At Home With The Armadillo

I think Gary P. Nunn said it best, "I wanta be home with the armadillo."  Well, the Armadillo Sheep Dog Trial is in the books, and we had a great time.  Huge thanks to John and Kathy Lewis for all their hard work, and for the excellent lunches.  The trial field on the banks of the Pedernales River was as good as one could hope for in these droughty times and gave the dog and handler teams plenty of room to show off their skills…or to show where things could be improved.  The Rambouillet ewes were a challenge.  

I think the only times they see a dog is each year at this trial.  They were a pleasure to work.  And, of course, the company couldn’t be better.  This is always one of my favorite trials.  

Not only is the field good, but there is plenty of room along the river to let the dogs stretch their legs.  There was even a little water left in the river.

The dogs and I bunked with Charly Kronberger since John was away harvesting a couple of nice whitetails for our freezer.  The south wind almost took us away on Friday, but Saturday we had a perfect, calm, early November day.  Rain was predicted for Friday evening, but never materialized.  We did have a fantastic view of the distant storm clouds illuminated by flashes of lightening and a beautiful almost-full moon.

 

I'm proud of my boys.  Their outruns were good (translation:  both dogs ran wide and deep and found their sheep!).  However, we are a couple of the teams mentioned above that have work to do; keeping the sheep on-line was a challenge, as was making nice, tight turns at the panels.  Bo had a problem with his woolies on his first run.  They escaped at the drive-away panels and ran to the exhaust pen so we retired.   His second run was better; he scored a 62 out of a possible 90  points.

Cody completed the course on both his runs, and finished fifth on his first run with a score of 61.  But what I’m most happy about was both dogs’ pen work.  In our class, which is the next-to-most-advanced, putting the sheep in the pen is the final element of the course and often the hardest.  The first Open Ranch course had 30 dogs entered.  Of those, only three penned their sheep, and Cody was one of those.  The ewes were very reluctant, and it took us over 2 minutes to get them penned, but we did it!  

Open Ranch 2 had 31 dogs, and only 4 penned their sheep.  Both Cody and Bo were successful, so I don’t mind bragging on them a bit.  Both were very patient, read their sheep well, and did exactly what I asked.  Good Dogs!  Thanks to Terri Nicolau for the pics (and videos) of Cody, Bo and me.  Here are some pics of our friends and their dogs. 

 It was a great weekend, and tomorrow we're off to Stephenville for the Texas Sheep Dog Association Finals and more great competition. Wish us luck and stay tuned!