Peaceful

Well not much going on around here lately. School is taking up a LOT of my time and I should not even be writing this now... so I will make it brief :)

Last weekend I took Lucy down south to her first sheepdog trial back since pregnancy. She did a good job, we had a little trouble syncing up to get good lines. I knew I was in trouble on the sheep side when she checked her sheep on a decently wide outrun at about 9 o'clock and broke way wide and deep. Squirrelly sheep alert! She was right, we had 4 white high-headed ewes who were about done for the day. They were nice and honest sheep, just difficult to line out. Between that and running in high winds it was interesting. 0-1-2-17 (oops)-1-10 (timed out trying to shed).

I came away with a great sense of peace that day. Spending a day in the sun (and frigid wind - brrr!) with good people, sheep and dogs was just what I needed. Bring on the vitamin D!

Rye had a great time at the trial, which you can read about at his blog: The Rye Way

Yesterday I took Lucy and Rye down to Fido's. It was cold, in the 20's. (Yes, for HERE that's cold!) There was a blanket of snow on the ground but most of the roads were in good shape unlike to the north and east of here.

Lucy looked good on sheep, but we have lost some ground on shedding cleanly while she was off work. She clearly knows the job and is keen to come in, but wants to stop short on the correct group rather than flanking through the gap when asked. We did a little work on that, and will do a LOT more later, going back to the "X" shedding exercise for a while to clean things up. The good news is, I identified a problem and actually know how to fix it?

We had a nice time working sheep, chatting and then Rye got to play with a new puppy friend named Bea. They had a wonderful time!

Ok, that's it. I'm back to writing a paper now (and letting Rye in and out).
Thanks for reading.