Our First AHBA Trial

Have you heard the phrase, "I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached."? Lol, well that is me sometimes. I was reviewing the blog thinking about things I have already written about and what I should cover to be as thorough as possible when I realized that, though I made reference to it, I had not ever posted the video of Diva doing HTAD I (sheep) this past November.  It's hard to keep up with what I have emailed, Facebooked, or posted on the Aussie Board :). 


This video has some very good things in it as well as some key points when it was handler error leading to mistakes. We had never done any AHBA before and I found I did enjoy the venue. Aside from different courses it was nice to get to watch so many different herding breeds working. What you won't see on the video is that Diva and I stood in the middle of the pen for several minutes while the stock handler was having a very hard time sorting out my group. There was a lot of shouting, banging, and sheep crashing around! Diva did an amazing job of staying calm despite the excitement and that alone made me proud. 


After the free standing pen Diva went out to cover and I made the mistake of yelling "No" at her which caused her to peel off and come back in to fast. The sheep split and it took her a moment to put everyone back together. Definitely handler error! I should have trusted her to do what she needed to do. Overall it was a fairly smooth run and we ended up with a Q and 3rd place out of 13. 

We also did one HTAD I duck run that day which ended up not going as well. Diva still hasn't had much duck time so she doesn't rate as well with ducks as she does with sheep. Her enthusiasm and desire to work them gets the best of her. I also had not practiced having her work them off the fence so when we needed to do that she could easily get them off but she wanted to over flank and would send them back to the draw. No Q for us but a great learning experience!