Herding with the wild child

Just to clarify, that wild child is Finn. Though Im sure no clarification was needed ;-)

Our long awaited weekend has been and gone, and was a huge success. The northern herding enthusiasts had Lynn Leach (herding trainer extrordinaire) visiting from Canada and doing some clinics, and it was so wonderful to get to visit with her again.

Thursday I headed up to Manchester to collect Lynn from the airport before heading across to Pickering where we were to spend the next few days.

Then friday morning and the training began! There was slightly different groups of dogs on each of friday, saturday and monday, with some overlap, but included Beardies, Shepherds, Pyreneans, Valhunds, Boxers, BCs, and of course the wild Finn! All the dogs improved in leaps and bounds, both picking up on the basics and giving their owners a clear idea of where to proceed next. Its so nice to see everyone thoroughly enjoying themselves with not a nasty word heard all weekend.

And I cant help but brag on the massive progress we made with Finn. She went from being the overexcited pushy speed demon that she had turned into over our previous few herding sessions, into calm and controlled (well, that is all relative of course) and actually thinking about working for me rather than just having fun. And it was nice to be able to see more clearly her strengths and weaknesses so hopefully its only upwards from here!

Calling away from the sheep..Whoever would have thought she could show that self contol!!

We finished the lovely weekend off by doing a little touristing, and getting our own personal behind the scenes Zoo tour. Thanks Jackie! Thanks Lynn!

In with the penguins

And the Rhea

And the ..umm other anteater type creature.