Short Herding Movie

Here's a very short movie of Pinch getting a herding lesson. He's handled by our instructor Cathy, as I'm pretty clueless how to start an eager young dog. She's trying to teach him to go around, rather than split the stock, and how to move them. What's fun about this movie is how fearless he is when a lamb strays. When it wants to fight he keeps backing it into a corner. Of course he still needs to learn how to handle such a situation but I'm proud of the fact he is so brave.
Like Obedience, herding with Pinch and Moto requires two completely different handling styles: for Moto, he has tons of instinct and not very much "want to", and with Pinch he has tons of "want to" but requires more instruction on how to herd.
Watching them both coming along in stock handling has been so rewarding, and we plan to try our hand at trialing again in the Fall.

Meanwhile the countdown begins for the Sheltie Specialty. Unless something freaky happens, Pinch should be just fine in Rally Novice. Moto should qualify in his Novice debut, but I'm wondering if I'll ever know which dog I'll be bringing into the ring. He surprised me at our lesson last night in a good way: thunderstorms rolled in with lightning, thunder, hail and wind. It was coming to a very loud peak during group stays. Many dogs broke as it was raining so hard you couldn't hear a thing other than the roar of thunderclaps and the pounding of the rain. Moto's ears were back and I could tell he was toying with leaving, too, but he held both his sit and his down. I was beyond happy to see this. The building we will be showing in will be off by itself, no air conditioning, and open on one side. So, if the weather is bad it will mimick the situation we were just in.
I just hope we can enjoy the day and our times together in the ring.
I'm getting nervous!