By Hilary Flower
Photo credit to Celeste Lacroix except where noted otherwise.
Thank you to Celeste and Brian for opening up their farm and hosting a wonderful Fall trial. A three day OBCC/ NEBCA/ USBCHA sanctioned trial. Offering NN/ProNovice/Ranch/Nursery and Open classes. Due to low entries in some of the classes a third run was offered.
Our Judge : Werner Reitboeck
The Trial field:
The sheep:
120 ram lambs (rented from Sarah Loten’s flock) were used for Pro Novice/Ranch/Open and some of the Nursery runs. The lambs had only been dogged in large groups, so we worked them in groups of 10 or so a couple of days before the trial.
They were set in a group of four. They were quite consistently challenging as some of them didn’t have a lot of respect for a dog the first day. They seemed to change their attitude a little the second day.
For the Novice classes, two ewes and one lamb from the home flock of 40 were used. They were dogged and people orientated, but a little wily and heavy to the exhaust if the dog didn’t treat them with respect or didn’t cover or came in flat at the top end.
The open course consisted of an outrun of approximately 250 yards, then lift, fetch, drive, split, pen single. The outrun seemed longer as the field was a lovely flat, lush field with a small dip at the top of the outrun which made the lift a little difficult to see at time (especially, if you’re only 5ft tall. :)
The Weather:
Was perfect on the Friday/Saturday. Sunday morning we had thick fog. The weather forecast said the fog would stay until close to noon. Fortunately, the forecast was wrong and we were able to start running around 10.30am finishing up around 4.00pm.
After a hard couple of days on the trial field, the sheep lined up to take a well deserved dip in the pool!
Photo credit to Stacey Rember
1st & 2nd placing in each class
