Hi all... Huge weekend is passed. I entered my first sheep herding trial and it RAINED off an on Saturday, yuk.

But thankfully when it was my turn it wasn't raining.

I entered Taite in Herding Tested Sheep and this is just a pass fail to see if the dog has herding instinct. Can you change direction, will they stop and come to you when called. We passed both days. You only need two of these, so she now gets to have the title HTS after her name. She feels real important.

Pete, my already trained advanced dog, was entered in Herding Started Sheep. You have to send your dog to pick up 4 sheep and bring them to you. 'Fetch' down the field, turn at a stake, then move thru four obstacles to the final 'penning' of the sheep. You have 10 min to do this. The field is 100 x 200 '

The first day, I was being so critical of myself, I was saying that was points off there, and there, crap. At the 4th obstacle, for some reason I was thinking it was worth 10 points and I know I lost 5 points and almost just gave up, as that is an NQ. (non qualifying)

Thank goodness my inner voice piped up and said well you paid your money, you might as well finish this and not just blow off the rest of it. So the sheep are by the pen and they should be somewhere else, so I told Pete to go get them and he was more than happy to do this. We then drove them along the fence to the pen and put them in. I'm all blah blah blah at myself.

Then they give out awards and we got 2nd place! Really?? You get your score sheet and I saw that obstacle was worth 20 points so I'm really glad I didn't give up!

the second day was much better as I was in a better mind set and I just said go with the flow, make it look like a dance. We did really well, felt great. Boy was I surprised when we were announced AND High in Trial Sheep! Petey is the man! He needs to get 3 qualifying scores before he can add the title HSSheep after his name.

Then went to check on the last cut he got on Tuesday was causing major fluid build up on his knee when I checked him Friday. I wasn't happy. The fluid was down quite a bit Sunday, thankfully. I got a quick ride in and he was really good, cantered w/o bucking! We even walked down the road some ourselves down the path to the forest preserve. Didn't go far, then turned him and went back home. He was very calm being out by himself, loved that too!

This morning, I got up early and got in a and it was misting.. I usually never go out in bad weather, but I just got a pair of Nike Swift Tights and they are big on keeping you dry. They were great tights! Looking forward to ramping up the miles in May!