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The life of a princess...

I took the herding instinct test on October 25th. I passed the test and got my "first leg." (Which sounds funny to me, I already have four legs!) Mom says I need to pass the test twice to get a herding instinct title after my name, HIC.

There is a video of my test on you tube if you want to see me in action! Just search for "Abby herding." Mybrother Lad took the test and passed too - his video is called "Ladd Herding Instinct Test."

This weekend....Sunnybank and herding!

I had a really fun weekend! On Saturday Lad and I went to a farm with a lot of my collie friends. My sister CC came too! We got to go into this fenced area where there were real LIVE sheep! I heard my mom say we were being tested to see if we had an instinct for herding. I don't know about that, but when I was in there with those sheep I just had to chase them! I kept them all together and moved them round and round! It was so much fun! Mom said I passed, and so did Lad and CC. If we pass the test a second time we get an "HIC" put at the end of our names.

Yesterday, Sunday, we went to Sunnybank! It was really exciting to go to Sunnybank, the home of all the famous Sunnybank collies. Especially now, since mom traced my pedigree back to Sunnybank Gray Dawn, Sunnybank Thane, and Sunnybank Goldsmith (Bruce). We visited all of their graves, which made me a little sad. But they lived a LONG time ago. The new picture at the top of my page is of me, at Sunnybank!

At the National...

Guess what?!? I went on my first vacation! It was a realllly long car ride! I can't tell time, but mom said it took 19 hours of driving to get to this place called Wisconsin! We took my niece Holly with us. She is a little smooth, tri-color collie, she is a lot of fun. She is two years old, and I am 18 months old. She is older than me, but I am her aunt. (My older brother Angelo is her daddy.)

When we got to Wisconsin we stayed in this place called a hotel. Mom said that all collies had to be on their best behavior when staying in a hotel. It was fun staying there because the room had two beds in it! Holly and I umped from bed to bed, and played. Mom said it was ok, because we had been cooped up in the van for so long.

Across the street from the hotel was this building and inside the building were hundreds and hundreds of collies! (And their owners) It was a big collies - only - show, mom called it a collie specialty. But this wasn't just any collie specialty, this was the National Specialty. All the top collies in the country were competing. There were even collies at the National from other countries!

We spent the whole week there, and I met so many new people! Kia, my human sister, took me into the ring when it was my turn to be judged. I was nervous, but having Kia with me made me feel better. I could tell she was nervous too, but she gave me lots of cookies. After the judge examined every collie in my class she turned to me and had me go to the front of the line. She put me in first place! I won my class at the National! Mom said it is a very big honor. And people kept coming up to us to congratulate us. Mom even cried a little bit! Everyone told Kia, being only 14, that she did a great job handling me. We were competing against collies who were being shown by professional handlers!

Holly is Kia's junior handling dog. Junior handling is when the kids compete against other kids to see who is the best handler. Kia showed Holly in the junior handling competition and they won 2nd place! So we had a great time and came home with 2 ribbons! What an exciting week! The best part was when mom let me pick out a new toy to celebrate! I can't wait to go to more shows!