HLSR

Doreen and I went to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo yesterday. We really were there only for the livestock show. The rodeo part doesn't really appeal to us so much. But the livestock part is fun.

We went yesterday because there were two things we particularly wanted to see – one was the Poultry Judging. The other was the Sheepdog Trials.

The Poultry Judging was not what we expected. We thought we would see all sort of different chickens in different colors and such. Instead, we saw this. Oh well. I guess it really was judging the poultry!

The sheepdog trails were fun to watch. I am not sure what I expected, but dogs work sheep sort of the way that old Daleks computer game works. The Sheep always go away from the dog. So the handler just needs to move the dog on the opposite side of where he (or she) wanted to send the sheep. As fas as we could tell, the dogs responded to only three commands “Here”, “There” and “Lie Down”.

The dogs obviously loved this work. Most of them were Border Collies, but there was one Kelpie as well. We didn't stay for all 40 contestants, but one fellow had two dogs. One named Blaze, and one named Dan.

Go figure.