So Excited I Can't Sleep!

After all of the talk and planning the Tee Creek trial is finally here. My stomach is doing flip flops and the excitement level has been rising. Yesterday Diva and I went out to Dawn's to get in one final pre-trial tune -up on cattle and things went very well. Diva was doing really nice in the pen work. Her confidence level is way up and I am no longer cheerleading. In fact now I am having to tone her down in some places. This makes me smile :-). Our first go on the cattle she was in full on drive mode. She happily put on her big trot and took the cows all around the arena (on the fence) but "forgot" that I needed her to make a space coming off the second panel so that we could set up for the middle. On one hand I was happy to see she felt good enough to blow me off and the other I was  annoyed to see her get sucked into the motion and forget that she can "fetch". How amusing that a year ago I complained about my fetching dog that was hard to teach the drive to ;-). I decided to re-pen the cows and take a break to re-group because I really didn't want to yell at her, especially after the nice pen work.

  The second time in the arena I changed my game plan entirely. Forget the big picture and trying to practice the course. What I needed to do was remind Diva she can get around the cows when asked AND continue her flanks until told otherwise. She did a really lovely take pen and I must pat myself on the back for finally remembering to open the gate and then position myself (and my stick) in suck a way that the cows started out the direction I wanted them to! It's only taken Dawn 3 years to get this through my head ;-). *Thanks Dawn!* From there I immediately sent Diva out to cover which she did but it was slicey. From there I started doing the half moon exercises on the fence and periodically asked her to try and make a space on the fence. The first time she was able to get through on the away side I threw her a party which really pumped her up. We did this both directions until I could see her confidence at making a space on the fence really growing. Then it was time to put some more control back on her by asking her to walk slowly into the heads and wait for them to move off. She did a very nice job of this and as luck would have it one of the cows decided no to turn away. I couldn't see from my vantage point but Dawn had a very clear view and when I told her to get a hold Dawn said she went in and nailed him good on the nose! We decided that was as good a place as any to call it quits so we put the cattle away and went to relax for a bit.

   Just for fun Dawn put her 4 Geese in the duck arena so that I could see how Diva reacted. She had been very interested in them from the moment we pulled in and she heard them honking. When I asked her to get around her eyes got big as saucers and you could tell she thought she had just won the duck lottery! This was the first time I had worked Geese too and I was pleasantly surprised by how nice they are to work and how honest they were! The dog needed to be correct but even if they were to pushy as soon as the dog backed off they settled. We worked on getting them through the center Y chute which turned out to be a fun challenge. The set up had to be just perfect and a few inches made for near misses. Diva and I will definitely take any chance we get to work Geese from now on and I would love to trial on them!


   So there you have it. I am so excited I can't sleep! I am looking forward to a weekend with Rae, Parfait, Dawn, and our Canadian friends. Watch out for the partying ;-). For the friends who won't be there I want them to know how much I will miss them. This means you Kelly and Amanda ;-). Diva and I are going to give it our best and at the end of the weekend I hope we will be able to count ourselves amongst those who have earned a WTCH.