Sheepdog trails and the tribulations of selling things..

This blog post might be a bit boring if you can't use your imagination. I forgot to take my camera with me on Sunday and have just spent too many hours trying to find photos to demonstrate the wonders that are sheepdogs in action so you will have to imagine...or be bored.

So, I turned up to the Sheepdog trails at 8am on Sunday morning after having dragged my children out of their beds and fed them breakfast. I had been told that there would be 'loads of stalls' so when I turned up to find a field, a plant stall, a builders merchants truck, a taxidermist and a marquee that housed two men with their 'extreme chainsaws' and a banner which showed, as my darling son pointed out 'a pretty lady who had forgotten to put her clothes on before she picked the chainsaw up', I figured more people would be turning up to sell their wares. Sadly not. That was it. We were the stalls.

It would seem that sheepdogs are used to playing chase the sheep quite early in the morning so while J and L were sitting in the car, contemplating why their mad mother had woken *them* up at the weekend, the dogs got to it. L especially had been so excited about going to the trails all week so I pointed out to them that they had started. All was ok until L got upset because the shepherd was shouting at his dog. She decided that the old man was nasty so she was going to give the dog a hug.....

J decided that the portaloo was much more interesting than the dogs or sheep so he spent the first hour walking to the portaloo at the end of the field, going in then coming back five minutes later to tell me about all of the amazing things that the portaloo did and how he wanted taps that you had to switch on by stamping on the floor and why our toilet couldn't open so that he could watch all of the wee fall down. I love my children!

My brother came to pick J and L up at about 1030 by which point L had made friends with the one family who had walked past the stands and has decided that brawling with a boy in the hay bales was the way ahead and J had informed me that;

'Mummy, you have to sell as much as you can so that you don't have to come and do this again!'

He doesn't really get the selling thing. He thinks once you have sold you stock, that's it, shut up shop, rich and play until you die.

The sheepdogs were ace! I am thinking I will send J and L to their trainer. When a man had whistled at two dogs to separate 6 dogs into two groups then put 3 sheep into each of the two pens, I even clapped but sadly selling didn't happen :(