Canadian Open Second Round- First Update

Scott and Maid ran their second course around 6PM last night. It was starting to be cool and the sheep were getting better but Maid didn't luck out with her set. She got a high headed running Suffolk that just wouldn't slow down. The run got crazy and she missed all of her panels with the exception of two ewes who went through the drive panels. She actually did get the pen (which is now a different pen - it's more solid to make the sheep more comfortable, but smaller which won't, so time will tell if it is an improvement - so far it's not) but on her shed she gripped off.
Hemp and I ran our second round at about 8PM. It was nice and cool and the shadows were gone so I could see real well. They set our sheep high on the hill. Higher than they have been setting them and they did lose them twice on his outrun but he took his redirect and had a nice lift. He was pretty straight down the fetch line with a little bobble at the panels. Our drive was nice and we made all our panels. Hemp is really trying to work with me and although his stop was off, he was still controllable and even made the crossdrive panels by using a little "intelligent disobedience" taking a different flank than I asked. Turned out he was right. The same thing happened at the pen. We lost the sheep around and around and I asked him to go one way which wasn't working and he took it upon himself to go the other way and he got them stopped in the mouth. I had to get down low to keep those sheep from busting through the rope - many a handler is sporting a rope burn because the sheep ran through the rope. (can I say how proud I am of him getting the idea how to pen when 2 weeks ago we had never penned in our entire trialing career?!) We got them in and then ran to the shedding ring with about a minute left. I couldn't take as fast a shed as last time and probably lost a point or two setting it up but Hemp came in beautifully and had an eye to eye stop on one ewe before the judge called it. I was thrilled with that because he's never had one look at him like that before and I know that this past winter, he would have let that girl go. Wish I had a picture! Anyway, his score was a 74 which is much improved from his last one but it won't be enough to get us in the double lift on Sunday. Hopefully, we'll have Scott and Drift to root on. They run late today along with Lad and I.
THIS JUST IN...
Grant Musgrove (Hemp and Maid's breeder) just laid down a 90 this morning with his 11 year old Sam!

2009 Canadian Championships

We have arrived in Okotoks at the Bar Pipe ranch, the 2009 home of the Canadian Championships. We got a great swag bag with nice ball caps for all the handlers and Rollover for the dogs! They are going to have a long day tomorrow. They are starting with the Nursery and running both runs and then they are going to try to run through number 30 in the open. That means Scott will be running Donnie in the nursery and Maid in the open. I'll likely be running Hemp tomorrow too. There are 74 dogs entered in open and each dog goes twice for a combined score to get to the double lift so they need to get started. The weather is predicted to be fairly warm so a morning draw should be nice. These are the same sheep we had for the Madden trial but they have done some culling so hopefully they will be even for all the runs. It's a neat looking field with a flat drive but the sheep will be set on a pretty steep hill for the outrun for both classes. I'll get some pictures tomorrow. Our judge is Roddy MacDiarmid from Scotland and we have handlers here from Washington, Idaho, Alberta, BC, Saskatchewan, and Ontario.