Friday, May 15, 2009

Bluegrass Day Three Second Update

Well, Hemp ran in the heat of the day. I had decided going to the post that I was probably not going to finish the run because of it. He's not in good enough shape to run hard in the heat and coming down from Canada, he hasn't acclimated to the humidity. I wet him down before we went to the post and I kept telling myself to let him do most of the work. He had a great outrun again and went really deep to come up on his lift. I let him pick his stop point and let him lift on his own. He would lift and then stop and I would whistle to him to encourage him to keep moving forward but other than one or two flanks he did it on his own. By the time he got to the fetch panels he had them and his pace picked up - hard. From the fetch panels on, the sheep were coming at a dead run up the hill. I flanked Hemp who went square and deep to try and control their speed but they outran him up the hill and were standing against the back fence behind the post when Hemp came up the hill. He lost sight of them and once he had them again we had sheep on the wrong side of the post. I picked them up off the fence (I was happy with how he did that as he usually can get into trouble there. Then we put them the right way around the post. They started down the drive line but they were fighting him and wouldn't line out so he kept having to flank to keep them from running back to the fence. We got close to the drive panels but I could see we were going to miss them because Hemp was getting hot and wasn't stopping as well so I retired the run. I was still very pleased with him and I will certainly make a mental note to have him more fit. He's not in bad shape but in order for our dogs from the north to come down and run in this heat they need to be in top shape. Plus Hemp gets hot in the head easily so all the more reason to have him fitter.
A big thunder/wind storm is blowing in right now and tomorrow is supposed to be stormy. Lad runs 7th so it should be cool no matter what.
Don won the nursery today! And Whiskey was 6th and got a leg.

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