Way To Go Canadians!

Well, the last of the runs were done today.  I am very convinced that something was placed in the water of the sheep of yesterday's sheep - the sheep of today's runs were like night and day.  Several good scores were had during the day, and we did not get a rash of RTs or DQs like we did during day 2 and 3 of running.  I noticed that the handler's coffee was a bit stronger today than the past few days, perhaps.....could it be.....that someone used teaspoons instead of tablespoons?  I once again, sat back and judged a few runs, as I drank Mike's Hard Lemonade - I could clearly see the lines on the drive after a can or two.  I ran into the speaker of the evening, Dr. Sue Taylor - who was going to talk about Border Collie Collapse.  She was one of my professors in my days at WCVM.  I learned quite a bit from her and those hallowed halls of learning, mostly how to play a mean game of fooseball and how to chug a beer (previous anchor woman for Class of 1994). I do believe I have the same syndrome as the Border Collie at times -becoming mentally dull, weaving, falling over - as with the dogs,it is usually related to working sheep - but perhaps the alcohol involved has something to do with it in my case. 

Today the nursery classes were done, and lucky Lyle Lad and her lucky dog Lucky took home the top award.  Lucky (and talented) pair they are!  Congrats to Scott Glen with Wyn and Bliss, and Lee Lumb and Gus with getting into the final day of running with the nursery dogs.  We Canadians are proud!

Obviously the toonie I had placed in the center of the shedding ring worked for the Canadians, out of the 15 dogs that had started (that is 10% of the total running at the finals), 9 have gone back to the semifinals (if you do the math, that is almost 1/4 of the dogs in the semifinals aredogs run by Canadians - and 90% of these dogs are Canadian bred).  Congrats to the Glens with Don, June and Laddie, Lee Lumb and Nan, Bob Stephens and Pat, Pam Boring and Mirk (I think the enema had something to do with it), Dennis Gellings and Jan and the Amazing Amanda with Roz and Monty (who had highest score in the preliminaries).  Another noteworthy event was the induction of Amanda's Hazel in to the ABCA Hall of Fame.  I will say that toonie has done well over the four days.  Now, the semifinal course is different, but I do think the shedding ring has not changed.  Maybe there is some luck left in that ring.