Finals

[amc]

If George had the best outwork, how did Alasdair win the Best Gather award?

 

Congrats to Amanda and all the finalists as well. Interesting that the year Kathy Knox won with Bob in Sheridan, Amanda and Hazel were Reserve Champs.

[DeltaBluez Tess]

Final standings:

 

1 Amanda Milliken Bart 358

2 Kathy Knox Jake 356

3 Barbara Ray Britt 337

4 Alasdair MacRae Star 323

5 George Stambulic Gyp 281

6 Amelia Smith Price 279

7 Bill Berhow Pete 279

8 Beverly Lambert Pippa 273

9 Dodie Green Dan 253

10 Dennis Gellings Jan 248

11 Linda Fogt Annie 207

12 Allen Hickenbottom Meg 152

13 Albion Urdank Maeve RT

14 Laura Hicks Zac RT

15 Pearse Ward Riel RT

16 Ian Zoerb Peg RT

17 Dean Holcomb Lynn RT

[Jennifer Glen]

OK Amy. That would be a matter of opinion then. When I stated this, it was before the awards were given out and the person I was talking to (in my opinion a competent judge himself) declared that George had the outwork and would have won it if he could have gotten that shed done. George did get the best new comer award so the judges must have liked something he did.

Jenny Glen

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

Year of the woman! Yay for Amanda and Kathy! And congrats to everyone else who made us proud - tough year, sounds like one to remember . . .

 

Safe travel to everyone.

[DeltaBluez Tess]

Folks,

 

Did you know that

 

* almost 30% of the people who made the top 17, had first names starting with "A"

 

* almost 24% were from Canada

 

* were 48% females handlers

[amc]

Jenny and All,

 

The rookie award goes to the highest scoring first-timer in the double lift, so George was a shoo-in for that. I agree that the guy who told you that George had the best outwork is a VERY competent judge but I guess the 3 that were looking at it from the judges' stands saw it a little bit differently. Hey, the first and second places this year were separated by 2 points! Talk about splitting hairs....

 

I would like to thank the Sturgis Committee for putting on three great years of the National Finals. They had to deal with the Feds, the Fort, the BLM, the locals, and still they managed to stage three first-class finals. My hat's off to them.

 

We are looking forward to welcoming everyone in Klamath in 2006. There is already a lot of excitement in the Klamath Basin about the Finals and we will continue to build on that energy.

 

Good luck to the Nursery dogs in Sturgis!

[juliepoudrier]

Hi everyone,

George really did have an awesome go, and in the pouring rain. In my nonjudges opinion he and Alasdair were the only two who had *really good* look backs (most of the retires were due to dogs not getting the look back). The second gather was at a really awkward angle, and most dogs just didn't turn back wide enough to be in proper position to run out for the second lot.

 

Alasdair had us on the edge of our seats down to the last second. Like George he was down to one sheep w/o a collar and just as he called Star through the judges called time and he wasn't awarded the shed. A real cliffhanger. George kept us all anticipating right to the very end because he did have a beautiful run and certainly could have won it had he gotten his shed faster. So this year, sheds were to be had, though no one had time for the pen.

 

Terry--I sure wish they had taken back the top 50. I would have liked a second chance at getting to the double lift!

 

Now it's time to go cheer on the nursery dogs.

 

J.

[cgt]

We are so lucky to be getting the handlers' impressions of the trial. Thanks Julie - and nice job!

 

charlie

[Jennifer Glen]

30% had first names starting with "A"! Andrea! This would have been your year. Couldn't Hobbes have at least "Cowboyed Up" and hobbled to the post for you?

Jenny Glen

[blackacre]

Poor old Hobble Hot Spot. No wonder he's been licking his forelegs, this was his year!

Never mind, Nap's gonna catch 'em all dozing in 2006.

A

[Valhalla]

Originally posted by Jennifer Glen:

Christine is so awsome! I'm excited for her! I will be crossing my fingers that she gets to the double lift! This will make up for the Bluegrass for her. She had to wait all day to see if her score would keep her in the double lift and she got dropped off the leader board on the last dog!

Jenny Glen

Jenny - you are so sweet! Thank you for your kind words!

 

I have been totally out of contact for 3 weeks and am now back among the internet living! Thank you everyone for the congrats. Rook worked so well at Meeker and the Finals and I feel bad for letting him down in the semi's on Saturday. He deserved more than I gave him! Unfortunately, I could not get the two collared sheep together and never got my shed (therefore no pen and single either). Someone made the comment after my run that it was like a Chirstmas tree with those two collared ewes staying on opposite ends of the group. I'm so proud of my boy for giving me his all.

[blackacre]

We were proud of you too Christine.

Tell us more about the experience when you have time.

A

[Valhalla]

Hey Andrea!!! How the heck have ya beeen?? Is Hobbes any better?

 

I really enjoyed Meeker and thought the sheep were way tougher there than at the Finals (not that they were easy at the Finals mind you). It was definately a challenge in more ways than one. The trial field had not been fully cut and so a lot of dogs had much difficuly finding the sheep or got a little lost having to go deep enough behind the sheep to lift them straight. The grass was waist high in some places (like right behind the set out spot). They did have a tremendous handler's dinner one night with entertainment by a local musician/comedian. That was a blast! And the night before the Finals they had the calcutta at a local rodea arena. Tommy Wilson provided the entertainment by parading Sly in front of the bidding audience like an AKC handler in the show ring. He was determined to "show off his talent" and it worked as he got the highest bid. They then a jackpot class in the arena. What you had to do was to walk about 3/4 of the way down the arena towards 30 or so sheep at the other end. Once you crossed a certain line, the clock started (3 minute limit). You had to cut 3 sheep out of the 30, move them down one side of the arena through a set of panels, across to the other side through another set of panels and then pen them. Fastest time won. David Henry and McCloud won in 1 minute 55 seconds and won a large pot of money! South African, Faansie Basoon and Lad were 2nd. Tommy and Sly were faring well, but when they started to cross the arena, the 3 sheep ran back to the others (which meant he'd have to start over). Tommy just stood in the middle of the ring, threw his arms up in the air in disgust and just fell straight over backwards in the dirt. He's a real crowd pleaser!

 

The best part of this trial was the absolute beauty of Colorado! I'll be posting pics soon so you can all see for yourselves.

[TotallyTerry]

Welcome home Christine,

 

I missed your board comments and your pictures with the ones of Colorado still to come.

 

Great job with a great dog. (The hander aint too bad either)

 

Julie,

 

It did make my day better thinking that it was the top 50 because I thought some of you had still made it into the semi finals---a lot longer!

[blackacre]

Hey girl,

I am looking forward to the pictures too. One of the magazines should hire you to do a photojournalism essay on your trip. Life magazine reborn!

Hobbes is better most of the time. Thanks for asking. I'm going to try to run him this weekend at a local trial.

A

[Valhalla]

I took loads of pictures on the trip out and back as well. There was a tremendous thunder storm in Kansas and after it was over, the most beautiful double rainbow appeared. I got shots of that over the vast crop land. A cool shot of a windmill in in the sunset in Iowa, some really great abandoned barns and homesteads in Wyoming and a light-phase Swainson's hawk that was just sitting on a fencepost waiting for me to snap a few shots before it flew away. We also drove through the Dakota badlands on the way home. It is like a different planet there - like you would imagine the landscape of Mars would look like! So desolate, yet so breathtaking. I know this is all unrelated to dogs, but the drive was gorgeous.

[juliepoudrier]

Hey Christine,

I spent a couple of hours driving around the Badlands on the way home too. Absolutely gorgeous, in a moonscape sort of way. Did you stop and read any of the informational boards? I thought the one about Hay Butte was pretty amazing. The butte is quite large, but homesteaders were unable to get livestock to the top to take advantage of the abundant grass there. So they disassembled their hay-making equipment and took it to the top of the butte and cut and baled the grass for hay (humans doing all the work) and then sent the bales back down the side of the butte via cable. And that's how the butte came to be called hay butte!

 

I took the dirt loop road through the park (everything inside and out of the van was covered with dust), but was rewarded with prairie dog towns, two different herds of bison, and pronghorns, too. Part of the drive took me through the Buffalo Gap National Grassland (all fenced for cattle). I'm certainly glad I took the time to drive through, and I'd love to see your pictures, border collie related or not!

 

I also stopped at the Prairie House homestead just past the exit to the Nat'l Park. The sod house built into the hillside was quite amazing, especially the little tunnel into the hill that opened into a window. The place was also surrounded by a prairie dog town, and interestingly most if not all of the prairie dogs were white! Not albino, but definitely not the same tan as the regular dogs I'd seen in the park. Unfortunately I got to the homestead just as they were closing the visitor center and leaving for the day, so there was no one to ask about the white prairie dogs (they may not be real dogs, but at least it keeps the dog theme going...).

 

J.

[Sue R]

You guys know that "listening" to you "chat" about the trip is a great treat for the rest of us. Now we all can hardly wait to see the pictures!

 

Congrats to Christine, Julie, Denise, Scott, Jenny, Pearse, and others from the boards, for a job well done at the Finals and at other major trials out West. The rest of us have just had to live vicariously through you.

[Valhalla]

Julie, we wanted to stop at the Prarie House homestead as well, but it was closed. And I am kicking myself that we didn't take the dirt loop road in the badlands, but with pulling the dog trailer, we didn't want to expose the dogs to an excess of road dust. From the sounds of what you say your car looked like, we may have made the right choice.

 

I'll be posting some pics today. I send a link when I get them all up.

[juliepoudrier]

Christine,

You probably made the right decision because of the dogs. The road was also a lot of washboard, which was less jarring if you drove a little faster, which just generated even MORE dust! One thing I noted about SD is that you could easily tail cars well ahead of you on many of the side roads just by following the dust clouds.

 

Sue, I also stopped at Wall Drug, but didn't stay long because I had the dogs in the van and it was rather warm. It struck me as very much a tourist trap, though I did enjoy looking at some of the old photos.

 

And if any of you love music or musical instruments and are ever near Rapid City, SD, then by all means take a detour to the National Music Museum at the U. of SD in Vermillion. It's not a real large museum, but it's packed with all sorts of old (many the only remaining example of their kind) musical instruments. I concentrated on the stringed instruments, though there was plenty more than that. They had a Stradivarius violin, but more interesting, they also had a Strad mandolin and guitar! I had no idea.... The craftsmanship in the various intruments was simply incredible. As I walked through a room full of violins, violas, violincellos, etc., I could just imagine all of those extremely old instruments being played together and what beautiful music it would be! There were rooms full of pianos and organs in all all of their variations (including harpsichords, clavichords, and at least one very different design for a piano keyboard), a room of instruments from around the world, and lots of brass. I found the old ivory recorders (anyone remember playing the recorder in elementary school?) quite interesting too.

 

J.

[blackacre]

Originally posted by Valhalla:

. . . Dakota badlands on the way home. It is like a different planet there - like you would imagine the landscape of Mars would look like! So desolate, yet so breathtaking. .

Hmmm, sounds like Alberta.

Ouch, don't hit me Jenny!

A

[blackacre]

Julie, Sammy Jo has a Stradivarius violin too. Ask her.

A

[Sue R]

Julie - When we dropped Laura off at college in southeastern Idaho (four long years ago), we drove back home by way of Yellowstone, the Big Horn Basin (that was fantastic), Cody WY, Wall Drug (we enjoyed the photos, too - they were the best part of the stop there), etc.

 

For us Easterners, the West is like another planet. I couldn't shut my eyes for fear of missing another spectacular or forsaken-looking view. It was just beautiful.

[tucknjill]

LOL Andrea, very funny! I have a masterpiece here, you are just unwilling to admit we could have bought it for 50.00! I am going on Antiques Roadshow when they go to Richmond and you will see!

[Pipedream Farm]

Hey Julie. Welcome back. The year Mark and I went to the nursery finals we stopped at the Prairie House place you're talking about. A white prairie dog was given to the homesteaders as a gift by the Indians. From the gift of the prairie dog, they bred a whole population of them. At least that's the story we were told. Anyhow, the white prairie dogs were just a random genetic mutation.

Renee