It was a long and tiring weekend and I came home with a sinus infection. Gimme was a good girl throughout. I learned that in the future I should ask for an upstairs room, so we don't have to deal with people tramping around on the ceiling at all hours of the night.
I thought we had two days of working slots, but it was only one. Probably a good thing, since Gimme was very tired after her working day on Sunday. She was both the youngest and the least experienced dog there. Most of them were getting ready for NW3. While she had trouble with some of searches, she got them all eventually.
One thing I have to love and that was repeatedly commented on by the seminar presenter, Barbara, is how persistent Gimme is. She had one search that ran over 7 minutes and another over 5.5 minutes. We'll never face a 7 minute search even at NW3 and even the other was still verrrrry long for a level 2 dog. She never gave up, even though she'd stop and look at me from time to time, as if to say, "Mom this is hard." It took only a smidgen of encouragement for her to go back to work.
I actually think she is ready for more challenges than she is getting in class. Of course, they need to be interspersed with regular and easy searches. For the seminar day, they were all pretty challenging and she was mighty impressed with herself when she'd get them. She never gave up and was just as eager for the last search of the day as she was for the first.
I have to admit I was feeling a little down at the end of the day, thinking we'd uncovered a huge hole in our training and that we were grossly under-prepared for the trial in April. But a couple people told me not to worry, that Gimme is doing great and will easily handle the NW2 challenges.
So we have a lonnnnng list of things to train... and we'll just keep on keepin' on.
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