May 14, 2008: Nothing much to report
It's been a relatively uneventful week! The weather has been superb - hot actually - and the grass is tremendously lush. A short thunderstorm with accompanying lightening on Sunday evening seems to have helped the growth of the grass (lightning changes nitrogen in the air into a form plants can use). The cows having just been turned out are still getting used to eating grass. For the first few days they were outside, the cows waited for silage to be delivered to them and were quite prepared to go hungry until the heard the tractor coming with their silage buffet. They seem to have gotten over this. The calves are very cute, extremely inquisitive and appear quite interested in watching the dogs going through their paces with the sheep.

Our dogs have been out quite a bit in the last week, although mostly first thing in the morning or in the evening. During the day it has been too hot for the sheep to have dogs working on them. We now have two sets of training sheep. A group of about 8 fast Beulah's for the older dogs, and a quieter group of 6 Buelah's for the younger dogs. The fast sheep are in a fairly large field with lots of interesting things to navigate around and through. The quieter sheep are in a fantastic 10-acre field. Angie got her pen to train on this week and it paid dividends where she penned the sheep at a trial on Saturday with Meg! Perhaps it was dumb luck.

We went to two trials on Saturday. The first one was Dolfor. We arrived early in the morning to get an early run, and as soon as we saw the sheep, we immediately regretted getting out of bed so early. They were fast, they wouldn't stay together, some would break away and just keep running, and they battled the dog at the top of the fetch, and again at the post. We could fairly accurately describe our runs as train wrecks. Our inexperience shone through as we both found it difficult to know how to manage these sheep. It wasn't that the sheep were bad. It was merely a case of not being good enough handlers to be able to manage them well. Meg had the best run of our three dogs with a valiant attempt at penning before timing out (this was the pen Angie did't get). The people at the Dolfor trial were super; really nice, welcoming and encouraging people. The trial field was superb with an early morning haze. Fantastic.

Onwards and, we hoped, upwards to the next trial. Felindre. Another fantastic trial field. It was an uphill outrun with good views of the entire course. The sheep were - tough! Gulp. After seeing a couple of runs, we were wondering why we got out of bed at all...but it was a trial, and that is always worth getting out of bed for, irrespective of the outcome. There were lots of people at Felindre. Lots of top handlers. They run trials in two sessions here. The first 45-50 dogs make up the first trial; the next 45-50 make up the second trial. You can only run your dog in one of the trials. By the time we arrived, we could only enter the second trial, which was just as well as the sheep were better in the afternoon than in the morning. Thankfully! It was late by the time we ran so the judge informed us he had a standard. But, in a nice gesture, the judge also left it up to each handler to decide when you took your dog off the course. You could run the whole course if you wanted to give your dog the experience, but the judge would stop judging if you lost more points than the standard. Most judges just call you off and that's that. Not this judge. So, we did get a run around the course. It wasn't a train wreck like the first trial, but it wasn't one you'd chalk up as a good one. Angie and Meg did get around the course, and even managed to get the pen...not that the judge noticed. He was on his way back from the loo about the same time! Ah well, perhaps one day they will actually get points for the pen. We have a lot to learn about trialling.

One person who was impressive was 85-year-old William Iorwerth and his very good bitch, Mai. William has a whistle that looks like it would be more commonly found on a soccer field than a trial field. He uses this whistle to blow a stop to his dog. All other commands are by voice - although he commands his dog sparingly. Mai seems to intuitively know what she has to do on a trial field. While they were not in the money this day, what a performance William and Mai put on. It was worth going to Felindre if only to see William and Mai run.

We learnt one thing about trialling in Wales. BRING YOUR LUNCH! The local shop closed at 1.30 on Saturday afternoon. We were starving by the time we got home!

We're off on a road trip for the next two weeks to take in a few trials. They'll be no blogs till the end of May - sorry!

William Iorwerth and Mai