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Just saw Jean and TeeJay won the White Mountain DGSPC Open Derby, you go girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OK, I'm busted. I admit it, she won! Teejay's first two points towards her FC. Not bad for our young girl. It was a blast to run her. I LOVE LOVE LOVE running the young dogs. My husband and I have decided that I'll run the young dogs and he'll run the finished dogs and we'll scout for each other. I like it that way - I get the fun part, he gets the stressful part .
In this stake, she turned in a nice (albeit not perfect) run, but the best thing was I got to see a young dog learning all the way through the brace. She cast off and proceeded to crap I swear 12 times, to the point that everyone was laughing, including our moderator Terry Chandler who was my bracemate. She had to have dumped 20 lbs of ballast. Then once she had lightened the load, she took off and headed for the tree line, as she should. She had a nice find as she entered the treeline and did good staunch work until her bracemate busted in, then it was of course "game on". Thankfully that bird landed in a tree. Then she had another find as she worked the trees. The course then takes a left and goes across a meadow. She worked all the little humps of grass and then turned and looked at me, clearly asking "Well, ok, now what? There aren't any more objectives". She looked further out front and saw the far treeline and appropriately headed for it. Then I was quite amused because she got into the treeline and then for some reason, second-guessed herself and was worried that wasn't where she was supposed to be. So she backed up a couple steps, looked up at me and wanted to know if she was doing it right. I hollered "GOOD GIRL" and if a dog can shrug, she did and said "OK, just wanted to make sure" and went back to working the tree line. The whole thing was just fun.
Jean
Murphy's law definitely rules at field trials. Whatever can go wrong ALWAYS does. The first major I won with Willow, she's standing on a covey in a big crappy scrub tree and I'm doing the do-si-do around it while the bird is of course going in the bush out of the bush in the bush out of the bush. I finally get it to fly a little and the judge hollers, BLANK YOUR GUN! So I do, and here comes the bird, sees me, veers between me and the bush and HITS WILLOW RIGHT IN THE BUTT, then runs under her legs back into the bush. I'm pretty sure I soiled my pants. But she held (and now that wouldn't be so unusual, but she was only 3 then and not totally honest).
Thanks guys! There are three amateur derbies coming up in the state over the next 4 months. Hopefully we'll get lucky and pick up some amateur points. If that happens, she'll be done with derby as it is just teaching her to chase, which of course is a problem. We'll pull her from running until she's totally broke, which usually takes quite a while. Then her cousins, Ellie and Gretchen, will take over in the puppy and derby stakes.