Off to Heppner

Yea! The first trial of the year! Boo-hoo! I don't get to go!
Scott left today for Heppner, Oregon for the St. Patrick's day trial.

Lucy and Roo waiting in their crates in the truck to leave this morning.

We still have some customer dogs here at our farm that are finishing up training and Scott likes to do a clinic at the end of this trip at Fido's Farm in Washington State, so I always stay home and mind the fort and dogs. He'll be home in 10 days to finish up training the customer dogs and then we will have 2 weeks left to finish up our trial dogs. Scott will have a jump on the season by going to Heppner where he can get a feel for how his dogs are working. It's a flat field with lambs to work so it tends to be a very difficult trial. It's not ideal for the first outing of the year but it will let him know what still needs to be worked on and how the young dogs are going to react at their first trial.
He'll be running 4 open dogs, Maid, Drift, Roo and Lucy and 2 nursery dogs. We decided to make a change for this trial with the nursery dogs. He'll still be running Don, but he's going to wait to debut Sleat until the Plum Lucky trial in April. These lambs are difficult, sometimes running and sometimes not moving so it didn't seem right to run Sleat on them when she has just started to show some confidence in driving. Tuque on the other hand, has a little bit more experience at this time of the year and is a confident driver. It seemed prudent to run her instead. (be sure to read Tuque's bio in the entry below this one)
Last year Scott thought it would be a good idea to sleep in the truck at the trial with only my Hudson's Bay blanket for warmth. After all, Admiral Byrd took one on his expeditions to the Antarctic. But Admiral Byrd must have taken several to the Antarctic because Scott found out he was not near warm enough and picked up a horrible flu. This year he is much more prepared, leaving early this morning and staying in a hotel during the trial. It should make for a much more enjoyable trip.
Maid had shotgun as they left because she won this trial last year but shotgun for the rest of the trip will be based on the dog's performances.

Maid keeping Scott company on the trip.

Scott has promised to give me updates tomorrow night. I will drag what information I can out of him but in the future, when I am at the trials, I promise pictures and scores from the top 10. I can tell you now that at Heppner there will be 53 open dogs and 15 nursery dogs. They are going to run 2 open runs over 3 days and 3 separate nurseries. The judge is Don Helsely from Idaho.