I love this picture of Justin and Lydia. They have the same smiles!
They start the competition with the dog at the bottom of a hillside and eight sheep at the top of the hillside. The dogs don't know where the sheep are the they have to listen to commands given to them by the owner's whistle to go find the sheep.
Once the dog found the sheep, the dog had to lead them through a gate and to the bottom of the hill. The dog would then run up the hill again and find a second bunch of sheep with red collars on them. The dog would lead these sheep down the hillside and through the gate and then combine them with the other eight sheep. 
Once the sheep are together, the dog would lead all sixteen of them around a pole, up the hillside and through another gate and then over to the other side of the hillside and through another gate. 
After that the dog would lead them back down to the bottom of the hill and the owner would separate out five of the the collared sheep. 
The dog would have to keep the other ones from trying to join back together. Once the five were separated the owner and the dog would try to herd the five collared sheep into a little corral. It was impressive.
The dogs would slow down and sneak up to the sheep once it got close to them. It is funny because my parents dog, Hollie, sneaks like this all the time.It was fun to watch. The dogs would be disqualified if they got excited and bit the sheep unless it was a head to head battle that the sheep started. We didn't see any head to head battles, but we did see one dog that got too excited and bit one of the legs of a sheep.
The owners had a whistle cue for going left, going right, and laying down. If the dog was getting too excited or starting to startle the sheep, the owner would have the dog lie down and calm down for a little bit.
The dogs had twenty four minutes to finish the course and then they would be judged and given a point value for the competition. The team that won was from South Africa. A new dog would start the course every thirty minutes.During the competition they also had different venues. They did a duck herding demonstration. It was pretty funny to watch. They said that they use ducks to help with the precision factor of the herding. The dogs that demonstrated this were just young pups that were being trained. They were Australian kelpies.
It was pretty entertaining to watch. The ducks would just waddle all over place. The dogs never bit at them or anything.
During one of the other demonstrations, the dog was getting warm so it went and layed in the bucket of water to cool off.
There were little horses at the event also. Lydia got so excited when she saw them. She loves animals!
They also had a Splash Dog competition. The dogs would start on a platform and their owners would throw a toy out into the water and the dog would run and jump to catch it. They were scored by how far they could jump. The distance was measured by where the stub of their tail touched the water.
I think that Sadie, the dog I used to have, would have been great at this.
This dog jumping is a black lab. You have to look for him. He is almost as high as the blue flag and just over to the right a little bit.
In this picture he is about even with the green platform.
And in this one he has just landed in the water. He jumped twenty feet and seven inches. It was crazy!
I forgot to bring Lydia's hat so when she wasn't able to sit in the shade of her stroller we had her wear Justin's hat. Isn't she so cute?
They also had a Bow Wow Luau show. All of the dogs in the show were rescue dogs. They had them running the obstacle course, catching frisbees, and bowing. We left this show a little early because I Lydia was in direct sunlight and I wanted to move her back into the shade.
This dog is a border collie that weighed 70 pounds because he was super long. He definitely wasn't fat, just very long. His name was stretch. After he did his frisbee routine he ran around and touched every frisbee on the ground until he found the one that he wanted to take back stage with him. It was pretty funny.We had such a fun Labor Day and can't wait to go and watch the competition again!
1 comment:
Justin should have bought her a pony!!
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