Introduction

Like many, I came to this venue while exploring my newly adopted border collie's heritage...I was hooked right away.

After I came to grips with my new addiction, I decided that having a trained dog would prove helpful to bring "me" along as a better trainer and handler.

Less than one year later, I purchased Maria Amodei's Rhyme, a 5 year old fully trained USBCHA Open level border collie.

Binx is my now 19 month border collie that started it all. I adopted Binx from Mid Atlantic Border Collie Rescue (for whom I also volunteer and foster dogs) in June of 2008 - he was 6 months old (awww).

Sarah (founder/director of MABCR) told me that he had potential for sheep work and that he had gotten into her big field by accident and gathered the entire flock and was bringing them to her before she realized what had happened. I thought "that's pretty cool". Though I knew NOTHING about sheep - had never even touched one. But having been around Sarah's farm for nearly a year as a volunteer, and meeting many of her friends and acquaintances, I must admit that I was more than a bit curious about these sheepdog trials and clinics, etc. that everyone spoke about. I had seen enough working border collies in action to have a large amount of respect for their work. What I did not yet know, was what it takes to train them or how to properly handle them. :-\