Tell and Lisa's big adventure

Tell and I entered the Red Deer Highland Games trial. I didn't mention it on the blog because I figured that way I could always back out at the last minute and no one would be the wiser - if you remember the title of my last entry, you understand why...
At any rate, I decided we'd give it a shot, plus we had other reasons to head south (more on that in a bit), so off to Red Deer we went.
Long story short, Tell won the nursery class. Given that he's had some confidence issues lately I was completely caught off guard with how he ran at the trial and for the first time in a while I found myself slowing him down and stopping him, which was a very nice surprise. I'm hoping that now that I've got that "first trial" out of the way that I'll feel a little less like throwing up next time I go to the post. ;-)
After the trial we headed south with Louanne to Scott and Jenny Glen's.

On our way to Scott and Jenny's we passed through Vulcan. It turns out that Louanne is a huge Trekkie - who knew?


Vulcan's "big thing" - the Starship Enterprise

Louanne begged me to take her picture with the rest of the Enterprise crew. I was of course more than happy to oblige.

Live Long and Prosper, Louanne.

I finally dragged her away from Vulcan as I was really looking forward to getting to Scott and Jenny's.
Tell and I had a lesson with Scott. He gave me a number of exercises to work on with Tell.By the end of the lesson I could see a huge improvement and by the next day he seemed like a new dog. The whole trip was worth it just for that, but there was more to come...

I also picked up a new dog...

Meet Hope.

Hope was bred by Alasdair and Tricia MacRae. Tricia has run him this year as a nursery dog where he's done quite well finishing in the top five overall at the Bluegrass.

He's a sweet dog and is settling in very nicely.

I'll take some better pictures of him when I get a chance. At the moment it's raining hard enough that I'm thinking about building an ark.

I've had Hope out on sheep a couple of times and it's been loads of fun. I'm looking forward to trialling him.

All in all, not a bad weekend! A huge thank you to Scott and Jenny for finding Hope as well as for being great hosts for the weekend. The company was great and the food was fantastic. I'm looking forward to heading back down their way for their trial in July.

Two steps forward, one step back

The blog seems to have been devoted to everything BUT Border collies and sheep lately, so here's a bit of an update.
I'm still completely obsessed with it all. If anything I'm getting worse, but I'd be lying if I said that it was all easy. It's a really steep learning curve.
Tell and I (mostly Tell) have moments of brilliance. Talk to me on one of those days and we can take on the world.
Then there are those other days where the wheels fall off the cart.
Mostly it's a bit of both.
All of this leads to more obsession. A person can kill a lot of time thinking about the "what ifs", the "how abouts" and the "I should haves" of their last training session.

A wee gathering at Abe Marshall's

Most of you know that I got Tell from Abe Marshall. Abe's a great guy and it turns out that this is his 50th year of residence in Canada since immigrating here from Scotland (of course). Dixie planned a party and folks came from all over for the celebration.

There was a piper.

plenty of Border Collies

A great meal

(sorry, no picture - I was WAY too busy eating)

And lots of fun working dogs

Abe and one of his dogs fetching what's at the end of the rainbow...

What a difference a month makes

Our front yard late last month...

Our front yard today...

Buster approves

Travis saves the day!

Tell and I went out to sheep and moved their nets around this afternoon. We spent a couple of hours out there in the rain, moving the nets, cutting down little trees in the way, shifting the sheep around. By the end of it we were both soaked. So, off he went to his cozy dog house, and off I went to my cozy human house. I was all set for a cup of tea, and a little internet surfing.
Odd thing was, there was no internet. We've got wireless high speed so I blamed the dish, the weather, the router, the provider.
I phoned Travis who suggested that I do "something else" for a change. I had just spent the afternoon doing "something else"! Probably the first stages of withdrawal were showing...

So, when he got home he checked things out and then called MCSnet when he couldn't get things working. Among other things they suggested that there might be a problem with the line going into the house. I took a peak outside...

SABOTAGE!!

The line was definitely at fault and I have pretty good idea whodunit.

Nope. not guilty at all.

MCSNet said they'd be out maybe tomorrow, maybe Monday. Apparently the look on my face was too much for Travis. He said he'd see what he could do.

My Hero!

You're reading this, so you know he managed to patch things up. Handsome AND handy!

My other new set of wheels

From what I understand, the most common way to exercise sheepdogs is to run them with quads. Very effective I'm sure. We don't have a quad. Our neighbour who very kindly lets us use his trails is not too keen on quads either.
So, I have come up with an alternative means of conditioning the dogs.

Meet the Alpha Dawg.

It runs with a 3 dog power engine.

We leave paw prints instead of a carbon footprint.


And it sure beats walking the dogs!

Field trip

Some would probably say that I've gone about things a bit backwards. It certainly wouldn't be the first time. I got a border collie and sheep so that I could trial. This weekend I went to watch my very first field trial to see what it was all about...
Tell and I headed to the deep south (compared to Athabasca, Okotoks IS the deep south!) and spent a couple of days at Louanne Twa's. Louanne gave me some much appreciated help with Tell and I had a great time hanging out with her and her dogs. For his part, Tell seemed thrilled to death to be hanging out with Border Collies for a change - I guess they all speak with the same accent or something.

A meeting of minds.

This is Louanne and her Lowline cattle. Notice that they aren't much bigger than her sheep. Very cool - as is Louanne's striking pose for this picture!

On to the main event. I went to my first trial...and...I loved it. Phew! Imagine if I had decided it wasn't for me. Try explaining THAT to Travis...

Louanne and Isla bringing the sheep around the post.

So, now that I've been to my first trial I see that I don't have to be quite as hard on myself as I have been - even the experienced guys get their flanks mixed up occasionally, and that I have a LONG way to go - the double lift and international shed are CRAZY HARD. Something to shoot for.

Amanda Milliken and Clive at the pen.


Louanne's pup Risk learning how a sheepdog should behave.