On Thursday the lines were laid for the first test in 95 degree heat. Then it rained hard, and the next day only Andy Bensing's Eibe was able to work this line. She took two hours to painstaking track what was left of deer foot and blood scent. Her focused attention never wavered. John was one of the three judges who gave her a prize I (92 points), and he thinks that Eibe is an extraordinary dog. Huge congratulations to Andy and Eibe!
On Friday there was another tracking shoe test for three more dogs, Steve Durocher's two teckels from Canada and our Joeri. None of these dogs could do anything with the line, which had been rained out by another torrential downpour. All three dogs failed. John withdrew Joeri after 20 minutes and about 250 meters in order to avoid wasting the judges' time.
The tracking shoe test, with its natural deer scent from the interdigital glands of the hoofs, seems to motivate dogs better than straight blood. However, the drawback is that the tracking shoe test line holds up less well
under heavy rain.
In other events, such as the Companion Dog Test (Begleithundpruefung) Joeri did very well. He was the only dog who did the exercises off-lead. The water retrieval tests with a dummy and a dead duck fascinated him. After passing these tests himself, he delighted in retrieving the dummy and duck for the other less enthusiastic dogs who left the retrieval object out in the water. This was all very fine, but we would have preferred to have a good score on the blood tracking test.
Since we don't have any pictures from the performance events, I have included pictures from today's John and Joeri's obedience training session. It included healing off-leash, down and stay, and retrieve.
2 comments:
Joeri was an awesome boy during the whole meet.
He is a great water dog. So nice to see a dog having such fun!
Always good to see you and John.
Thanks Claire. It was good to see you and Franka too.
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