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Wish us luck,; our first time at the post


Smalahundur
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Sunday, 7 th of April (weather permitting) it will be the first time at the post for Gláma and me.

 

It is a small local trial held at Daðastadir, a farm that is well known to everyone interested in working stockdogs here in Iceland.

 

There will be run in three classes; the A group, B group, and the so called "young dog group".

 

A group is for the most experienced dogs and handlers, a standard ISDS style course, outrun, fetch, crossdrive, shed, penning.

B group is the same but for less experienced handler dog teams, and without the shedding.

(It is expected that a handler/dog team that has gottten at least 60 points in the B group moves up to A).

The young dog group is for dogs that are reaching an age of three in the running year or younger. Same course as B, but with a shorter outrun.

 

Gláma and I will run in the young dog group, as she will be three next June.

 

 

 

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Thanks for all the moral support! I really appreciate it.

I hope the trial will be held on sunday; this was a postponed date, the terrain is a bit iffy, they are hoping for thaw weather so the last ice and snow will disappear. But long term weather fore cast is not really looking good. keeping my fingers crossed.

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Ah well, just got an e mail, the trial date has been postponed weeks.

This was not entirely unexpected; The terrain was not in a good enough shape to hold the trial, and the weather the last couple of days wasn´t good enough for improvement, and the forecast is not good, north eastern winds, dropping temperatures, and a good chance of snow.

Looking on the bright side, at least this means two more weeks to practice ;)

I will keep you posted.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, this is getting ridiculous...Two weeks have passed, and we have had very cold weather followed by lots of snow :wacko: .

Someone from the trial organizers mailed me last week, there is more snow on the course than they have seen all winter!

Sad message; the trial has been postponed for an indefinite time.

 

And the spring "window of opportunity" is closing fast, lambing season is just around the corner. We are relatively early, expecting the first lambs next weekend, end of april.

 

So probably no "first time at the post" in the near future... :(

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Sorry to hear this. I am sure the you, and others, were looking forward this. Has the whole winter been unusual for you this year - or only the past couple of weeks? (I guess that I am assuming that the weather of the past few weeks is unusual - or maybe not?)

 

Jovi

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Your weather reminds me of the time I went to Alaska. Ketchikan is in rain forest and fishing is a way of life there. Sometimes a hole will appear in the cloud cover and a newbie might be tempted to head that way, but it is pretty much guaranteed that the hole will close up and it will be raining there too in a very short time. Only suckers believe in the promise of the sucker holes.

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Sorry to hear this. I am sure the you, and others, were looking forward this. Has the whole winter been unusual for you this year - or only the past couple of weeks? (I guess that I am assuming that the weather of the past few weeks is unusual - or maybe not?)

 

Jovi

An Icelandic friend of mine told me shortly after my arrival in this country, that is is pretty unusual to have the usual kind of weather for the time of the year... He was not kidding :rolleyes:

And though the winter has been pretty mild this year, spring has been unusually cold.

I just hope it gets better before we intend to put out the first lambs, the forecast is not very good...

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I'm sorry that you are having to deal with all that snow! Is this normal in Iceland in the Spring?

 

It's funny, because we often get snow in the Spring in Ohio, but it hasn't been bad this year. Last Saturday, however, there was quite a bit of snow falling. Very little stuck to the ground, but it was falling pretty hard early in the morning, making visibility difficult for driving. But, boy, you should hear everyone gripe! You would think we were getting buried in the stuff!

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Oh, that's so bad! Ok, I won't complain about Poland anymore! But it has been bad here too, not nearly as bad, the spring is so late and it is so cold! So I am concerned about our blueberries.

 

We won't be trialling this year either unless something very convenient happens, since I am going to start Darine's training this year, and I can't do both trialling and training, so we will just go training with the two dogs (since I could trial only with one), and hopefully sometime in 2014 Bonnie will go back to competing.

 

So all the best for the lambing season. We are already finished, the last ewe had her lamb yesterday.

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Okay, yesterday we had a blizzard, and it kept snowing today.This is not funny anymore.

 

Things start to look worrying. There are a couple of factors working together to make the farmer´s life difficult here in the northern part of Iceland at the moment.

 

First , a pretty bad hay harvest last year due to drought. Second, because of a bad autumn, we had to house the sheep about a month earlier than last year. Third, because of the nasty weather pattern in the winter, a lot of hay land has been under ice for a long period, big a chance the grass died, the dreaded "kal". This probably means an even worse harvest next summer (and expensive measures to cultivate fields anew).

Now number four it looks like spring is not coming early (this is an understatement btw), this of course means even more hay is needed.

 

The effects are noticeable; there are a lot of people sending more ewes to the slaughter, there is also an increase in horses being slaughtered.

 

For us personally it is not disastrous, the sheep farming is a kind of a runaway hobby. A flock of over a hundred sheep is a lot of work, but in our case there is not a big part of our income depending on it.

Also we have enough hay for this spring (unless things really go crazy....).

I would hate it to be forced to cull good producing ewes because of this....Ah well, we´ll worry about that after the harvest, I hope I don´t have to make tough decisions then. Our land does not look that bad (fingers crossed).

 

As for trials I don´t think anything will be held until late summer. I don´t know what this postponed trial will do, but it is unlikely they can keep it after lambing. We´ll see.

The Icelandic nationals are planned for end of august, but that is on the other side of the country, and it will be very iffy to find the time then, when I can make time I will try to go.

 

But we have different things on our minds right now, it is lambing time. Well that is to say, no lambs yet, but today it was 140 days since the rams went in, so anytime now, we are checking a couple of times a day.

We hope for about 180 lambs. Unlike your ouissants Maja, icelandic ewes are expected to give birth to twins (the offense of repeatedly producing just a single means culling...).

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