Testing Times…or Not (36 weeks)

With the hint of possibility of a January acceptance test for SARDA, much focus has gone onto preparing Venn for the obedience and stock –proof assessments.

Telling the difference between your bed and a bag of laundry is fortunately NOT part of the acceptance test

On the obedience front, there have ups and downs (again). Walking to heel remains a challenge, although most of the other areas seem fairly robust. In early Jan it became clear that, although possessing all the relevant skills, she needed to develop a bit of consistency and polish on these before facing the Test. We had a mixed performance of these building blocks at the SARDA January training meeting, starting from “giddy beyond useful control” through to “approaching acceptance standard.” This was obviously a bit of a disappointment for competitive dad who is chomping at the bit to get onto the formal search dog training. Having said that, there was valuable experience for Venn in terms of a range of different environments, and working with an audience of handlers and dogs. Much like mountain rescue in general, from the dog’s perspective training weekends consist of short bursts of activity requiring real focus, followed by long periods where nothing is happening. The patience that this requires on Venn’s part is an important skill in its own right.

Though I am prone to focusing on the short-comings rather than the good stuff, over the training weekend I couldn’t help but notice the feeling of my developing confidence in controlling Venn (apart from walking to heel!) in these settings, and the increasing depth of her understanding of the SARDA environment. So that’s a good thing.

The Stock Test part of the assessment checks the reliability of a dog around livestock, and in particular, sheep. This has been a harder one for us to prepare for; with lambing almost upon us, farmers are rightly cautious about allowing an untested dog into their sheep fields. We have been visiting the livestock auctions since before Venn was able to go on the floor, and if anything she was a little bit apprehensive of the penned sheep. When we tried her on a lead in a field of sheep this also seemed to be the case. While they stood still or were at a distance she was uninterested, but when a couple of them bolted, she was up on her back legs barking, warning them off. A requirement is that she can walk nicely to heel on and off the lead in the presence of sheep, so until she will do this in the absence of distractions, we will not be ready to face this in a sheep field.

So it all hangs on walking to heel really.

In other news, Venn has taken to the water of her own accord (rather than falling in), and seems to like it quite a lot.