Barn Hunt Pictures

Here are two surprise pictures I got from Jeff Dairiki.  I don't know Jeff, but he was taking pictures of dogs at the trial on Saturday morning and then shared them with the Puget Sound Barn Hunt facebook group.  I asked him if I could have .jpg files so I could share them on this blog and he kindly sent them to me.  So these first two pictures are of Gimme's morning run on the day she got her RATM.



This is us, getting ready for the release, "Find Vermin!"

She'll be all the way across the ring doing something before I get off my knees.  But I learned early in our barn hunting career, if I didn't have her butt against my chest and her front in my hands, she'll self-release.  If the self-release comes before the judge gives us the "release your dog when ready", it can cost us a 20 second penalty.

And here's Gimme having a barkfest at a rat tube.  As you can see this is very vague and I can't tell where the tube is.  Thus the reason I've been encouraging her to, "use your paws".  Which is going very well.

And this is our picture with our new RAT Master ribbon.  We had a real challenge getting this picture because the photo prop was liberally sprinkled with little toy rats.  If you look closely, you can see the last one at the base of the flower pot.  Gimme was ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED she was there to play with the toys, so all the others had to be removed.   Getting her picture taken in the face of such a huge distraction was very low on her list of priorities...

She looks very poised in this shot, but only because someone was standing next to the camera holding all the rat toys we removed.  She's photogenic even when she's being bad, doncha know...