From the first moment Ben came into our house, it felt like he had been there forever.  We had never purchased a full grown dog before, only puppies, and I wasn’t sure how he would fit in.  But as none of the other 6 dogs took offence to his arrival, he was mine for good. Ben was bred (by her Jack out of a daughter of her Hail) and trained by Jeanne.   Two weeks after he came home in mid July 2006, we went to our first trial.  I had previously been training my red dog, Jammer, and decided that Ewesful Acres would be my first trial for both dogs, as when I sent in the entry I knew that I would have Ben by then, so why not? Well, that trial turned out to be a trial to remember.  I crashed and burned with Jammer, but ended up tying for first place with Ben.  After the run off, and a couple of novice handler errors, we finished second, but I was very pleased with our performance and how well we worked together.  At the start of 2007 we continued to do well, other than being beat by Chris and Keane!  As we ran in more Novice classes I found that Ben was rushing the course, and I was struggling to keep control. It was observed that perhaps, as Ben had been run by Jeanne in P/N and Nursery that the Novice-Novice course was too small for him - he needed the distance of a larger course to get a better feel for the sheep.  But as a new handler, I was too scared to move up so continued to run him in Novice-Novice, until taking the plunge at the 80 acres trial in August.  At that trial, to my amazement, we ended up placing 5th out of 25 dogs.  Making the move up to Pro-Novice was the right move at the right time