National Finals

The 2010 National Sheepdog Finals have come and gone. It was a bittersweet time as I planned on retiring Ben after his run at the Finals. Hard to believe that he is going to be 10! He is now officially a couch potato, with maybe a sheepskin thrown in for his comfort :-) He will continue to do farm work, but I won't be trialing him. He finished his trialing career as #10 in the USBCHA standings!

I went with hopeful expectations for Nick, but knowing that he has been off more than on this year. His lymes reared it's head again and he was diagnosed with a heart murmur. He has slowed down considerably this year and his run at the Finals showed that. He left my feet slowly, which is just not Nick. Sheep were off line the entire fetch, the sheep fought him on the driveaway and he just wasn't covering when I asked. I then retired, knowing that he just wasn't himself.

It was great watching everyone at the Finals and rooting for friends. Congratulations to Patrick and Riggs for thier win, it was clearly the winning run!

Will now start to train all my youngsters and hopefully have some young dogs to run by next spring. It will be exciting to see how they mature, most are just a year old!