I hope you all watched the on line feed today. They did a really good job and it was free! Assuming you all did, I will just give a brief mention about how it went.
Scott hates it when I brag on him but the reality is that he was awesome today. Sure, we expect him to be good with Don but the real kicker was that June beat him by a half a point! Not much to say about those runs except they did everything they were supposed to in a smooth and on line manner. Scott got a 195.5 with Don and a 196 with June. (out of 210)
Of course, Scott will tell you that he'd rather give up the win today to have a win tomorrow and I will be keeping my fingers crossed and sitting on pins and needles, probably forgetting to breathe while he runs them.
Laddie, Laddie, Laddie. It takes both of us to get the job done. Sometimes it's me, sometimes it's him. Today it was him. He got lost on his outrun and I gave him a couple of redirects to widen him out. Then he went too wide and tried to go get the exhaust sheep from the nursery field. Fortunately, there weren't any there and I was able to get him back to the correct sheep. After that, it just wasn't very good. He was just kinda late on getting over on his flanks. We made our fetch panels and actually had not a bad drive away making the panels nicely but had a pretty sloppy crossdrive and just missed the panels high. We again had a good shed, and this time a nice pen but when I called Laddie in on the single, he came in and held it good enough for most trials but this is the Nationals and they wanted a little more so they didn't call it. We tried one more time before the time ran out and ended up with a 113. I thought we'd be the last dog with a score but actually we weren't and we ended up 28th overall, which is nothing to brag on but it's higher than I've ever been at the finals. Laddie will probably be an old dog by the time I get in the double lift but we'll keep trying. And in his defence, alot of dogs didn't listen to their handlers when they told them where to find the sheep and had to retire early. Lad did listen, and got there, and perhaps getting lost is what put him off his game. I knew the single was going to be a problem ahead of time. Spoiled dog will probably still get to sleep on the bed.
They will do a draw tonight for the finals order tomorrow so all I can tell you right now is to tune in at 8AM and see who runs when.
Oh, and a big shout out to Brian White from California (his wife has the Honest Dog store with really cool border collie themed clothing) who is in his first finals and made the double lift today! Scott and I are really proud of him!!
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