A Nice Confidence Booster!

Creekside Tap, Winner of Quechee Scottish Festival Open Sheepdog Trial AND Spring Valley Open Sheepdog Trial - 2008 Vermont State Champion

(Photo by Grace Smith)

This past weekend, Tap, Pat and I competed in the "Vermont State Championship" Open sheepdog trials. The first day takes place at the Quechee Scottish Festival on the Polo Fields of Quechee, VT and the second days' running takes place at Steve Wetmore's Spring Valley Farm in Strafford, VT.

Some people knock the Quechee trial as being "easy". The field is small yet oddly shaped, with the outrun no more than 200 yards, up a steep hill. The sheep are a fit flock of dogged Kathadins, who don't like to be pushed to hard and they don't run well for dogs whose flanks are too big, too much and too fast. So yes, they are not "fight me" sheep, they don't charge or stand up to the dogs (for the most part, anyways!) but they also present some different challenges. Dogs and handling must be precise and quiet. Dogs must be able to read the situation and pace themselves at the correct spot behind the sheep in order to make any sort of steering possible. Yes this is true of all sheep, but sheep that must be muscled into moving off the dog are very different than light, twitchy sheep such as the ones we ran on this past weekend.

Anyways, Tap managed a beautiful run, moving perfectly with her little square flanks and correct pace - she was the only dog to manage any sort of controlled cross drive (even Pat's sheep ran like racehorses up the hill, with only a well timed huge flank able to steer them back down the hill) and in consequence, won the trial with a score of 90/100. Some say, "nice draw of sheep", but on our "Victory run" (an exhibition run with 5 sheep instead of 3), Tap handled the group with the same quiet precision and ran near perfectly yet again.

On Sunday, the trial moved to Steve's farm, where the same flock (not Steve's own) was run on the famous Wetmore hill - a steep forested hill side - with an interesting course consisting of a near blind gather from amongst the trees, down through fetch gates and through a brook, a drive back up the right hand side of the steep hill, over another brook (where many dogs couldn't get the sheep to cross at all), back down over a bridge, a sharp turn through another set of gates, to a "W" chute. It is an interesting, non traditional course, perhaps reflecting more practical work than the previous day's running, but Tap managed to WIN the trial again! Pat got a decent score and may have made it into the points, but I don't have the final scores in front of me. After the trial, the trial manager ran the top 3 dogs in a Double Lift fun run with 2 packets of 5 sheep. Tap also won that as well! So a very consistent and confidence boosting weekend for us!

Countdown: 8 days till we leave...