Spring is nearly here

I love this time of year the days are cool but not cold the nights are great not to hot, the garden is already starting to look better after all of the frost's we had over winter. I was looking through my photo's and came across some of our station in various stages of drought, flood, green and now brown. This time last year we where WET and it was just the start of a very wet and sad summer of devastating  floods and cyclones, we where very, very lucky while we received record breaking rain falls we didn't have the huge downpours which caused the flooding over large parts of Queensland. With all the moisture we  have a great body of feed for the cattle, however it has hayed off and now grass fires are a huge worry.

This was taken in February 2009 and things only got worse!!!!!

Same paddock 12 months later.

This creek is just down from our house no one had seen it this high.

Now we are back to brown again.

Not a lot of training has taken place the last couple of weeks we have had a steady stream of visitors and tiding up the cattle work has left very little time for training. I have had Sonny around our National course which I am very pleased with, no were near to the standard which I saw at the World Trial in 2008. I did however get the fetch gate both drive gates and had a minor hiccup with shedding, lots more practise there I think. Sonny is still only learning as well and we both have a long way to go but I am enjoying the challenge of something new, we have both seen a major improvement in how our dogs work in the paddock as well after we have been training  to do this course. We where a little unsure if our merino's would suit the course as they can be a little flighty at times, after only a couple of times they have taken to it very well. My next project is to work on Nell, she is well and truly ready for some training.I didn't get any photos of Sonny working sheep but I did take some when we where feeding the bull I don't think he liked them getting so close to his motorbike.

Sonny pushing a bull over to the feed bins

Little Ben may have taken control of his way ward ears finally they have stood up and he is looking rather handsome with pricked ears.Ben has started working sheep and we are both very happy with how he worked I will leave him now for a few months. He found it very tiring posing for the camera.