Tulsa State Fair

Talk about running a marathon... The first run of the cattle trial was held on Tues. as was both runs of the sheep trial. So I was back and forth from arena to arena about a thousand times waiting for Josh to run Pete, checking to see when the sheep handlers' meetings were, going to get a dog from the trailer, running back over to see if Josh was running yet. Needless to say, there wasn't anytime for the camera on Tues.

I started off with Tess in the Open Ranch Class. She had a great outrun, lift, and fetch, but then the drive got really messy both times. Tess stalled out on me on the crossdrive both times. The set out was right next to the crossdrive panel and Tess wouldn't come off the pressure to push them through the panels she was too worried they'd get away back to the set out. I can't remember if we ever did get a pen either run. I'm leaning towards no for both. See... amnesia again! So we managed a 4th in the first run and a 5th in the 2nd run for an overall finish of 4th place. I was a little disappointed, but hey that's trialing!

Blaze on the other hand, I was really proud of. He had a great run both times and tied for 2nd in the first run and tied for 1st in the second run. That left me tied for the Overall First with Danny Shilling and his dog Rip. They looked at the gather scores for both runs. My gather was better on the first run and Danny's was better on the 2nd run, so I was excited about doing a run off. Then they came to us and told us that they were going to add the 2 gather points together, so we were edged out by 2 measley points for that nice Tulsa Fair buckle. Rats! Blaze could have cared less about the buckle and I was so happy with him!

Pete ran in the Tulsa Derby which is designated for 3 year old dogs only. The cattle were really fresh and too much pressure sent them all over the arena, so Josh played it safe and didn't hastle the cattle. He walked around with his hands in his pockets the entire time and him and Pete just caressed the cattle through all of the obstacles for one of only 2 full score runs of the day. When all was said and done, Josh and Pete came out on top for the first day. Way to go guys! Then 15 mins. later they were over in the sheep arena running in the Ranch class. Pete was still in cattle mode and had a hard time staying off the sheep and wasn't listening the greatest, so his sheep runs didn't go so well and he ended up 6th. That's okay Pete, we all know Josh likes cattle better anyways!

Then Wed. rolled around and Josh and Pete got their second run. The pressure was on for Josh. Him and Pete laid down another nice run, but they had one heifer that didn't feel like playing. She charged Pete more times than I can count. Pete turned her back with a nose bite a few times, but she wasn't deterred. So she slowed things down significantly. They still finished, but their time wasn't good enough to hold onto 1st place. So they had to settle for 2nd to Brent Daniel and LH Wood's good dog Bree.