July marked the start of my lessons with Tina. This is being written about over a month later, so I am doing the best from my memory.

1st Lesson
For the first lesson, we started out with three of Carol's dog-broke sheep in her circular pen. Before we ever started out to the sheep, we briefly discussed the flanking directions: "Come Bye" for left and "Way to Me" for right and the idea of a controlled outrun. Most important, the dog should not come in too close to the sheep or too fast to the sheep or they will RUN.

Tina and I went into the pen and I had her try to move the sheep around the pen in a circle. With the directions written on my hands, I did pretty well. We also turned the sheep and had them walk through two pylons in the center of the ring. This lesson was way below the level at which Tina can work but was a much needed introduction for me.

2nd Lesson
This lesson we moved to Carol's larger field. We were still working with the dog-broke sheep. In this lesson, we were starting working on course that roughly resembled the AKC A course.

This course consisted on an outrun, lift and fetch to bring the sheep to me. From there, we drove the sheep to the right and along a fence line. At the corner of the fence, we turned onto the next fence and contined driving along. At the next corner, there was a pen. This was a major trap! The sheep wanted to fly in. To drive the sheep along the fence-line, I had been holding Tina in a "come bye". Then, as soon as we started to turn, I had to send her in a quick "Way to Me" to keep the sheep out of the pen.

Making a lot of progress for such a short period of time. It is great working with a dog that knows what she is doing.