One of the Best Places on Earth

One of the best places on earth, in my opinion, is the UC Hopland farm. We were lucky enough to spend another day there this weekend. The UC sheep team was nice enough to hold a Pro-Novice "fun"trial for everyone to test their dogs and their handling on the trial field at Hopland.

The farm's yearling replacement ewes were used, and they have not had a lot of dog work, although they have had some. The young ewes worked differently from the mature ewes who are normally used in the November trial. The mature ewes are busy raising their lambs. I have a neat picture of them grazing on the roadsides, but I cannot get it to load in Blogger right side up! Oh well! I clerked for judge Claire and had a great and informative time doing that. Trying to follow along thinking of how I would score a run compared to her thoughts was really a brain teaser for me.

Most of the folks were there in order to gain experience on younger dogs. It was a nice jovial group and despite some chilly wind, was another beautiful day similar to the weather for last weekend's Knox clinic. The handlers were also very fortunate to have calm consistent setout done by Elgar from Wales with his favorite spotting dog Gael. Lucky me, I was allowed to run Coal at the end in a non-compete run even though he is in Open and the rest of the dogs were Pro-Novice. It was nice to get out there on the big open fields with Coal, as we've had little time to work together it seems, in weeks.

And Spot AKA Ernie got some meet-and-greet which he enjoyed. Another nice day in one of the best places on earth!