May 22-24th 2020

The Greater Atlanta ASC did an excellent job hosting a social distancing friendly stock trial. They started the long weekend with two farm trials; one on Thursday and one on Friday. Nick and Beru participated in their first ever farm trial on Friday. They also competed in all arena trials on Saturday and Sunday. Hilda competed in her first ever arena trials Saturday and Sunday, handled by Rachel. We also brought Poe along with the help of new handler Marc for their first arena trials.

The farm trials have four components; cattle, sheep, ducks, and mixed. Most of that is incredibly similar to the arena trial, but there are a lot more pens to put stock in and out of and some open pasture work. The mixed group was a mystery to us, how were we supposed to herd cattle and sheep at the same time, or even harder sheep and ducks at the same time. We were slightly disappointed to find out they were just smaller quick sessions with the animals separate. Since it was their very first farm trial Nick chose to compete in just the sheep since that is the stock that Beru is most confident working. They did an excellent job, their only mistake was in the sorting pen but they fixed it quickly and got a very high qualifying score and a complement on their working style from the time keeper.

Nick also had a high goal for the weekend. He wanted Beru to win the high-combined non-wtch dog award, to win this award Beru would have to have the highest combined score out of all the open and advanced dogs that didn’t yet have their working trial champion title (wtch). They did consistently well on Beru’s nemesis, the call ducks. But there was a dog who kept just barely beating them. Almost all their runs separated them by 5 points or less and once they tied, but lost by time. Nick and Beru also did very well on sheep and cattle and their consistent runs helped them win the high-combined award for the weekend!! We also discovered that the dog who was beating them in ducks was trained by one of the top trainers in the country and Nick was very excited to be in such close competition with such a good dog.

Next up was Rachel and Hilda. They entered every arena trial in the hopes of gaining enough points to win the Most Promising Started Aussie belt buckle. It was Hilda’s very first trial but she had been training with Nick and doing chores for several months and then started some more focused training with Rachel two months before the trial. Hilda is a little nervous in new environments so that was going to be an extra hurdle to get over especially with all business we usually go to practice off the farm we’re closed due to covid-19 shutdowns. Hilda loves working the ducks at home so Rachel made sure she went on those before cattle and sheep to help get her mind in the game and boost her confidence. It definitely seemed to help for her cattle and sheep runs but working out all that nervousness also meant her duck runs suffered. Saturday’s course was course E, course E has 4 obstacles for started dogs and can be very challenging. Hilda was one of two dogs who were able to complete the course on cattle Saturday morning! We moved some of her runs to exhibition only so that she would not earn her title because we feel like she needs more confidence before she is ready for open/advanced work.

Last up is Marc and Poe. Marc is Nick’s cousin form Michigan who has been staying with us and helping us train dogs the past couple of months. Poe is Rachel’s dog. They have been working on rally and obedience for a year but we decided that having Marc would give us the perfect opportunity to start Poe on stock. We have goats and ducks to practice on. While Marc helped push stock around Rachel watched and marked Poe’s directions with her shepherds whistle. Poe did his circles really well and leading up to the trial was able to move both goats and ducks through easy obstacles. Rachel also slowly stopped being close by so Poe would get used to working with Marc alone but Poe was so excited to be working it didn’t look like a problem.
Turns out it was a problem. Poe seemed very excited to be somewhere new with new stock but when he got in the arena with Marc he only lasted a few seconds before looking around, realizing Rachel wasn’t with him, and then escaping the arena. He did this on all three of his turns on Saturday and we tried having Rachel in different places to see what would be better but he escaped to find her every time. So on Sunday we decided to let Rachel handle him and had our fingers crossed that he would stay in the arena. So Sunday morning Rachel started Poe with cattle because she is almost as confident with cows as she is with dogs. Poe was still a little distracted, but he did much better than the day before. They did really well in the take pens with ducks but were still just under a qualifying score. The Poe that practiced on goats did not show up and he did not receive very good scores but he did receive some valuable experience and we are looking forward to getting him ready for the next stock trial.