Pictures from Herding Day!

This morning I found a happy surprise! Border Collie Rescue of MN posted pictures from the herding fun day on their Facebook page!

I was surprised to see how nice Secret's shots turned out. She actually looks focused and engaged in most of them -- Although you'll see there is a shot or two where she is clearly just on the chase. :o)

No surprise that they captured a shot of Secret doing what she does best -- Trapping & holding sheep in the corner! :o)

We had fun with Rascal last night. I played with Secret on our Novice course for a few minutes before they arrived and she did great! This was the first time I tried incorporating the weave poles into a course and she nailed it each time. I had opened up the weaves to encourage her to single-step, but I don't think I opened them quite enough. I'll play with that more this weekend.

We had an unfortunate incident of "littering the course" with treats from Bethany's treat pouch. I didn't realize quite how bad it was until I took Secret out for a turn while Rascal was getting a break. She COMPLETELY blew me off and went off looking for treats. The speed at which she went from running with me to nose on the ground was amazing -- I'm still trying to figure out how she even could tell there was food on the ground so quickly, but once she found the first one that was the end of it. She blew me off so badly that I ended up putting her in her crate in the house for a bit. I realize treats are terribly tempting, but that behavior is not cool.

The good news is that the dogs cleaned up all the treats during play time, so when we went to play on the course again after Rascal left, Secret was a million times better and ready to play. She's getting better at her "out tunnel" already and also had a couple of great rear crosses on course.

I set up a set of 12 weave poles for Bethany & Rascal to try and this was still set up during Secret's last session. My intentions were not to just throw 12 poles at her like this, but I figured what the hell, why not see what she does? She nailed them on her first time through! Huh, go figure! :o) She did pop early a couple of times with me on the off side, but I let her go slow and figure it out once and after that she had it.

I still plan on setting up two sets of 6 as suggested in the 2 x 2 program, but it was fun to see what she would do on a solid set of 12 so early in the game. She's a smart little girl.