Sheep Camp

One of the highlights of my visits to Buffalo is the time I get to spend working sheep with my dogs.  For several years, “Sheep Camp” has taken place with Wendy Auzqui on their family’s ranch east of Clearmont, WY, just a short half-hour drive from Buffalo.  In addition to her work on the ranch, Wendy breeds, trains, and trials working border collies.  If you look back at previous blog posts, almost every year has photos and descriptions of my time picking her brain and learning how better to work my dogs.  

This year, on my first visit I was greeted by a litter of seven-week-old pups from the outstanding bitch, Quirt.  I first met Quirt in the summer of 2019 when she was just beginning her training as a working dog.  She and Wendy have gone on to success in many dog trials, perhaps the most notable was her first-place finish at last year’s Calgary Stampede World Stock Dog Champion-ship.  (I had wondered why Quirt didn’t compete in this year’s Stampede, and now I know; she was concentrating on motherhood.)  I’ll bet these pups will go on to become outstanding stock dogs...

as will this little girl, a daughter of Wendy's good dog, Frank.

Cody, Bo, Dutch and I have already had several working sessions with Wendy.  Here are a couple of photos she took of the boys working sheep in her arena. 

Much of our work was done on Wendy and John's hay fields, where the dogs could practice their big outruns.

I was also able to reconnect with Linda Lulias, and spend some time working sheep at her place.  

Here are photos of Gill and Jessie, Linda's trial dogs, honing their herding skills.

Saturday, we had an opportunity to get in a little impromptu trial work at the annual Big Horn Basque Club celebration.  As part of their gathering, they had arranged for a dog trial demonstration that we were fortunate to be a part of.  We were happy to have neighbors Bill & Sherri and Ross & Carole in the audience.  Carole enjoyed an up-close-and-personal meeting with some of the lambs.

The fresh lambs were a challenge for all the dogs, but gave them good experience.  I was pleased with Cody’s performance.  

He brought his lambs around the course and to the pen…but then the youngsters realized they could fit between the rails of the enclosure. Two of them slipped through and escaped, and the third ran to the set-out pen and jumped back in with her friends.  I sent Cody out to retrieve the escapees and put them back in the enclosure, but we lost the opportunity to finish the course.

Bo had a difficult time with his lambs.  They stuck to the setout pen like glue and he wasn’t able to get them headed down the course.  I finally helped him to exhaust them, but our run was over.

Dutch was only one of two dogs that penned their sheep, but we missed winning by three seconds.  In reviewing the video of his run, I concluded that most of our problems were due to his handler not being clear with her commands.  Hopefully our communication will be better next weekend.  `

It has been a great couple of weeks, and we look forward to more "sheep camp" and trial experiences before we leave the end of September.