This weekend, Hendryx, Indie and I traveled to Nebraska to do what we thought were instinct tests. Turns out I accidentally signed them up for herding test, which are not the same tests
I went in not expecting a whole lot, considering we have not practiced for the herding test. But my best red boy came through and managed to qualify both of his runs earning his HT title. I couldn’t believe it. He absolutely blew me away this new title qualifies him for the versatility award with our parent club. So he gets to add 3 letters to his alphabet soup V Skylight's Wild Thang CGCA CGCU RE TKA BN BCAT CA NA OJP CD-V HT URO-2 Indie, who has never been on stock before in her life did one run on Saturday and showed promise for a future with herding however, she did not qualify for obvious reasons. Despite my error and my dogs being wildly unprepared, we walked away this weekend with a new title and I couldn’t be more proud. It is a goal of mine this year to get Indie prepared for PT so that she may qualify for versatility in the future.
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We're excited to announce our 2nd Ensemble litter is due at the end of May!
Visit our Current Litters tab for more information on this awesome pairing! Medley was confirmed pregnant this morning via ultrasound. Indie & Echo had a successful weekend. Indie and I headed to Tulsa to chase more GCH points. She walked away with Select both days and a total of 3 pts putting her at 20! Only 5 more to go!
Echo & Sue headed to Omaha where they did agility and earned Echo's first Excellent JWW leg and first place! Indie and I are taking a break from Confo until June but have a special trip planned for mid May to hopefully earn her & Hendryx's HT titles! Indie and I made our way to Garden City, KS this weekend to show conformation! We showed Sat & Sun and had a very successful weekend. On Sat she went BOB/BOBOH for 4 more points towards her GCH putting her 17 pts with all majors & CH defeats. She also earned 4 more breed points. On Sun she went BOBOH. We had a judge change last minute and the replacement judge is one that is on my DNS list and so I was not surprised when Indie only got BOBOH. However, she did not leave empty handed and snagged an OH Group 2 to give her 25 OH points for Sunday totaling 30 for the weekend.
The points she earned this weekend moved her up the rankings (based on the March rankings, this is subject to change when the April rankings come out). BCSA OH #8 AKC OH #17 All Breed #31 Breed #27 KS GCH #1 It is my goal that this year we are able to keep her at least in the OH Top 20 - but it would be icing on the cake to get her up to the Breed & All Breed #20 as well! We've got Tulsa, OK next weekend and then a small confo break until June. This weekend Hendryx & Indie and I played agility.
On Saturday H earned his OJP title with his final Q and 1st place! We moved up to Excellent JWW on Sunday where he did really really good and his only flaw was my fault. On Saturday Indie earned her 2nd leg towards her NAJ title and 4th place! She got very close to titling on Sunday but unfortunately slipped on her last obstacle which caused a bar to fall. However she was really engaged and had a lot of fun which I appreciate. We didn't get much time to practice or prepare for this trial due to the move, breeding & just general life craziness. However, despite that I feel like these two really had an awesome weekend and I can't wait for the next one in June! PHEW. It has been a wild few weeks around here. We recently went through the process of getting our old house on the market and buying a new house all while planning a trip to Kentucky and a breeding so my website has been neglected a little.
A few recent Ensemble brags include Indie going 2nd place at the Kentuckiana Tartan Border Collie Club's specialty sweepstakes in the Bred by 18 months and under 3 class. She and I showed in the Specialty and until Saturday in Louisville, KY. On Friday she made the cut in a lovely lineup of SO many quality border collies. While I was in Kentucky I found out that both Hendryx & Indie made it into the rankings of rally dogs in for BCSA! Indie with an impressive tie for 4th place in the Intermediate class and Hendryx tied for 29th place in the very competitive Excellent class. Finally, this past weekend Indie and I went down to Claremore, OK where she knocked out her final 2 major and champion defeats needed towards her GCH title! She now has 13 points and only needs 12 to finish in just 3 weekends! She went BOS & BOBOH on Saturday for a 4 pt major and then BOB & BOBOH on Sunday for another 4pt major. She then went on to finish the weekend with a lovely OH Group 4 placement. These OH wins put her at 100/250 needed points towards her OH Bronze award and based on current stats has her tied for the #11 spot in the BSCA OH Top 20 rankings for the 2025 specialty! It is my hope that Indie and I are able to keep a nice spot in the OH Top 20 for the 2025 BCSA specialty. Our next few weekends are very full with agility and conformation shows! I hope to have more brags to share. This weekend Indie and I braved the cold of Des Moines, IA to go to a 3 show in 2 days weekend. When we left from our hotel on Saturday morning it was -10 degrees outside. But it was a pretty successful weekend overall. In Saturday Show 1 she took Select for a point and in Saturday Show 2 she took BOB for a 4 pt major! On Sunday she took BOS and BOBOH for 5 OH points and unfortunately no points for OS as the other specials that weekend did not show on Sunday.
However, we left with 5 pts, a major and a champion defeat towards her GCH! We won't have much going on in February as we're waiting for Medley to come into season - but we will be heading to KY in March for a cluster and a border collie specialty! This weekend Echo & his mom Sue earned both their OAP & OJP titles putting Echo officially in master preferred for both classe!
This team has really hit the ground running and are really rocking it! We are so proud of Team Echo! We made our last dog competition weekend for 2023 count!
Hendryx re-earned his NA title (I had entered him in novice A for his last title run instead of B and they pulled his Q because he had earned his NAJ title more than 30 days before) and then went on to get his 2nd OJP leg too! Indie came out to play and earned her first NAJ leg with 2nd place! Echo also played this weekend and earned his first OAP leg as well! I love home trials - especially when we have successes! It's been a good 2023 with lots of accomplishments and I hope we have just as successful of a 2024! Thursday, Saturday and Sunday the border collies and I played rally at one of our local kennel clubs.
We had 7 runs total over the weekend. I’ll start with Hendryx. Prior to this weekend I never thought I’d be able to say that he played rally and had a lot of fun! He went 3/3 qualifying runs with an 85 (handler error caused 10 pts), a 93 and a 97 with 4th place earning his rally excellent title today! He was happy and engaged the whole time and it was so incredible to see him having fun. Anybody who knows Hendryx’s experience with rally/obedience knows that he can get pretty rough ring stress that causes him to disengage. I had tentatively retired him from the rally ring just because he just wasn’t enjoying it anymore. This weekend I thought we’d give it a shot to see if our training paid off and boy did he deliver! Medley didn’t have as successful of a weekend. Our off leash disconnection is still a WIP and this weekend just solidified we have some more work to do as a team before she’s ready to finish her title. Indie came out and finished her intermediate title with an 80 & 2nd place and a 93 and 1st place! She was happy, engaged and really gave some good enthusiasm. She’s going to get some classes in before we do anything off leash for rally. But I’m so proud of how much fun she had. Overall we went 5/7 this weekend with Qs and I’m super proud of everybody |
AuthorTaila Bateman is the breeder/owner/handler of the dogs at Ensemble. This brag blog is for bragging on all Ensemble family and their accomplishments. Archives
May 2024
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