Day Two!

Today was day two and we did okay for ourselves. First of all, after what can only be described as a disaster of an intermediate A course we somehow magically qualified AND placed fifth--wtf? I'll take it but I wasn't very proud of the run. We had ANOTHER melt down at the "z" chute and didn't make it through. So I attempted it once or twice again and then said "SCREW IT!" just moved on. Then we had a total meltdown on the assisted cross drive and it turned into a fetch. That was just embarrassing. I will say, our hold off the gate was FANTASTIC and she held it like a champ. The judge said I did a nice job of handling. Thanks! I felt like an ass and just started having diarrhea of the mouth and issuing commands like crazy. "Away LIEDOWN GoBYE LIEDOWN wait, liedown, walk up walk up , away, what? Wait. What?" LOL i guess it wasn't that bad then!

On B course we did well again but the fetch turned sour and knocked a gogillion points off. It was offline the whole way (apparently--I need to start reading lines) and then the sheep broke at the end for the exhaust. Soda recovered them nicely but the damage was done. I talked to Terry afterwards and she said I need more coffee in the morning and aparently everyone but me was seeing they were about to break. I must confess I wasn't watching the sheep. Classic NOOB.

The outrun was fantastic (no points off!) and the lift was good. I got one point off b/c one sheep didn't lift right away BUT my trainer was doing set out at the top and was watching. She said she got worried when the sheep didn't lift and not only that but I guess she has a reputation for putting wimpy dogs in their place. The ewe lowered her head and pinned her ears at Soda (I didn't see the ear pinning part). Terry said she thought the ewe was going to chase her and try to pound her but I told Soda to "get up there!"--that is her "don't take no BS from no one and bite if you need to" command-- and she did and the ewe turned and joined her buddies a few feet away and gave me no more trouble. Soda didn't need to grip, which was good because AKC gets all weird about it. I am glad for all those confidence building sessions in a packed pen saying "GET UP THERE!" because that gets Soda going EVERY TIME without fail. Terry was impressed with Soda and so was I, especially after she told me the ewe was being a turd!

We executed a very nice pen with a great hold off of it (yay!) but when it came to pull them out of the pen -in B course you pen, then unpen and take them over for a hold-- Soda, who NEVER wants chase, not even when she first started on stock, decided that today was the day and she was going to chase someone. I wonder if it was the sassy ewe who maybe gave her a look and tried to break for it. It happened really quickly so I didn't get a real good luck at what caused it. A quick "HEY YOU GET OUT OF THAT" fixed it but I was like "really?? REALLY?? TODAY???"

Anyway, the rest of the run went really well and we got third place. Yay!

Paige