First Trial of 2011

Esperance Club Annual Three Sheep Trial
"Linthorpe", Ongerup
Feb 25th - 27th 2011

Nan Lloyd gives the Ginger Biscuit some judging tips

Our sheepdog trial season is officially underway, kicking off with the Esperance Club's annual 3 sheep trial, held this year at Ongerup. Usually this trial is held at the more distant and generally cooler grounds at Cascades, and an unofficial trial is held at Ongerup in the middle of the year. But this year we have the Australian Supreme in WA in September and Eastern States triallers will be driving across the Nullarbor to attend, arriving in WA not too far from Cascades. And since Esperance Club are due to host this year's WA State 3 sheep Championships, they've elected to hold that at Cascades a few weeks before the Supreme, so the East Coast bigwigs can drop in on their way up to Dowerin for the Supreme.

Boylee Copper (Boylee Tobie x Boylee Speck)

I have really enjoyed trialling at Ongerup in previous years. The sheep are "challenging", the landscape is open and spectacularly conflicting- minimalist and utterly huge at the same time, and when the wind picks up and the clouds march low across the country like a migrating herd of fluffy wildebeest, I feel terribly small , inconsequential and brilliantly alive. It's awesome.

But there's also no shade, and with temperatures in the mid-30s every day and a small child with a hat allergy, we were hot and bothered much of the time.

Acute hat allergy- note the facial suffusion, stiffening limbs and high pitched cry. Later we may see the child's back arching and spasmodic flexion/extension of limbs.

And while I like challenging sheep, and absolutely prefer the feral types to the well behaved, this year's Ongerup sheep were frustratingly random. The ground is pretty small, and the sheep liked a lot of distance between them and dogs. They didn't like the look of the obstacles, or the handlers, or the heat, and they seemed to find constant heading annoying- but if the dogs didn't head cleanly, the sheep would take opportunity to sprint for a fenceline. And if the dogs managed to block one break, they'd start working as a team, splitting in three directions simultaneously. There were the usual comments about "hardest sheep I've ever worked", but in this case it might be true- despite most of the top handlers and dogs being out in force, there were very few scores, even fewer obstacles successfully negotiated, and only one team successfully penned in the entire weekend (Ray Sutherland and the 16 month old Ramulam Penny, who won the Improver). The temperature made it even more difficult, and there were a few questions raised about the wisdom of running dogs on mad sheep in the middle of such scorching days. But the sheep were fit and the handlers largely sensible, with most people retiring well before problems arose.

The overall winner: the sheep (and Tom- is there no photo opportunity he misses?)

I didn't have big expectations of my crew- I haven't had any time to train and not even any opportunity to work them recently, so the girls were a bit feral and Bill is fairly porky and unfit. Nan Lloyd dropped in a few weeks ago to work some young dogs, and I gave them all a quick spin- Fly was okay, but Queani was the pits, not stopping, looking totally one sided and refusing to cast on one side. Bill nearly had a cardiac arrest just running the training sheep into the yards. Of course I resolved to drill them daily until the trial, and of course I did nothing.

But even aiming so very low, we managed to fall short. Fly tried in the Novice, but didn't cope with the sheep, so I retired. We retired again when she overran and didn't listen at all in the Improver, so she ran the skin off a pad and was scratched. Bill somehow managed to draw every run in the middle of the day. In the Novice we made it to the race fairly tidily, but then did boglaps around the obstacle until Bill was starting to sound like a fat hairy phone pervert, and we retired semi-gracefully. In the Improver, the run before ours saw the sheep turn bolshie and march the dog back to the let-out, so both Bill and I were a little nervous. Our sheep tried the same, and Bill tried his best bark/bounce until he was hoarse and the judge and spectators were hysterical with laughter, but to no avail. He even tried using a little tooth, but neither the onlookers nor the sheep were taking us seriously, so we retired. Again.

Queani's Improver run was the highlight of my weekend- she was on great form, listened to me and ignored me appropriately, didn't lose her temper and didn't slice once. We got the sheep both through the race and over the bridge in a respectable fashion, and were only the second run to get to the pen. But then the wheels fell off- two sheep were willing to look into the pen, but one kept breaking away, and Queani's stamina was running low in the afternoon heat. She'd started to misinterpret commands and was slower to react, and with no timer on me, I had no idea how much time we had left on the clock. Much as it pained me, I had to retire. Her Open run was a joint stuff-up. I didn't stop at the first winding-peg, imagining that the sheep, who were off course to my right, would swing below it easily. But they broke back on the wrong side, and I had to unwind from the second peg. Queani was her usual bossy self and didn't understand why I wanted her to push the sheep across the ground instead of bringing them over to the race. By the time she stopped overriding me and started to listen, she was fairly tuckered out. So I retired. Ungracefully.

By late Sunday morning, it was beginning to look like I would have a clean sweep of "R"s and not a single score for the weekend. I looked a bit like this:

Or perhaps even a little like this:

But in the end Bill got it together in the Open enough to get us to the race in reasonable shape. Even though we tried every trick in our (very small) book, the sheep wouldn't consider going down the race, but we still scraped into the final with a 45.

R was running some of his young dogs as well as Tess, and had much the same luck as everyone else. Tom, in particular, worked really nicely and they were having a really nice open run up to the race, where R retired when it got a bit untidy.

Torbay Tom (Boylee Fred x Tig imp UK)

There was some fantastic work, despite the pitiful scores. Novice was dominated by kelpies, and the Improver by Ramulam dogs, especially Kiwi Knight progeny. The highest scoring dogs in the Open showed that it was possible to get the sheep settled and workable, and even through the obstacles on a few occasions.

Novice
Judge: Nan Lloyd

1)	Ken Atherton	Binnaburra Tammy	Kelpie	64
=2)	Jenny Atherton	Badgingarra Tony	Kelpie	61
=2)	Karyn Buller	Badgingarra Barney	Kelpie	61
4)	Tony Boyle	Boylee Stephnie	Collie	60
5)	Scott Welke	Badgingarra Doug	Collie	58

A kelpie- ? Badgingarra Barney?

Badgingarra Gem (Badgingarra Jock x

Boylee Minnie (Dajara Woody x Boylee Sweetpea)

Improver
Judge: Jenny Atherton

1)	Ray Sutherland	Ramulam Penny	Collie	71
2)	Peter Doherty	Ramulam Jen	NZHD/collie	66
3)	Peter Gorman	Grassvalley Milo	Collie	63
4)	Phil Dorrell	Ramulam Patch	NZHD/collie	57
=5)	Malcolm Seymour	Olboa Jess	NZHD/collie	55
=5)	Tony Boyle	Boylee Mustard	Collie	55

Euroa Nan (Stoneyville Harry x Glenview Ruby)

Elfinvale Toby

Badgingarra Lisa (Sunvale Brumby x Grassvalley Sam?)

Open  

Judge: Nick Webb

1)	Wayne Hall	Hudsons Tasha	Collie	72 + 69 = 137
2)	Ivan Solomon	Perangery Sasha	Collie	47 + 61 = 108
3)	Ivan Solomon	Perangery Jill	Collie	47 + 59 = 106
4)	Ray Sutherland	Swagman Cyndy	Collie	61 + 39 = 100
5)	Ken Atherton	Ramulam Merle	Collie	54 + 44 = 98
6)	Peter Gorman	El Shamah Ellie	Collie	59 + 34 = 93
7)	Sam Weaver	Boylee Bill	Collie	45 + 41 = 83
8)	Tony Boyle	Bellview Dale	Collie	46 + 34 = 80
9)	Karyn Buller	Kumbark Monty	Collie	45 + 22 = 67
10)	Grant Cooke	Grassvalley Moss	Collie	63 + X = 63
11)	Ivan Solomon	Somerville Tully	Collie	60 + R = 60
12)	Ivan Solomon	Perangery Beck	Collie	55 + R = 55

Open winner, Hudsons Tasha

Perangery Jill

El Shamah Ellie, going a bit grey these days

Kumbark Monty (Badgingarra Bobby x Christies Driftz)

Grassvalley Moss (Grassvalley Tod x Grassvalley Lisa)

Badgingarra Dotcom (Princes Tom x ?)

Special awards: 
Best performance by a worker with two or less dogs: Wayne Hall
Another special award I can't remember: Wayne Hall
Aggregate: Scott Welke with Badgingarra Doug

Glenice Webb and Grant Cooke, with Moss, planning strategy

(Note: no children were seriously harmed, mentally or physically, in the making of this blog. They may been hot, filthy, hungry and at times even bored, but they were also festooned with jewels and tractors and allowed to roam free in their natural state, which is fair compensation as far as they're concerned).

See you at Wagin next week!