Three and a half months have rolled by, bringing with them some of the most unusual and unsettling times that many have experienced in their lifetimes. Questions over livelihood and direction have loomed large through the summer, and many question marks remain hanging in the air as we try to second-guess what the future will bring. Oh, and we are back in lock-down again
Running as a small thread of normality through the middle of all the chaos has been dog training; mostly just Venn and I, sometimes with Paul and Bryn, and on a couple of occasions with the trainers from SARDA. In the great tradition of this blog, it has been a bit of a roller coaster ride (again)
With SARDA acceptance testing under our belt we have continued to develop our scent work as best we could under the circumstances. Looking back, we have been playing “nose-work” games of some shape or form for the best part of a year at this point, so we went to our first “benchmarking” session with the trainers with a quiet confidence that she could give good account of herself with the basics. To be fair, she did well on the day, but the trainer spotted a couple of things that needed tightening up.
We are going to go back a few stages, and focus on getting Venn’s indication (how she tells me when she has found something) a bit sharper and less ambiguous. At the moment she does this with a bark and some strange subtle body-language changes. However, the ambiguity creeps in as she already barks a lot in anticipation of the “game.” I can tell the difference, but it would be much better if she gave a more clear-cut signal, so we are working on introducing a sit. Some of you might remember that she started out with a sit and no bark as an indication, but over the months this has morphed into a bark with little in the way of a sit.
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