AKC Herding Trial

Saturday morning, October 3rd, Kant, Echo, and I were loaded up in the car for another road trip. We went to Fido’s Farm in Olympia Washington for the Willamette Valley Herding Club’s AKC Herding Trial. When we arrived it was a drizzly morning and everything including the sheep was wet. I watched some of the A Course Cattle runs from the barn where it was dry and the cattle runs were about all you could see from there. Echo was running in her first Pre-Trial Test in the afternoon. About lunch time the rain stopped and I went down and watch a few A course runs. Then it was time for PT, Echo was the first dog to run so I did not get to see how the sheep were but I also had no time to stress. The judge was a bit too helpful and did not let me handle Echo like I wanted, I just felt I could not tell the judge to keep quiet so Echo was moving more then I liked and did not settle in. I was pleased with our run overall, I felt she was a nice distance off the sheep and her stand was good.

I could not believe how nervous I was. We were done by 3:30, after a long play time in the big field across the street we headed for dinner and the hotel. We all slept well that night.

Sunday morning was a bit foggy but no rain all day and in the afternoon the sun actually came out. Kant was running in Intermediate A Course and Started B Course, and Echo had day 2 of PT. Kant was 2nd to last in A course and did very well, she was 1 of only 2 dogs that Q’d in the class. It was a Come Bye outrun which is not Kant’s best side and she was a little tight but had a beautiful lift and fetch and a nice tight turn around the post. We had a little trouble getting started to the Y Chute but got all the sheep there with very few points lost, the drive to the Z Chute was great, and also to the Hold Pen. I still struggle with strategy for removing the sheep from the pen and getting them to the Cross Drive. I had Kant remove the sheep from the pen and it was perfect and they were heading down the fence for the cross drive and a little too much push pressure and not enough time to get around to cover and they headed straight through the cross drive panels to the exhaust gate. Kant did a great job of holding the gate and the repen was perfect. We do not trial much and my nervousness shows but I was so happy with how well Kant did. It was then time for Echo to have her second PT run. I had hoped it would be better then the day before since I knew this judge would not be so helpful. We were first in PT again but they ran 2 HT runs first. We got through the course but no at all like I had wanted. I do know if it was because I let Echo get away with so much in the first run but she was definitely out there for herself. We will be working on teamwork! Our last run for the day was Kant in Started B, Kant had a great outrun and she was almost to the sheep when the set out dog stood up because another dog was heading for the sheep and Kant stopped and the sheep saw the dogs and headed back to the set out and Kant was not in a position to cover sheep running from her. It was a bummer but things happen! We did not have to stick around for that score so we headed home and were able to get there before dark. It was a mixed weekend where my dogs did things that I really liked and where they also gave me lots to work on. Our next herding event will probably be the Sheltie National in March 2010.