February Pics and Valentines Pt. Pleasant

These were my pics from February. It was still very dry and we were worried about another drought. Sunny and warm, a lot of the time. Pleasant, and good for dog work, but worrisome..
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A beautiful evening at 7 Oaks, and my new pickup :-)

Beautiful Santa Rosa evening skies

One of the seven

Ryme pursues his new hobby - hunting gophers

Big bro and little bro

Cap and Jerry the llama, in the background

Little Bro is catching up to Big Bro

Mr. Technicolor

Cap and his real brother, Leo

Cap got to see his litter brother Leo, again, for the first time since they were eight weeks old. They disliked each other right away. LOL. Typical teenagers, but both good looking boys. Leo is a lot bigger than Cap and is a rough coat; he is one handsome dude.

A gift of love from friends in memory of a lost friend and her dog

We went to the February Valentines Pt. Pleasant sheepdog trials. Spot and I got a score, both days. It was another round of confidence-building.  Saturday's run was our best. I sent Spot to the right, and for the first time in forever, I did not need to give any additional whistle support to get him out to the sheep. It was pretty exciting for me. We finished the course - which included one pass through a Maltese cross -- with 80 points out of 100.

 

Sunday's run was not quite as good but we did OK and  Spot worked hard for me. An added second pass through the Maltese made things much more complicated and difficult and it was the deal-breaker for many teams. We managed to finish the Maltese but did not have time to finish the single, before time ran out. We got 74 points out of 110. Still, I was very happy.

The Spencers' winter trial series was super helpful in allowing us to work out our trial routine and just get more comfortable with going to the post again and again. I am super grateful for this opportunity although I know putting on these trials is a ton of work.

Between going to the winter trial series, and in between, fitting in lessons approximately twice a month, I felt like I was doing what I could to prepare for the bigger trials coming in March and April. It seemed like we were getting our routine down, Spot and I were both more relaxed, and his outruns were certainly improving.