Life In The Dog House

After Spirit’s emergency surgery on Tuesday, we never thought we would be going to Red Deer to compete in the Little Nose that Knows/Canine Coaching Sporting Detection trial.  The Vet said we would be surprised at how quickly Spirit would recover but we never expected to be going to a scent trial 4 days after her surgery.  We waited until 4:30am Saturday morning to make our final decision.  Spirit was happily eating, peeing and pooping so we decided to go so that Brodie could play.

Brodie competed in Elite on Saturday in the biggest group of Elite competitors that I have ever seen.  Unfortunately not only did no team title, not a single team passed even one of the three components.  Sunday was a much better day.  Several teams passed 2 of the 3 components but we were the only team that passed the first two components and had an opportunity to title if we got the third one.  Brodie was doing really well.  He found two hides in the exterior search where there can be 0 to 3 hides.  We had less than 1 minute left in our search and he pawed at a picnic bench and I blurted out Alert so fast….sadly too fast because immediately I knew that it wasn’t a hide it was a distractor.  Lately Brodie has started pawing at distractors (which is his alert at source) so I have been trying to wait to make my call to make so that I can be sure that the rest of his body language also leads me to believe that it is the hide and not a distractor.  It was so disappointing being that close to a title and missing it.  Ironically I think the Judge was even more disappointed that I was.  He came up to me at the end of the trial to tell me what a wonderful partner Brodie is and how well he searches for a young dog. We ended up with a 2nd place in Interiors and a 3rd in containers.

Over the weekend, every time I came to take Brodie out of the car for a search, Spirit got all excited thinking it was her turn.  It broke my heart to see how disappointed she was when I said Brodie’s name instead of hers.

Sunday afternoon we had the games searches.  Brodie was entered in Speed, Distance and Team and Spirit in Aerial.  Brodie passed the Distance search to earn his Distance title but just missed the Speed component which would have given us a Games Championship.  Our partner in the Team component false alerted early in our search so we were done for the day.  The Aerial component was run last.   I went on the walk through to see the search area and discovered that all the hides were hanging up against a wall and they were all at Spirit’s nose height.  I spoke to the Judge and told him about Spirit’s surgery and how she really just wanted to get out and “play”.  I said I would just let her walk slowly by the hides and not worry about passing or failing…just giving her a positive end to a crappy week.  We were the first team.  She strutted down the side of the building wagging her tail and walking with the classic Berner prance.  It was so wonderful to watch her.  To my surprise she went straight to the hide and did a brilliant indication. She was so proud of herself.  It was her 3rd qualifier in Aerial so we walked away with a Title.

Many thanks to Samatha and Kristina for holding the trial, all the amazing volunteers as well as Judges Jean-Marc Dugas and John Mairs.