Phyl didn't let it bother her), and Bruce gave her an 18. Her drive was pretty decent (with my usual unsure crossdrive line), and we made both panels. Unfortunately, I pulled the sheep back through the crossdrive panels as I turned them, and we lost six points that were completely within our grasp: our potentially 25 point drive crumbled to a 19 point drive before my very eyes. *Sigh*. Phyl did a great job penning the sheep, a task which confounded quite a few other teams: because of the setup of the pen, its proximity to the exhaust, and the fact that the sheep were not at all afraid of people, penning was a task that took a dog with plenty of authority. Phyl got an 8 on her pen (the sheep slipped around the pen partway before we got them in, as they had with almost every other handler before us). Unfortunately, I lost my head in the shedding ring, calling her in with a much-too-excited voice (and that never works). We had a very nice hole, and I'm sure if I'd just been calm (and not stood in her way), all would have been well. But because of me, we lost our chance to shed entirely and never even got a piece of it. So our total score was a 73, which put us in about 13th place out of 47 dogs. If we hadn't had the pullthrough, we would have been 5th; if we hadn't had the pullthrough and if I'd managed to get a 10-point split (and any decent handler *would* have managed to do that), we would have won the trial. Trialing is peculiar indeed!
Day 2 was both better and worse. Phyl's outrun was tighter, for a 17 and a 7. Her fetch had the potential to be even better than the fetch of the day before--she did all the hard parts beautifully--but I started setting up the turn around the post too early, and as a result I let the fetch line drift as the sheep got closer and closer to my feet: Linda gave her a 16. Our drive was decent (similar to the drive of the day before, without the pullthrough), for a 24.5. This time we had to single off a sheep before the pen. I called Phyl into a hole, and for one reason or another (probably my tone of voice again), she didn't come in. I made another hole (I think on the tail rather than the head, although I can't be sure), and this time she came in nicely. It was only a 3-point shed, but sheds in trials have been few and far between for me lately, so it pleased me mightily. We got a 10 point pen after the shed, for a grand total of 77.5 and eighth place. Go, us! :-)
(By the way, I have two new tools of the trade to help me out at trials: I finally broke down and got a pair of those yellow sunglasses that fit over my glasses, and they actually *do* seem to help me see the line better. And I now have a watch with a countdown timer, so I can consult it as I go to the shedding ring in order to give the impression that I have vastly different shedding strategies available, based on the amount of time I have left. Hah!)
The handler's meeting for the Bluegrass is tonight, so I'll have to confront the field and face the fact that I'm actually going to have to run on it tomorrow. I'll check in after our first run, and let all of you know what's happening. Think good thoughts!
Thursday, May 05, 2005
In which we report on big events
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Yes, I had a good time at Old Chatham; we didn’t place, but Phyl worked beautifully, and it was certainly our best Old Chatham runs to date. (Some of the longtime readers of this blog might remember that Old Chatham was one of the first Open trials we ever entered, and the results of that first year were less than spectacular--Phyl used to have problems holding a fetch line when there’s a lot of pressure to her away side, and Old Chatham seems to have exactly the setup that confounds her. (For anyone interested, here's the blog entry about our very first Old Chatham trial.) So I was very pleased this year with her: she held the pressure well, and we had no problem making our fetch panels on either run. Her driving was good, but we didn’t get a shed either day (and I messed up the pen on the second run, crowding the entrance so much that Phyl couldn’t put them into the pen. We ended up with a one-point pen, which turned an otherwise decent run sour). I’m getting a little tired of having runs that everyone thinks look great but that nonetheless produce low scores, but I’m still proud of Phyl and happy to be running her.
The trial report, however, pales in comparison to the few days after the trial, when I went up to Amanda Milliken’s farm in Ontario to breed Phyl to Amanda’s Bart. (Everyone should be able to live in a guest house on a beautiful farm while breeding their bitch.) It’s done! It’s really hard for me to believe that, after three years of agonizing over this litter, trying to decide to whom to breed and when it was going to happen, the whole thing was over so quickly and so easily. The earth didn’t move; no trumpets sounded. I simply let Phyl out of her crate, Amanda let Bart out of his kennel, and in about thirty seconds (no foreplay here!) the two of them were tied. (Nobody, by the way, can convince me that either dog really liked this odd process of being physically linked to another dog. Sure, the sex part might be mildly enjoyable for them, but who on earth came up with the idea of this literal canine ball and chain?) We did three breedings: one on Sunday night right after we arrived, one on Tuesday morning, and the final one on Wednesday morning. (The Wednesday morning was the most interesting: a service person showed up at Amanda’s with Phyl and Bart tied and me hovering over them worriedly. Since Amanda wasn’t around, he just stood around awkwardly, watching the dogs silently. No sense of privacy here, but neither Phyl nor Bart seemed to feel the need to retreat in shame. The guy told me afterwards that he never knew that dogs could “breed backwards” like that. Live and learn!) So that’s that: with any luck, there should be puppies growing inside of Phyl right at this moment. I’m very nervous about the whole thing, of course, and I hope nothing awful comes out of it. At least Phyl and Bart looked good together, and I really do believe in this cross. We’ll see if I end up eating my words!
Tomorrow I’m off to Kentucky for Laura Hanley’s OVSDA trial, followed by the Bluegrass during the course of next week. After that, I’ll have one more trial (the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair) before calling it quits and waiting for the pups. Life is getting really interesting!
