AHA! Moments

It's interesting how the mind processes things. Robin is such a patient sort - and *finally* on Saturday she got through to me so I could help Nick better. I've been SO busy watching my dog that I often forget to watch the sheep. Sometimes I *feel* the sheep but same thing - forget to watch them. He doesn't always feel his sheep, so we've been a bit bumbling at times and often find ourselves frustrated with each other.

Robin and I were standing at the top of the hill, and Nick was bringing the sheep up the hill to us. At one spot I lost sight of my dog, but not the sheep. It was in that one AHA moment that I was able to focus on the sheep and help my dog be where he needed to be simply by watching my sheep. The next day I worked on putting him out to the side to hold the line by catching the eye of the lead sheep - as opposed to working the whole group from behind by his body position. To my surprise he decided to PUT himself out there, and I could just see his head coming down and the eye that I have always thought was in there was coming out.

So to a certain degree we BOTH had AHA moments.

It was a good weekend. And yes, that is a crouching Nick. He's so leggy that even when he crouches he looks tall. HAH!

We worked on getting Linc's flanks shaped more correctly. It's in there, but he sometimes can be resistant to input - and a lot of times he gets tense and whereas someone with experience can nip it in the bud often he's all ratcheted up by the time I realize I need to do something. Usually by that time we're butting heads. So we worked on getting him to bend out appropriately, and to keep his attitude right. To keep MY attitude right also.


We're probably going to stay relatively close to home this month, and I probably won't do any trials until Dr. Ben's at the end of May. I can't believe that just a year ago was mine & Nick's first pro-novice run at Dr. Ben's. In a few weeks I have a good friend from college coming up to visit, and Tom Forrester is coming down that same weekend to shear at Julie's. I never miss a chance to hang with Tom. I hope to get Linc out to Julie's a good bit over the next few weeks though - I think he's going to start coming along.

Photos by Robin French