Tough guy, eh?

We went to a new herding facility in Yamhill (capital city of Nowhere.) It was really beautiful and Kola was allowed to run around off-leash. The male bearded collie really wanted to mount Kola. Kola really wanted to run around and sniff and ignore him. It worked out well. He followed Kola around and she pretended he wasn't there. If Kola stopped for too long she had to do her classic my-eyes-are-over-here spin on her front end. Dave's kelpie also thought Kola was pretty cute.

The actual herding was good too. Dave was pleased with our progress in general. Out outruns still suck. Kola went out basically straight, I pushed her out far enough to get her on the sheep's shoulder and she wound up pushing the sheep the entire way around the pen and then some. Kola gave me this look, with her tongue hanging out of her mouth, as if to say, "Mom, this really isn't working." Finally she got out far enough to give the sheep an excuse to come to me. Kola was pretty amped up so she overflanked a lot. She calmed down eventually and did some pretty good work, albeit always pretty pushy. She held a down while I walked with the sheep all the way to the other end of the pen, but they still refused to lag behind me. Dave said the pen is too small for that.

The really exciting part was when the black sheep decided he'd had enough of Kola and turned to face her and refused to move. Kola was PERFECT! She didn't show a trace of fear, didn't get distracted or discouraged, she just stared that sheep right back in the eye with complete and perfect certainty that the sheep was going to move. "I am dog and you are sheep. You will move now." Is what her face said to me. The sheep tried this several times and always backed down from that placid stare.

I'm so proud of my girl.