One man and his dog

So if you are in the Manchester area, it is raining again - which actually sums up most of the weekend.

Last night I had a rather sleepless night as my mind was churning over all the things that I hadn't sorted out yet for this trip. I did originally think I was almost done, but obviously panic must be setting in. So I think another sit down with the kit bag is required this week, and assure myself I have what I need.

So no training this weekend, other than a gym session this morning, the weather, and several urgent jobs on the house dissuaded me from walking. So some tile repairs in the bathroom and new kitchen sink taps (after having to remove the whole sink first !) occupied my weekend. We did also go to the Hayfield Sheep Dog Trials, which was good fun.

If you have ever accidentally come across one man and his dog on the TV, I say accidentally as I can't believe people sit down with the intention to watch it, then it all looks very professional, man and dog in harmony.

So welcome to Hayfield, where I must say I only watched a few competitors, but here it was more man and dog struggling to get sheep to do what they want.

The first competitor fell foul of the random sheep selection, unfortunately it appeared that the ones he got had been on sprint training for the past few months. The dog could hardly keep pace with them, let alone direct them. Consequently then went from one end of the field to the other, avoiding all gates, before the dog had managed to get near them.


Competitor number two was somewhat more successful, this time his sheep selection brought out a more docile collection, however in this case man and dog were not so well in tune, and the dog had them down the field and back up successfully missing all the gates, he did however manage to get them into the pen with no trouble at all.

Anyway after a few more we departed to walk around the other show stalls and features. However there are two competitors we saw later that did bring about a smile. The first one, has a set of sheep who clearly held no fear for the dog or the man, a stand off at the pen led to the judges calling the proceedings to a close, before it turned dark. Sheep and dog and sheep and man face to face in a stand off, none of them moving an inch.

The second one, was even more funny, having successfully collected his sheep from the top of the field, drove them down and through the first gate, round the pen and back up the field to the second gate, perfect, maybe he was a potential for the TV, but then........

sheep rapidly followed by dog, jumped a fence at the top of the field, and disappeared from sight, I assume local rules then called for disqualification as the judges asked them to leave, but the dog was having not of it, successfully chasing 3 of the 4 back over the fence, one sheep doing a 360 degree summersault, then despite shouts and whistles from his owner, went back over to retrieve the last one. He obviously didn't care about the rules.

So no training trivia, but at least you can all go away thinking about what you missed in Hayfield, maybe I could try some tips with the other trekkers up Kili - Come by, come by, down down........