Bad Dress Rehearsal Good Show

There is an old theater superstition that says a Bad Dress Rehearsal Leads to a Good Show on Opening Night.

I hope it holds true for dog trialing.

Our "Open"ing night will be in less than a week at Zamora when I run Piper in the Open for the first time. It will be the first time in Open for both Piper and for me. And we could not have picked a more difficult test for our first attempt.

Yesterday at Jennifer's was our final tune up session before the big jump. Jennifer has been devising some tough exercises for us the last few weeks to help us all get ready for Zamora. From our Saturday group there will be four (Jennifer, Jeff, Tricia and me)of us running six dogs in Open. There will be at least three (Sara, Nina, and Sharon) from Jennifer's Wednesday class also running four dogs in Open. There will be two (Ron and Dr. Bob) of us running two dogs in Pro Novice. Two of us (Jennifer and me) will be running a total of three dogs in Nursery.

Of the group I am the only one using Zamora to make the transition to move up a level.
I am the least ready for the challenge of next weekend but possibly looking forward to it the most. To be clear I have been told I am jumping the gun but we will see how Piper does. My impatience got to me and I did not want to wait another year to have a go at that fabulous field.

Yesterday we started working on a very difficult outrun with the sheep placed up on a bluff in some scrub. Virtually every dog had trouble with it at firsts and many dogs crossed the face of the hill at the bottom below the sheep. Multiple redirects and restarts were required. Piper struggled with this portion of the day's drills but - with a multitude of redirects - we got her out there. Her fetches were somewhat offline and this was the bad dress rehearsal part.

Later we did a driving drill on some lighter sheep where Jennifer put traffic cones out extending back from the inside opening of the drive panels about fifty yards to mark the drive lines. She did the same for the cross drive. In theory this should have simply made it easier to see the drive lines. In theory, that is. In practice it created a psychological barrier and many of the dogs struggled with getting the sheep in the lane, Piper included. Eventually we started to get it together and Piper did some good driving.

Our initial attempts at a shed were total failures as we could not get the sheep to settle well enough to get a split. We asked for and received another try at the end when the sheep were a little tired and less likely to run. We ended the session on a high note getting three in the ring sheds on our last go. So we are as ready as we are going to get.

Rylee was - for the most part - pretty good yesterday. Her come bye outrun (the sheep were set in the flat for the younger dogs) was very nice and she did a nice fetch. For some reason she simply would not go all the way out on her away outrun and required major schooling to eventually get around.

Her driving was good although I am often still having to use "here, here" to get her started on an inside flank. She is very cautious and stylish walking in on her sheep although if she gets to the side a bit much she does want to go their heads. She is paying better attention to me each time we go out and I am hopeful we will be able to complete the full Nursery course at Zamora.

Two things from Saturdays lessonwith Rylee - Jennifer suggested I stop drawing out my "Theeerrre" command and it seemed to work getting Rylee to turn in more sharply if I shortened the command to a quick "there". Second the "shh shh" sound will get Rylee to pick up her speed when needed. Both of these are good to know.

Anyway I hope the theater superstition holds true.