well I ain't "raining men" but...HALLELUJAH none the less

Okay so my reference to this song dates me as well as admitting grooving to the tune during the "bar" days of my youth. 
Yeah I've always been kind of a rock and roll girl but will admit to liking many of the dance disco tunes of my time.
Okay there , I've said it!

Anyway it was been raining at a steady pace since this morning , already two inches of rain in the rain gage. It has been MANY weeks since I have seen this in the main sheep field...torrents of water running down the hill.

The sheep don't seem to care and to be honest I did not let them out to graze today. That hill is steep and I was wet from the morning chores. The lure of my morning coffee was just too strong for me to override and slog down and back up that hill.

So not much going on today . Dogs are bored  with housebound activity.

At some point if the rain gets a bit less torrential I'll get them out on a good walk and then to the kennels in the garage.I really need to run a vacuum through the house and it's just easier without the Borders inside while trying to negotiate the machine around them.

I got all five worked yesterday and did some flank training on the youngsters. Dream and Spirit I worked on shedding. Bracken I used to gather sheep that were set in different locations on the property when done with the other dogs works. She had to gather  the training sheep in the hay field, bring them into a smaller field, turn back and gather the sheep I did not use that were out of sight in another field , join them all up.Them drive all of them to the electronet in the back pastures.
I used the far side hayfield yesterday  for the youngsters to lessen some of the pressures .

I feel they are still struggling with the flank command without a little help from me on drive out and across.

Even with saying this I was able to get some clean perfect flanks on a drive away as well as across .
Better, surely better.

I also wanted to test a bigger outrun on each and was happy to see them running out with good cast both ways. As I walked up to the sheep while they were running out I was thrilled to see them hit the sweet spot and thoughtfully engage the sheep to start them to me. 
Fetching sheep to me they are much more solid on flanks. I can stand still and am able to get them left or right  fairly easy. So I know they have a concept of what I am asking.

I like both young dogs. They are so similar yet so different in their work.
I want to push forward but there is a little voice that keeps tickling the back of my mind that says
 "steady girl. Take yer time. "
So far I have been good and listened, yet when you see and read about dogs the same age running at Nursery level it fools with your head some. I keep reminding myself the handlers that have dogs at that level with a 16 month pup,  have trained WAY more dogs than me.
I still am learning to train a dog correctly and in doing so I need to go slower and be more thoughtful in my training program since it is not second nature for me.
There has also been great lag time between young dogs and so this also impedes my progress a bit.
I have nothing fresh in my mind of the last ones I have trained.
Did they do this? Were they hard to teach that? 

I am the tortoise in envy of the hare...
I just hope my fairytale ends the same as the classic Aesop fable