Surgery on my hand has made for a slightly different couple of weeks where the tempo of training has had to ease a little, and Venn has had the opportunity to bimble around a bit more than usual. Of her many distractions, one of the funnier to watch is her blackberry picking, although her newfound passion for puddles also takes some beating. She also managed another swim, and just like the first one it was unintentional and a bit nerve-wracking for both of us; she couldn’t climb out where she fell in and I was trying to get her to swim to a better position, but to the untrained eye, it might have looked a lot like I was just pushing her back in!
We started puppy classes last week which was, predictably, carnage. There was much excitement (for excitement, read weeing) on meeting so many dogs of a similar age, and a fair amount of noise to register the fact that she would like the chance to play with some of them. There wasn’t a right lot of listening to me going on.
At home we have started trying some “stay” work with me going briefly out of sight, and this seems to be going well. We also have started playing hide and seek on our walks with Kip (I hide when they get too far ahead. They then come back and find me). Sooner or later some random passer-by is going to find me crouched down behind a boulder next to the track and wonder.
On the SARDA front, I had another stint of bodying (acting as the scent target for a trailing dog), this time up at Llanberis. My trail was the final test for Gethin and Sion in their trailing dog novice assessment. I know Gethin through his involvement with Aberglaslyn mountain rescue team and have bumped into him from time to time at SARDA events over the last couple of years as he has been training his dog, so it was great to see it all coming together successfully. As a novice handler and dog, the pair goes onto the call-out list, but has a further assessment in 12 months to make sure all is well. In other good news, Paul from our Team and his dog Bryn passed their stock-test (behaviour around sheep) which was the final part of their acceptance tests, and are now enrolled as trainees. We just lost our peer-group.
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