Naturally when I went to put Gimme in the car, she was limping on her left front. I almost didn't go, but rationality prevailed. I figured it was only a ten minute drive, so we could easily bail out if she continued limping and didn't want to play. Where the yard-guys have been removing the blackberry overgrowth, there is still a lot of bramble pieces on the ground and that's right where she goes to watch me put stuff in the car. So I was hoping that she had just stepped on a thorn. As it turns out, when I got her out for a potty break 30 minutes later, she was fine.
We got to the site early enough to get one of the very few shady spots. The grounds layout was nice and they had set up two canopies for queuing up, with chairs, water, shade and visual blinds. From the time we arrived until we pulled out was less than 90 minutes.
Gimme didn't seem very interested in the practice boxes, but finally deigned to indicate one. Once she realized that I had really big hunks of juicy beef heart - then she was more motivated. As we walked in the search room, she looked around and then strained forward and I let her go. She trashed the second box and looked up at me to see if I would call it and pay her, but as I stepped past her to start my walk around her she left it - so that told me it was a fake-out. She stepped on several boxes in passing; she just likes doing that. Then she trashed another box in the right-hand row, but quickly left it. She went down the left-hand row and paid almost no attention to any of the boxes. Then from there she went back up to the end and demolished a box, sticking it while I walked around, so I called "alert". All that sounds like a lot of stuff, but it only took 20 seconds!
Demolition Gimme Strikes Again!
Peggy was the judge and commented that I "need to work on that", referring to the serial trashing of boxes. Actually we have been working on it and she is getting better. At her first ORT she killed six boxes in addition to the odor box; at the second ORT she killed 4 in addition to the odor box. So only killing 2 extras is a huge improvement. We are continuing to work on modifying her alert so that its a little less "vigorous", with more of a paw-and-hold rather than scratching. I'm ready to start working with some boxes, but held off on that until after today.
I was going to take Gimme out to the fort to run, but forgot to take my cellphone with me. Then we got home to find a full crew of guys continuing the work on the yard and they had a gate open to load the brush for removal. So, that means Gimme can't even be out in the yard and she's not too happy about that.
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