Labor Day Weekend

It's been a very enjoyable but low-key Labor Day weekend: watching the scores come in from Soldier Hollow, working dogs, and doing cleanup chores at home. I'm super grateful for an extra day off of work for all those reasons.

Saturday I bought hay and was happy to see that the price has come down a dollar per bale from our last purchase. I am going to get another load so that we are stocked up for the next month or so. Things are going to get busy here, really soon!

I love this photo of Spot because it is so him. It's like he needs the miniature angel on one shoulder, and a devil on the other. :) Well maybe not a true devil, but perhaps a teenager.  He tries so hard to be good and then sometimes, he just can't stand it, and he blows it. At the larger pasture where we work, there is a new pen for practicing penning with the sheep. These sheep, while pretty darn broke for working dogs, are not broke at all to going into a pen. Several of us tried and failed to pen them with various dogs over this past weekend. Spot is a very inexperienced penner; we have only worked on that task a little bit. On his first try on Sunday morning, however, he almost had the sheep penned; they were marching in, and I was starting to inch in to close the gate, and what the heck - Spot dove right into the sheep. Arghghgh. Back to the drawing board. As Derek S. would say, the dog is wondering, "why doesn't she kill it?" when we pen the sheep. Spot did not wonder why but thought about taking matters into his own paws.

Other than the awful penning episode, however, Spot was pretty good this weekend. I am using him for any chores that I can.  At the larger pasture, we've been going out to walk the llama in with the sheep before we can really start working, which is something new for Spot. He doesn't want to stay with me, behind the llama, but he wants to run ahead and work the sheep. No, buddy, this is the job - you walk with me and we bring in the llama, first. But also you need to pay attention to that llama and stay out of his way.

Coal and I are working on his getting back into shape, mentally and physically, for the fall trials. He seemed to bounce back pretty quickly today even though it was pretty hot out by the time we went out to work and we did a fair amount of work. Fingers crossed that we get into some of the trials. And that it cools off!