Sammy Olympics

The Sammy Olympics were held on Saturday, September 10, 2005. As always, this is an event that everyone who attends enjoys. Not only the humans, but the dogs as well. This year the turn out was great and there were several events offered.

Cheri Hollenback chaired the event and was in charge of the herding. It is amazing to watch these dogs get into the pen with the sheep and instinctively do what they were bred to do. The most amazing dog to watch was Ariel. Ariel is just one day shy of 5 months old and thought that it was wonderful to have stuffed toys to herd that ran on their own and did not wind down. It was the most amazing thing to watch her in that pen.

In addition to the herding, Joe and Linda now have a complete set of agility equipment which was available to us. Jason Loper was kind enough to work with everyone on taking them through the ability equipment. It is so much fun to watch the dogs work with this equipment and especially to watch the owners and handlers try to keep up with them.

The third event we had available this year was scootering. Both Kathy Buckner and Van Swearingen brought their scooters and Kathy spent the day working with this event. Although it was difficult for the dogs to run in the field as there was no trail to follow, they managed and many got an opportunity to see how their dogs could pull and a chance to ride behind them on the scooter.

Finally was the Grooming Demonstration. Kim Leslie got drafted to do this and did a wonderful job. She spent a great deal of time working with the folks and answering their questions. She explained both show grooming and general grooming techniques. It was a very beneficial session.

We saw many old friends here and several new ones. There were even folks who attended without dogs, just because they had Sammies in the past and wanted to get back in touch with the Sammy community. As always, what this event pointed out to us is WHAT AMAZING DOGS WE HAVE!!!!!!!

To see the rest of the pictures from the event, go to http://www.eskimo.com/~sams/sammyo2005/