Since my last blog post (which nobody read), I reared 400 calves at SIT Telford's dairy farm, then in November I switched to their sheep farm where I had the best two months ever, living my dream as a shepherd - Swifty and Sketch were awesome little sheepdogs - until I was told unexpectedly that I wasn't needed anymore (after being left hanging for six weeks waiting for more work). A lot of things discussed early on never eventuated. It was incredibly disappointing. I had picked up two other casual farming jobs in the meantime but last week both of them also told me they had no further work for me. So, I am currently unemployed again. I am getting pretty sick of this.
On the advice of my boss at Telford, and since I no longer own any cattle, last month I brought 6 ewes to train my dogs on - something I would not have bothered with had I known the job would be ending so soon. So now I have my own sheep. At least it gives my dogs something to do while there's no work otherwise. I've applied for 10+ jobs in dairy or shepherding in the past month but no luck so far.
On the dog sports front, things are much the same. I changed agility clubs at the end of last year after a long string of negative experiences, and things are much nicer where I am now. I have cut a few people off and made an effort to surround myself with the right kind of people, and agility weekends are so much nicer now.
- Swifty is still doing great in her agility, though the weaves continue to be her nemesis, so we are still chasing those 2 wins for Senior. She is showing a lot of progress in her reactivity, thanks to the advice of some lovely people. She has started to make friends with other dogs again, of both genders so I am very happy with her. I'll never know for sure what caused her to suddenly switch like she did but I'm happy we seem to be having a breakthrough. We also had a fantastic winter in bikejoring, she loves it so much and we managed a couple of 4th places. She even was able to race in 2-dog scooter with a friend's dog, he was a lovely boy and she had no issues with him. Unfortunately steering two dogs on a scooter in icy conditions was a steep learning curve and I crashed about 1 minute from the start line. 😂
- Skuggi, well he is still Skuggi. He had a cancer scare in the winter but it turned out benign. He's very happy and loud as per usual. He is close to retiring from sports, but he managed a perfect clean run in Jumpers A last month for a 6th place, his first run of the year. He may have a go at hoopers later in the year.
- Sketch is now 13 months old and a super cool boy. He's turned into a really leggy, athletic young dog outgrowing both my other dogs. He also had two health scares since my last post but he's fine now thankfully. He loves doing agility and he has now done 3 short bikejor runs with Swifty and showing a lot of potential there too. He is a little crazy but so smart and fast. I still can't believe that after 20 years of dreaming I finally got my border collie! He is everything I wanted.
