We spent this weekend at Prairie Dog Sports’ Barn Hunt trial. Although we’ve done some local barn dog trials, we haven’t been to a Barn Hunt trial since before COVID. Our weekend didn’t start out great but it ended with a bang. Although he Q’d in every Crazy 8 run we NQ’d in 3/5 Open runs. Sunday morning things started to click. We got our final Open qualifier to earn our RATO title. Brodie finished 1st in the large dog category and 1st in class. For our last run of the day we moved up to Senior. He was awesome and got 1st in the large dog category and 1st in class again. I am over the moon proud of how he managed to control his over excitement and hunt so well. We came home with a mitt full of ribbons and swag.
Big thanks to everyone at Prairie Dog Sports, Judge Christina Benishin, all the amazing hard working volunteers and my fellow barn hunt enthusiasts who support one another and find joy in each other’s success and share in our ‘oh so close’ moments.
Well our first Barn Hunt trial at Prairie Dog Sports has come to an end and we had an amazing time. Great participants, volunteers, judges and hosts. To say that Brodie was absolutely thrilled with barn hunt would be an understatement. He gets to combine his love of scent work with the freedom to run around and hunt for source without the need to follow any pretty pattern. Considering the fact that we just did our introductory seminar a week ago I’m blown away at how well he did. Although we NQ’d in both our instinct runs, mostly my fault, he did so well in Novice and Crazy 8’s. On our first Novice run his dummy human partner forgot to hand her leash to the gate steward before leaving the start box. I was so excited that we had Q’d only to hear the Judge say I’m sorry I have to disqualify you because you still have your leash in you hand. Hard lesson learned but hopefully I won’t make that mistake again 😉. Our second run earned us a 2nd place finish. Our final run was a thing of beauty. He found the gerbil, did a tunnel and jumped up onto a bale in a smoking fast time of just over 11 seconds. He not only got 1st place in the large dog class but he earned a High in Class for all Novice dogs.
This past weekend we took Brodie to 
Life In The Dog House 