Dottie's First Herding Trial

Dottie earned her PT (pre-trial tested) today. It means she has enough training to be able to do something, but not enough training to be ready for the regular classes yet.  Which makes sense for us since we've had a total of 7 lessons!  It was both of our first ever herding titles. Yesterday went much better, today was a little rough. The judge wrote on her score sheet- "Nice handling with a strong but obedient dog." Let's just say she could have been more obedient and I could have done a better job handling. But we passed so all is good!

After our first qualifying leg on Saturday.  Muffin approves.

Dottie PT!!!

Pie says she is a movie star and doesn't need herding titles to be cool.

There were a lot of boder collies there, but also some other breeds.

Lots of cattle dogs- mostly owned by the same couple.

Border collies-notice the different groups of geese have different colored bands around their necks- that is so they can tell the groups apart and if one group is too bad they won't use them again.

Belgian Sheepdog- same as Malinois but long black coat.

Sheltie- my friend's dog

German Shepherd (working lines)

My instructor's bc doing very well

There was also a corgi, boxer and samoyed and a few Aussies that I did not get pictures of.  Plus Dottie of course.  I think that covers all the breeds there.  I got to watch the A course which is in the arena, and also the B course which is in the big open field.  I saw sheep, geese and cattle.  It was a great educational experience so when Dottie and I are ready for the regular classes I will have a better idea what they are about.