Finally finished

" Workin' all day and the sun don't shine
Tryin' to get by and I'm just killin' time
I feel the rain fall the whole night through
Far away from you, California Blue "


Well , not really California Blue. More like Sydell Blue.
The past week or so I have gotten busy resurrecting my used sheep handling equipment. If you remember I bought it over the summer and had a difficult ride down and back to pick it up. Managing to loose at least half of the support rods out the back of the horse trailer on the trip back.
When I picked it up it was loaded on a pallet and never really had a chance to inspect it. One of the items was a swing/slide gate that when unloading I came to discover was broken at a weld. I was just so disgusted that I put it off to the side for several months.
As the weather changed, I knew I had better address this stuff before it was too cold to give it a proper face lift. So I got to it.
My neighbor Randy was able to weld the swing/slide gate for me and so that was fixed. He also let me borrow his drill with wire brush and so I got busy removing the rust and chipped paint off of the MANY pieces of equipment. I spent several days from morning till dusk grinding down this stuff . I then got to painting all equipment with a good coat of Rust-Olem paint. As close to the Sydell Blue as I could match. This also took me several days to complete and at the end ( yesterday ) I was really disliking the color blue . My back was screaming at me each night from many hours bent over this stuff and picking it up each morning and moving back under cover each night. 
Yet in the end I am really pleased with how it turned out. It looks as good as new and was worth the effort as it saved me quite a bit of money to buy it used. It would have cost me twice as much brand new.

Though I will confess I just got my Premiere Sheep catalog and hot dipped galvanized is looking really good to me about now .


I did manage to get the dogs lightly worked.
Focus on the two young dogs, but managed one of the adults here or there as well.
I have started putting some whistles on the two young ones. Amazing how fast dogs pick up on the stop whistle.
Right now Flint is looking really good.  I am getting him driving and cross driving at good distance from me, he is holding his lines really well and getting better about his flanks.
It changes as time goes between the two dogs .
Rush at times seems to excel where Flint struggles or the other way 'round.
Rush is more solid on her flanks but her pace is a bit too hurried at the moment and she wants to be too close to the stock and boring into them.
She has not learned to rate herself on her own and stay back a bit . I am needing to keep reminding her of that "bubble"
She is very responsive and whippet fast in her work.
Rush seems to learn things faster, but Flint seems once he learns things he is good to go and needs less handling to keep him right.

Both work differently but I am enjoying them for what they are teaching me about training as well as how they are learning from the training I am giving them !