The 6th annual Nippersink or Swim Sheepdog Trial.

The 6th annual Nippersink or Swim Sheepdog Trial was held the Memorial Day weekend of May 25-29, 2017, and it was really great fun!

The wind was blowing with a windchill and we were hot, the rain came down through the bright sun, the thunder started and then stopped, leaving us with a downpour and on Monday the tent fell down, and we were lucky—the weather was great.

See all of you around this summer, and our Fall Trial will be held October 13-15, so come if you can!

This year we had two runs of Pro Novice, and the first five placings in PN 1 were:

1st Gordon Watt with Ben 77
2nd Lyle Lad with Nick 75
3rd Lori Perry with Ember 74
4th Connie Brannen with Derry 74
5th Merry Russell with Rob 71

PN 2
1st Lori Perry with Ember 83
2nd Linda Tesdahl with Sunny 82
3rd Lyle Lad with Nick 79
4th Donna Huntington with Shae 79
5th Claudia Frank with Hawk 78

We had two runs of Nursery, and the young dogs placed like this in Nursery 1:

1st Connie Brannen with Derry 82
2nd Lyle Lad and Nick 71
3rd Stuart Ballantyne with Cap 69
4th Vicki Kidd with Lynn 65
5th Kerry Watt and Ava

Nursery 2
1st Linda Tesdahl with Sunny 77
2nd Linda Gray with VH Hawk 76
3rd Stuart Ballantyne with Cap 75 (outwork)
4th Connie Brannen with Derry 75
5th Claudia Frank with Hank 72

Then there was Open. Open 1 finished like this:

1st Gordon Watt with Storm 92
2nd Dave Imas with Tip 83
3rd Jennifer Boznos with Daley 83
4th Mike Schragel with Jaff 77
5th Kerry Watt with Flo 76

Open 2:
1st Dave Imas with Tip 93 (outwork)
2nd Kerry Watt with Reba 93
3rd Marilyn Terpstra with Lola 92
4th Lyle Lad with Joe 87
5th Rose Anderson with Skeeter 86

And finally, Open 3, the Double Lift:
1st Gordon Watt with Nell 153
2nd Gordon Watt with Storm 144
3rd Connie Brannen with Velvet 143
4th Lyle Lad with Joe 128
5th Jennifer Boznos with Daley 127

It was amazingly fun and everything came together like clockwork. I must thank again our intrepid judge John Wentz, who carefully and fairly judged all 340 runs, through a variety of weather, day after day. Those runs were beautifully facilitated by the amazing sheep setting skills of the Watt Family, with Gordon, Kerry, and Sophie wrangling sheep along with our good friends Mark Day (came the farthest, from England) and Missi Roland, and some help down on the left hand set out from Sharon Woolman.

Every day around 11:30 Candi Sandberg marshalled a wonderful lunch for all, and the Handler’s Dinner Saturday night, would not have happened so well without her. Her baked treats are the stuff of legend.

“Dan and Pete” provided the music, the pig came from East Troy—call “Dine with a Swine” for one of your own.

Tresa Laferty did a fabulous job as Trial Secretary. She kept track of all the details and kept things running so smoothly it felt effortless to me. Many thanks to her.

And the other thing—what a great community is the sheep dog world. Everybody offered to help. I got to meet people whose names I have heard for as long as I’ve been involved in this and it was something I have always wanted to see, so many good handlers trying the course. Gordon Watt won High Combined with Storm, and he gave me the Craig Malloch crook given the Nippersink as prize by Stuart Ballantyne. It’s beautiful.

See all of you around this summer, and our Fall Trial will be held October 13-15, so come if you can!