Yesterday I drove out to Walla Walla to meet with Mary, who owns Moss's littermate brother Toss (no, I'm not kidding LOL). Toss is an amazing working dog and is qualified for the 2011 USBCHA Nursery finals. They are gearing up to attend this very prestigious sheepdog trial, which is held in September. This year, it's in Carbondale, CO. I'm very excited to see how they do! I'm sure they'll be amazing, they're a great pair.
Here is Toss. Isn't he gorgeous?
But anyways.... yesterday was a really fun day. We started off working some agility and freestyle in Mary's back yard. I used Cedar to help Mary and her awesome JRT, Kitty, get started with some cool freestyle moves, and then we did some agility jump drills.
After we finished with that, we drove over to Mary's friend Erica's house to vaccinate some sheep and do some chores. Toss is a very good chore dog and he was very helpful in getting the ewes loaded into the trailer. All except for one particularly nasty ewe with a lamb. She had no qualms about headbutting the dogs or chasing them across the field.
Toss tells the ewe to turn back...
She says "no way!"
But she turns.... for now.
Their troubles were just getting started...
Even Erica's dog, Tate couldn't get her into the trailer.
Toss tried his best, as did Tate, but eventually the three of us humans had to catch her and haul her bitch ass into the trailer. Sorry, no pictures of that ;)
A few hours and lots of running around later, we ended up back at Erica's house and worked our dogs on some fresh lambs that had never been worked by dogs before. Lambs like that tend to be really light and not flock together very well, which can be challenging. I was a little nervous because Moss hasn't worked sheep (and neither have I) in almost 5 months. I shouldn't have worried, tho. He was FABULOUS. He listened well, read his sheep intelligently, was a lot of fun, and didn't get us into any trouble... even if I wasn't totally on my A game all the time. I'd count that as a success! I just love working him.... he takes such good care of me, especially for a young dog.
My favorite moment was when two of the lambs split off from the group and tried to run for home. The draw was really strong on one end of the pasture. Moss calmly swept out and cut them off, holding them to the pressure. He just stood there, keeping them from breaking away and moving ever so slightly whenever they did. This dance kept going for about thirty seconds or so, until Moss finally took one tiny step forward and they ran back to the rest of the group we were working. What a good dog!
Erica snapped a few photos of him while we were working... thanks Erica!
Oh, and I actually remembered to do Saturday Blog Hop for once! :)
Hey, stopping by on the Blog Hop and now a new follower.
ReplyDeleteLooks like it was a really interesting and busy trip. I bet the dogs were totally zonked out by the end of it!
I told you that you would find a place to work sheep around here! Walla Walla is a pretty cool place and not that far away. I'm glad to see Moss didn't seem to miss a beat, I will have to come next time and check the place out.
ReplyDeleteAnd OUCH, Toss sure took it on the chin from that dang sheep.