Sheepdog Trials

We went over to see a bit of the Sheepdog Trials Saturday.
It was pretty interesting. The Fuzz's Sweetie saw something about it in the local paper. We had heard of it before, but never thought to go.
As you can see in the picture above, there were a lot of these black and white dogs there.
This was a first for us. The Fuzz's Sweetie brought along a friend who was interested also. The folks out there seemed nice enough. They were willing to answer The Fuzz's pretty basic questions about what was going on out there. We enjoyed it.
First the dog has to run all the way across the field to get the sheep. These shots were taken with a zoomy-type lens so the distance is a bit distorted. It was really a pretty good ways across.
The dog has to herd the 4 sheep back across the field to the handler, who I guess is a sheepherder. On the way they are supposed to pass though a gate out there in the middle of the middle. You can see that happening in that 2nd pix. After they get to the handler, he/she sends them back out to pass though a couple more gates out in the field. The handler is using a whistle to tell the dog where to take the sheep. When they get back again, the dog and handler have to separate the sheep into two groups. This seems to be a bit tricky as the sheep don't seem to like it. That's what they're doing in those next couple pix. After that, they put them in a small pen. All this has to happen in 9 min. The dog in that next pix looks just a little different than the others. The woman said it has a bit of Bearded Collie in it. What ever it was, it seemed to do the best out of the few we saw.And here's a couple of the spectators taking it easy in the shade.