The July 4th Cascade Farm trial was the last trial my friend Darlene Hutchins was able to attend while she was fighting cancer. That was in 2009. Darlene left me her young dog Fina. Fina and I had plenty of struggles together, but finally began making progress. The July 4th Cascade Farm trial in 2010 was our first placement together.
This year I only ran Fina one day at Cascade as I had 3 dogs to run and was judging one day. She worked like a well oiled machine, confident and responsive. I'd been in first place for some time with Song, but I was pretty sure Fina had bested that score. I was due to set sheep for the next class so I went to the top of the field before seeing the results. They radioed up that I was needed for a runoff. Indeed Fina had beaten Song by one point, and another handler had tied Fina.
The trial had a fun trio of handlers from NC, and it was one of these ladies that had tied me for first. I could not resist a North South challenge for the runoff. The judge and scribe whistled Battle Hymn of the Republic when I came to the post, and Dixie when Sherry came to the post. Much laughter was had, and Fina worked even better than the first run. However I made some mistakes, and as I did so I considered that the south had better generals than the north. Apparently I was reenacting that disparity. The quality of Fina's work carried me and we prevailed for the north.
We made Darlene proud, and even more importantly (if you knew Darlene), we made her laugh.
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