Smacked Down at the Throwdown

Jennifer's Wednesday training class issued a throwdown challenge to the Saturday class for a dog trial. High combined score wins. Winners get bragging rights. Losers buy lunch.

The trial was run as an Open trial on a tricky layout at Canines-N-Ewe, with a combination setting of two ewes and two lambs. The stock trailer substituted for the pen and the lambs especially were reluctant to go in. It was difficult but doable.

Oh and we brought in the same judge who will be judging the Soldier Hollow and the USBCHA Nationals all the way from her house on the edge of the trial field.

In a close competition - the Wednesday's - after adding an extra dog to make their total number of dogs 9 to Saturday's 6, managed to eke out a combined 6 point win So congrats and we Saturday people will have to eat crow and serve lunch.

It was a great deal of fun even though our runs were somewhat disappointing. Both the one that counted and the afternoon extra runs.

On Piper's morning run I sent her right and she took the wide road which I was trying to get her to take the week before. Problem was that for the fun trial this road dumped her off a hill right at the set out pens which were conveniently filled with very distracting sheep. As our judge reminded me I should have blown her in as soon as I saw where she was heading but she has spoiled me on her outruns and I fell victim to overconfidence. Lost nearly 4 minutes before blowing a recall to get her off the set out pens and bringing her part way back. Then sent her off on her way and she found the right sheep. Fetch was off line at least for the top half as the lambs wanted to pull the group to the handler's right. We had a pretty nice driveaway and some back and forth on the cross-drive. Overall we were set to lose 14 points on the drive except we timed out about five feet from the shedding ring due to time wasted at the set out pen. These points were critical as Saturday could have won if we had just made it into the ring. Despite the low score and outrun adventure I was actually fairly pleased that Piper did call off the set out pens and then listened to me fairly well afterwards. The drive - while not great - was actually an improvement given the difficult ewe/lamb combination.

After a wonderful pot-luck lunch some of us (mostly the defeated Saturday crew plus Lasoya) headed back out to do it again. This time I sent left but Piper came up a bit short at about 11 o'clock and we had a bit of an off line lift. Problems at the top end of the fetch again but got it together at the bottom. Our drive was slightly worse than the morning drive but I made a point of looking at my watch as time was running down and just encouraged Piper to "walk up. walk up" to make sure we got into the shedding ring and saved our drive points. We had less than 30 seconds left for the shed and with these sheep that simply was not happening.

Then we did a third run where we reversed the course since so few had managed to actually get to the finish work. The third run was Shed - Trailer - Single - Drive - Push sheep back to set out cone - recall dog most of the way - turn back - and fetch. Only one dog managed to do the course and that was Jennifer with Soot who got her fetch back into the shedding ring with about 1 second to spare. Sharon Roman and Nick went second and after working hard Sharon managed to get a shed with some very good body positioning, got her trailer and single, and got started on the first leg of the drive before timing out.

Piper was the only other dog to get out of the single ring and started on the drive. We managed to get a gap for the shed fairly early and Piper came in through the gap and turned the right direction. I did not think she really took control but Jennifer called it a shed and we gratefully moved on to the trailer. We got three in fairly easily (at least for sheep that did not want to go in) and the fourth tried to escape. Piper was having none of that and retrieved our escapee and we got the trailer fairly quickly. Then to send Piper into a small crowded trailer - something I have never asked her to do. But she went in with just a little encouragement took a quick nose bite and convinced those sheep to just explode out of the trailer. We worked hard on the single and I managed to get a gap three or four times but could not get Piper to come through. Finally I got another gap with her in good position and she came through and took control of the single. We did not have much time left so we tried to hustle through the drive and timed out on a poor effort at the cross drive. For practice, Jennifer let me do the partial recall and look back since we needed the sheep back in the ring. She took it like a champ even though we had never practiced this.

Overall - a really fun day.