Rocky Ewe trial

We drew up 5th. The sheep were being pretty nice up until our turn.  Z and I had the rotten luck of drawing a rouge group of sheep.  They left the set out and boogied down the field as my dog got to about 10 o'clock.  He was way wide and deep, so the departure of the sheep was not his fault.  The set out person made a valiant effort to control the group, but alas no luck.  This caught me a bit flat footed, but I blew a down and flanked him back over.  He listen to everything I asked and we nearly got the sheep back on line.  Just skimmed the fetch panels.  I stopped Z and let the sheep drift the last few yards to the post and gave them a minute to breath.  All 4 were big eyed and up headed.  I knew I was going to have to work hard to keep things from going totally sideways.  I flanked Z to make the post turn and he kicked out nice and wide and the sheep began to have another mental melt down.  Blew a steady when the sheep were pointed in the general direction of the panel.  And they were off, we basically had to contain them rather than actual work them.  The course was pretty sort and I struggled to get our drive away line straitened out, but we made the panel. Had a great panel turn as the sheep wanted to make for the exhaust again we worked on containing them.  I thought I had a great line, but just skimmed low, cost us a ton of points.  There were quite a few people who did the same.  Turned that panel and they fought to go to the exhaust, so again another tough line to make.  Of course being the sheep they are they walked right into the pen.  My shed never happened, every time I moved my dog or myself the sheep tried to book it away.  When I received my score, it was pretty much as I expected 65, it would have been nice to make the shed and at least kept half my points from that ;).  Ho hum better luck next time, right?

I was super pleased with my dog.  He listened to EVERYTHING I asked him, tried his guts out and kept his head together.  He had sort of a cockeyed, sheep eating look about him as we turned the post.  I haven't seen this side of him before.  Although as he is getting more mature he is getting more pushy and a little bit of a handful.  On my side of the team I only took my whistle out of my mouth 3X and this was for corrections when he would feel like he was getting tense.  So that's all for now.  I don't know for sure when our next trial will be just yet.