National Finals '10 - First Day

The first day of the 2010 USBCHA National Finals was a good show. The handlers are being well taken care of by the hospitality folks and the weather, although a tad warm at times, never got too hot. The swag bag had lots of nice stuff in it including a utility/pocket knife with the finals logo on it and I got a new ABCA hat! We are finished with the first half of the first round and Alasdair is, not surprisingly, in the lead. The sheep are tough but his Nap son, Coll, did the nicest job of getting them around. They want to run like slightly nicer Meeker sheep. They don't run as fast on the fetch as Meeker sheep but they just keep going in the direction they want and the dog has to get almost to their heads to have any affect on them. This is resulting in most sheep missing the fetch gates and a fetch somewhere down on the right hand side of the field.
Herbert Holmes is in second place with his Keema. It was a very nice run that would have been even higher if the dog hadn't gotten a little excited and circled them in front of the crossdrive panels when it felt the draw there. It isn't the only one. Many of the youngsters found that pressure in front of the last panels and did something stupid. The sheep are not bad to pen and there are alot of pens but it is not a given and you have to be on your toes.
Jeanine Van Der Merwe had a smoking run going until she turned the crossdrive panel and seemed to relax and let down. Her bad line on the third leg, and no pen, hurt her.
Scott ran Diane Pagel's Kuro mid day.

Scott and Kuro sizing up the outrun

He sent him to the right since that is his better side and I don't think there is damage done by sending either way. Kuro needed one redirect as he came up the slight incline and then had a decent lift. The fetch started out as a short footrace, but Kuro caught them and got them back on line.

Kuro catching his sheep after the lift

It didn't look like it was possible to miss the panels because they were dead on line but the sheep are tricky and they slipped around it at the last second.

Kuro looking like he would make the fetch panels

After a nice turn around the post, Scott got Kuro onto the line for a right hand drive and they made a good drive panel.

Kuro on his fetch

As they do with every run, they started to race across the crossdrive of their own accord. Most of the time the sheep missed the panels low and Scott was ready for this and gave Kuro a comebye flank but he panicked and took the wrong flank, missing the panels like so many others.

Kuro missing his crossdrive panels after taking a wrong flank

The third leg of the drive was good and after one ewe dashed around the pen, they got them in with less than a minute to spare.

Scott and Kuro at the pen

His final score was a 122 which put him in 10th place for the day but we still have another day to go. Top 40 will rerun on Monday and the combined score will determine the nursery champion.
Scott is first up with Jr./Sweep tomorrow morning.