June 1st-2nd, 2019

VA ASC hosted a stock dog arena trial weekend the first of June.

I entered Marshal in every trial available and Nick did the same with Beru. We usually bring another dog for some extra socialization but this time we brought both kids instead.

The first day we ran ducks and cattle simultaneously. We ran course B on ducks and course D on cows. Beru was a little stand offish on her first run of ducks so Nick called it early. Marshal did much better on ducks but we usually drive our ducks and these ducks wanted to be fetched. The ducks were a different breed and trained much different than we were used to so the stock we went in feeling most confident on was also the stock we felt we struggled on the most.

The sheep don’t count as a struggle because we hardly made it past the gate before we had to give up.

At our first stock dog trial we met some amazing people who have helped us train on sheep and cows since we don’t have access at our own home. The sheep we usually practice on are very used to dogs and people and take a fair amount of pressure to move. The sheep at the trial would fly through the air if you looked at them wrong. Which is exactly what happened as soon as I opened the gate to let Marshal push our sheep out into the arena. Beru also liked making them move a little too much so for the rest of the weekend we decided not trial on sheep.

The cattle is where we both did much better than we expected. There are different courses for arena trials and this weekend happened to have two of the hardest courses possible; D and G. There is a certain title that you can achieve only by competing on every course so the trails try to cycle through them pretty regularly. We are not ready for that yet so didn’t think to check the course map ahead of time. Marshal and Beru did really well and even managed to get most of the way through the course. Where Marshal and I really excelled was un-pinning and re-penning the cattle. Beru did a great job of following Nick and worked well as his partner.

Marshal ended the weekend with three 2nd place awards, two 3rd place awards, and two 4th place awards. He also won the High in Trial Aussie award for his best run on ducks.

Beru ended the weekend with two 1st place awards, one 2nd place, two 3rd place, and one 4th place awards. She also won the High in Trial Aussie award for her best run on cattle. AND her started stock dog cattle title!!