Competitive Outrunning

It was a very fun group for lessons today and slightly smaller than expected. Piper and I were joined by Jeff Blackstone & Dusk, Tricia Guidry with Tipper & Tara, Gayle Cory with Milo and a special guest appearance by Tierney Graham with Brisco.

Tierney is trying to tune up Brisco for the Nursery National Finals and Jeff and Tricia are both running very successfully in Open so it could have been expected to be a competitive day of lessons. And it was ! But not necessarily how one would have expected.

Near the end of the day - just for the fun of it - we decided to send the dogs on a blind outrun to pick up the sheep from the other side of the canines n ewe field. That's right dogS. As in plural. As in four of them at once. Brisco and Tara went away and Piper and Dusk went come bye. Soon we had a very confused group of sheep who are used to outnumbering the dog coming over the hill in a controlled fetch with four dogs on their rears. It was actually quite amusing and fun.

We also worked early in the day on driving some runners and Piper struggled mightily at this although it got better as the day went on. Basically she was over flanking from what was necessary and sending the sheep on a serpentine pattern. She did get better as we worked on getting her to just walk in at a controlled pace and eliminate much of the flanking.

We also did some shedding practice and I had serious trouble getting the home flock sheep to stay still. We eventually got it ad managed a couple sheds.

Then we did outruns and partial fetches before turning the sheep around. Unlike the last two weeks we largely left the dogs alone. Piper did well at this and then we moved the sheep to the other side of the hill where they were not visible. Piper's come bye outrun then was way wide (almost to the junkyard) and deep. But soon enough sheep heads popped up over the hill and headed only somewhat off line. On the away side Piper (and the others) needed to go behind one set of boulders and then bend out along the side of a hill. I used a redirect whistle on the fly to help with this and she took it very well. Although I obviously could not see either lift on the other side of the hill Leon (set out person) told me that Piper was appropriately deep and hit the right spot for controlled and proper lifts.

It really was a fun lesson today and a very good group.