For those that wonder....

Whenever I mention herding to my family, people at work, or agility friends, they often give that quizzical look, and ask, Herding? Herding what? Where do you do that? Mike has been doing this for a year or two now, and I just started a few months ago. So here are a couple of videos, one of Mike and Bailey, and one of me and Lexi (our first trial ever) competing recently at an AKC trial here in MS in Started Sheep. We both Qualified on these runs with Mike taking 3rd place and Lexi taking 4th. (By only 1/2 a point I must add. Not bad for our very first run!) Thanks to Tammy for taping these runs out in the cold!!

Herding and Agility Updates

2 weekends ago, Lexi and Bailey competed in an AKC Herding trial here in Memphis. Mike and Bailey completed two Sheep runs, with a 3rd place in both, and finished her AKC Started Sheep Herding title!! This was mine and Lexi's first attempt at a herding trial since we started training a few months ago, and she did awesome! Lexi qualified both days and even got a 4th place on Saturday! So we have 2 legs towards our AKC Started Sheep title!!

Last weekend was our last agility trial of the year in Decatur, AL. Despite the chilly temps in the unheated arena, Foster did Q twice this weekend, and was just seconds from Q'ing on some of the most challenging courses I have ever seen since I got up to Excellent a few years ago! The judge, Mr. Dege, did create courses with sequences that you often see in World Team level courses and mostly do not see at the local level. Lexi did well this weekend, completing all of her contacts except for a new found fear of the teeter, and even did the table on Sunday very quickly!!! We did have some handling challenges on my part, and of course we didn't weave. BUT I now have my new channel weaves, and am so excited to start over on weaving with Lexi. On top of that, I was just reading a new ebook by Susan Garrett about 2x2 weaving, and I have some really good ideas to apply a lot of it to channels. My goal is to have Lexi weaving by our January Show in Franklin. Keep your fingers crossed!

Other great news from the trial... Congratulations to Simi and Tammy on their 2 legs in Open Standard!!!! It was so exciting to see them succeed all weekend after all of the hard work they have put in to get there! Congratulations to a new Excellent team, George and Jill!!! George finished his Open Jumpers title! Congratulations to Jennifer and Moana on running an Excellent Standard course 2 seconds under time!! Even though they didn't Q, it was an incredible run!!! Everyone and their dogs did well this weekend, and we all had a great time!

Little Rock Agility Trial

We have never gone to this show before, and since it was so close we decided to give it a try. We had a very good time despite the chilly weather!! This show had FAST offered and they ran it first on both days. I did enter Foster and we had a couple of mistakes, so no Q's, but they were fun courses. However, having FAST had us running Novice after 7:00pm on Sat, and we didn't leave for home until 6pm on Sunday. One nice thing for those of us with Big Dogs, is that it was high to low on a Sunday!!!!! That NEVER happens! Foster got 2 1st place Q's in Jumpers, but we just couldn't eek out the clock in one Std run, and in the other I cut his approach to the dog walk too tight and he couldn't get his footing and had to bail. Otherwise he had some great runs!! Lexi had some beautiful runs as well, but we are still working on our table and weaves in competition. Moana had a little trouble with the clock on these tightly wheeled courses too. Cletus and Jennifer found a new rythym in their Jumpers runs and boy is Cletus FAST!!! Jill & George got 1 2nd place Q, and both George and Atticus had some great runs as well! I think Natalie made out like a bandit at the awesome raffle that the club had!! I think the club is rethinking what days and what time of the day they will offer FAST next year, so we will have to wait and see for next year.

This upcoming weekend is Lexi and I's first herding trial. Mike and Bay are also competing as well. They are both in Started for this AKC trial. Bay has 1 started leg on Sheep, so she only needs two more to get her Started Title!! Wish Lexi and I luck !!! It should definitely be interesting! Then next weekend Lexi, Foster, and I are off to Decatur for our last trial of the year and we are also hopefully picking up our new channel weaves!!!

Well that is all for now:) Hopefully next week I will have some herding videos to post!!

Halloween, Our Weekend Guest, and Voting!

This was my first time voting in Mississippi! I hope everyone got a chance to get out and vote today!!

I haven't had a chance to post any Halloween pictures. So here are a few! After 3 years of, at most, 15 trick or treaters, we had at least double that this year!!! And so many cute costumes!! Lexi and Bailey dressed up for a few minutes too!!





Our friends' dog, Mattie, stayed with us this weekend while they went to New Orleans. We love having Mattie stay, and give Bay a run for her tennis ball, and play with Lexi and Foster!



We are getting ready to head out to an agility trial in Benton, AR this weekend! I have never been so it should be exciting, and hopefully the weather will be nice and not too chilly. It is an outdoor trial under cover. Lexi and I also have been practicing for the AKC Herding trial the weekend after this agility trial. It is a lot harder to practice anything during the week now that the time has changed!! After that we have one more agility trial for this year, the weekend before Thanksgiving in Decatur, AL. Busy month!!

We also took a couple of pictures at Tammy's house in fromt of her awesome Fall Background!!

Return from Murray, KY Show

We had a great time at the agility show in Murray, KY this past weekend!!! It was a fairly small show so we finished early each day. That left us time to play with the dogs out in the adjacent fields in the afternoon and relax. Foster had a great weekend!! He Q'd 4 out of 6 runs, finished his MXP2, and got his 12th QQ!!! Lexi had a good weekend too, finishing her Novice Standard Title finally!!! YEAH!! We have moved up to open, and she did the table twice this weekend, not perfect, but she with a little coaxing did what was required!! Now we must work on our nemesis...The Weaves!!! I will be ordering some channel weaves this week!! From all the people, either Jennifer or I have talked to that have dogs with great weaves, they have learned on channels.... so we are going to give it a shot!!!

Lastly, Lexi's sisters Blue and Jean were also at Murray competing in Agility. Jean finished her Novice titles in one weekend!!! Blue only competed one day, but Q'd on both of those runs!! See the picture below!!

Lexi & I with the judge she titled under, Cynthia Tilley.

The Blue Sisters: Lexi, Jean, and Blue

Cletus relaxing after a hard day of agility


Atticus is staring intently after a butterfly, one of his favorite past times!

New Shoes!!!!

A girl loves a new pair of shoes!!! Probably not the kind some of you are thinking of...a new pair of shoes for running agility. I have been talking about getting a pair of new shoes for agility for a while now, and I finally did! I decided on Merrell Siren Sport GTX. And wow what an incredibly comfortable shoe, especially for a trail running shoe! I tested them out a little today because we practiced at Elaine's ring with a packed dirt floor...they were great! I can't wait to give them a full test run at the trial in Murray, KY next weekend!!!

My shiny new agility shoes

VP Debate, Flies, and Qs!

Last weekend we went to Franklin for an AKC agility trial. When we got there on Thursday we got the Pop up set up, our spot at the trial claimed, and got the TV hooked up so that we could watch the VP debate while we were grilling dinner. Luckily, all of the flies( the show is at a horse arena) disappeared when the temperature dropped!! There were so many out there all weekend, but the really cool nights made them go away while we were eating!!


On to the agility! Friday was Lexi's first run in Open JWW. She did really well on everything but the weaves, but I expected that:) We are still working really hard on getting our weaves! Lexi also got her 2nd Novice Std Leg!!! She had great contacts, did the table, and on the 3rd try we got the weaves!!! She is really starting to come along!!! I was so excited when she hit her first contact w/ a 2o2o!!




Saturday, Lexi again did well in JWW but we had 2 refusals on the weaves. I think Lexi may have gotten spooked by a whistle in the other ring because she just wasn't into focusing on the std run. O well!! She has made so much progress, and we are hopefully going to get that 3rd leg and a ticket out of novice std soon:)

Foster had an incredible weekend as well with 1QQ bringing our total to 11 out of the 20 we need for his PAX, he finished his MJP2, and just was all around fast this weekend!!! He finished his Std run on Friday 10 sec under regular time and 15 sec under preferred time!!!! That is unheard of for us even when he was running 24"! We had a great time running this weekend and all the mistakes were minein handling! There were some really great courses this weekend, very challenging!!

Last but not least, Moana finished both of her Open Titles and is now in Excellent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think she may be only the 2nd bulldog currently running in Excellent in the country!! Cletus, Jennifer's Bouvier, ran in his first trial this weekend and did really well!!! Our whole group did really well and we had a lot of fun this weekend!!

I almost forgot...this was Tammy's first time in her new RV!! Here it is!!!

And finally, here are some pics from the weekend!!!


Dexter with every toy Moana has won since Jennifer got him!


Foster and Lexi


Cletus and Dexter waiting for Jennifer to return to the pop up.