Updated

Dogs available

Faansie Basson Clinic, June 9th & 10th

I have to admit, this didn’t go the way I’d initially imagined.

Nan Lloyd and Balto watching Karyn Buller and Monty working on outruns (R and Bill the Wonderdog holding in the background)

Plan A involved me attending the clinic originally planned for South Australia.

June 9th/10th: R would have just finished seeding, I would have spent the preceding 6 months really brushing Fly up on her stops and flanks and working on some basic driving. I’d book time off work, leave the kids in R’s capable hands and fly myself and Fly over to South Australia, where I’d hire a van and spend a few enjoyable days touring the beautiful area around Strathalbyn, south of Adelaide, where my Dad grew up on a dairy farm. I stopped there about 10 years ago on my way back from the Melbourne agility Nationals, and it’s a glorious part of the world. Then we’d attend the clinic, learn heaps from Faansie Basson about skills needed for running ISDS style trials here, meet other Australian sheepdog triallers with similar interests, and come home refreshed and inspired. A bit of an indulgence, something to look forward to, the option I chose over travelling to South Australia for the invitational Champion of Champions with Queani last year (the one and only time I’ll ever get that invitation, I’m sure).

The way it actually happened:

The South Australian clinic was cancelled. The Queensland clinic was full and the Victorian one not an option.

With the support of some WA people, I asked about holding one over here, and we were accepted. Hosting the clinic here seemed like the right thing to do, given the awkward time of year and the fact that the burden on hosting always seems to fall on a small group of people.

Seeding was delayed, and delayed again, with a late break and machinery breakdowns, so R was stressed to the eyeballs and tractor-bound day and night for weeks up to the day of the clinic. My leave from work never happened, because of staff shortages: in fact my hours more than doubled. Jake did his cruciate and Muddy did his shoulder, Fred’s surgery went pearshaped and I spent all my free time driving up and back to the city for vet appointments. Fly hadn’t been worked, yet alone brushed up, since 2011. The kids got sick. I got sick, and stayed sick. Lambing started the week of the clinic, and we never got around to breaking in the dry ewes planned for the clinic. None of the necessary fencing repairs got done.

Anyway, in the end, people came, Faansie came, we had a clinic, I met some new sheepdog enthusiasts and even if we didn’t cover the sort of trial-specific skills originally planned, I think it was a success. Until Sunday afternoon, when our house blew apart in a storm. But that’s another story.

Corner work- in the shearing shed yards

Chilly spectating!

Faansie introduces Courtney Robinson and Meg to some corner exercises

Meg on the move

Jane, Faansie and Rocky Dusty in the yards

Faansie explains some details to Jane and Dusty

Jenny Nolan working with Nolan’s Kade

Nolan’s Kade

Lisa Poprzeczny and Lilli

Lilli making the Pets earn their keep for once (Tuama-tutama and Basil seen here with friend)

Andrew Gorton and Boylee Ella in the corner

And working on shedding

Jane Dorrell and Faansie show the dogs how it’s done

And then let Dusty have a turn

Inspired? Motivated? Informed? Yes, yes, yes, definitely! Also, totally and utterly exhausted.

Many thanks to Denise Agnew and the newly founded Sheepdog Trials Australia for the huge effort involved in organising these workshops, thanks to all the WA people who attended and for all your help with the chaos that followed, and thanks to Faansie for going the extra (thousands of) miles to include WA.

On the road

Well, look at that! It’s been three months since my last confession… err, post. Oops.

I’d like to have a decent excuse- a secret overseas mission, the birth of new triplets, my enormous Lotto win, but sadly none of these apply. It isn’t like I don’t have any free time. I guess I’ve just been choosing to spend it elsewhere. Like afternoons with Norman (my regular riding school horse), and running.

Yep, I’m back on the road, after more than 5 years and numerous half-arsed attempts- still more penguin than Pheidippides, but we’re getting there.

Most of the time we’re going around the paddocks. The downside to this off-road route is that if I have to take the pram, I’m pushing an extra 30kg through sand and mud and basically, I nearly die. The down side to the other option- running on the bitumenised road- is that I may well actually die, courtesy of the many country vehicles, including huge grain and sheep trucks, that hammer up and down our road. This is a rural area, so the idea of using one’s legs to move from place to place is quite foreign and not something drivers here would expect to encounter. Also, the black plumage of a penguin tends to blend into the background. 

But this is my newest bit of running gear (thanks to the lovely Boss, who really doesn’t want me to die because then he’d have to do all the reading of Hairy Maclary, every single night):

The other obstacle to be overcome in my quest for regular running time is winter, daylight and the lack of it. Generally if I want to squeeze a run in before school and work, I have to go around 5am. In case anyone isn’t up and well into their day by that time, at 5am in May, it’s very dark. Most paddocks have sheep in them (generally rather pregnant ewes at this time of year), and even though most of the dogs in my running pack have pretty good recalls, it isn’t beyond some of them (hello, Mabel! Ziggy! Elvis! Queani!!) to accidentally drop behind in the dark… and meet us at the gate with five hundred woolly friends. Here’s my solution:

Taking a few of the pack out to test drive the new gear was brilliant. Running through the paddocks below the silhouette of redgums against a clear starstrewn night sky, the dogs orbitting around me like huge blue fireflies- I was in heaven. As we went across White Dam paddock on a path halfway up the hill, a car passed along the road about 400m below, slowing abruptly and then crawling along until they rounded the bend, stopped at our driveway- I wondered if they were considering warning us of approaching alien life- and then took off again. I’m hoping we make Today Tonight!

Of course, being able to see the dogs is one thing, being able to see the ground is another.

Some of our paddocks have quite a few rocks in them.

(and yes, I’m aware that with such massive expanses of fluorescent white doubling as legs, my high-vis gear is probably redundant)