New Barn Hunt Champion

I entered Gimme in 12 classes for a 3-day trial, equally split between Crazy8 and Masters. My main goal was to get a Masters Q, which would finish her barn hunt championship. Naturally she came in season the day before the trial started. This works out well for us, since she is in a blind of 1-2 dogs, which means much less waiting around and no real stress from the presence of other dogs. The dog who blinding with her is small and owner-carried, so Gimme doesn't count her as a dog. On the other hand, she is more distractible when she's in her special condition. Another advantage is that I can remove her harness when we are up next, so it makes it faster and smoother to get in the ring and start quickly. By the end of the weekend I dispensed with the harness altogether.

Saturday --

Crazy 8 (1) - Indeed she started out distracted, but once she got the first rat, then she was really into it. She did climb, tunnel and found 5 rats for 70 points. This is her personal best and brings her Crazy 8 point total to 780. She is already more than halfway to the next level title.

Masters (1) video - Gimme did a good job here, getting 3 out of 4 rats. The course had a large distance challenge and she went into it twice. The second time I was looking in from a different angle and I saw her vigorously scratching at a spot near a bale, but what she was scratching at was obscured from where I was. Ordinarily I move a little away to test her commitment, but I didn't feel like I could do that when she was already so far away. I called alert and was wrong. As she was coming toward me she found the rat tube close to where I was, in a spot she hadn't been yet. I suspect the scratching was probably just her checking a pee spot from a rat tube location for a prior blind. My bad. Note to self: As she was scratching, I only saw shavings flying, no straw.

The comment about her panties refers to her little hop as she came out of the tunnel. Each time, all weekend, she'd hop her butt up as she exited the tunnel, rubbing her panties against the edge cover. Most times the edge cover (gray pipe insulation) came off and ended up away from the tunnel. She never got the panties off, but she did manage to slip the waistband down a bit - which I'd pull up again each time she found a rat (the time when I'm allowed to touch her while we're in the ring). BTW for this class she never did do the tunnel, which is odd for her.

Crazy 8 (2) - Gimme came in raring to go and I hoped she'd have another stellar effort. Unfortunately some rude, stupid, inconsiderate handler walked her dog too close to the ring and then stood there letting the little booger pee on a nearby post (less than 6', rules require them to keep 10' away). I told her to move along, but by then Gimme was distracted and it took her a bit to refocus on finding rats. We still came away with 50 points, but it could have been more. This brings us to 830, so it's possible Gimme could finish another title this weekend. We'll see.

Masters RATCH win video - Gimme did a great job. She found two rats, then she found the rat in the distance challenge. I couldn't see what she was alerting on, so I started to move to the end of the challenge area to see what I could see. Gimme started to come with me, then turned and went back to bark some more, so I called it. She was right. I have to say I wasn't sure where it was she was alerting to, but quickly figured it out. After removing the rat, Gimme came out with me and after a little bit found another. Then did the tunnel on her own. She searched around a bit and not finding anything did another tunnel. She got around to the back of the big pile where she'd shown interest before and didn't come away when I delayed following her (not wanting to sell her on something that wasn't there). When I got there she was persistent in that spot and I called "rat-finished" on the fifth rat. The judge commented how nice it was to have a dog like Gimme for the last run of the day, since she cleared the course, saving the ring crew time.

Gimme is now a barn hunt champion, having gotten her 10th Q in Masters. I was so proud of her. We were the very last dog in the trial today because of her special condition, so there were very few people there. There were a couple friends and ring crew. The ribbon for her RATCH is huge. I may have to move things to display it at home. So I got a huge ribbon and a chocolate milkshake to celebrate our accomplishment. I stopped at Safeway to get Gimme a new toy. She has most of the toys they sell. Of the ones she didn't have, I couldn't make up my mind which to get - so I bought all three. This made her happy for a short while. Like most kids, she quickly lost interest and says "I don't have a thing to play with..."

Urban Tracking (104) & MDSA

On Thursday, August 30th, Nadine and I met at Auburn Cinema for tracking. The conditions were cool and breezy. It was a fairly simple track. What became a challenge was the times the track crossed over main driveways, so I had to interrupt Gimme's

work to let cars go by (pink dotted line). It's good practice to have her tracking disrupted and then having to get back to work, but it does make for disjointed and inefficient tracking.

MDSA trick video - This month's MDSA seminar was about tricks. I'm continuing to work on Gimme's backward weaves. For the seminar finale, we each got to submit a 20-30 second video of our dog doing tricks in a sequence; starting and ending on a platform of some sort. I started Gimme on her red, white and blue tub. I used the nearby tree for an "out" around (parkour), then a 180º center front pivot, "scoot", into "heel", "spin" into "otto", finishing with "bacon" to back-on the tub. Gimme was well focused and it didn't take very many tries to get her to do the sequence. Some of those were for me to figure out my handling.

Nosework (1/33)

We started class with an interesting exercise. There were five hides along the row of plate glass holders. We were to go up the row and reward any hide the dog went to. If they passed a hide and didn't whip back quickly on their own, then we were to keep going. At the end we were to turn around and come back.

Gimme really isn't ready to apply her new indication in a search, but I wanted to see what she'd do. I accepted whatever she gave me as her first indication, then paused in place to see if she'd give me repeat nose touches - she did. There was also a bit of paw lifts/touches, but no aggressive scratches. I tried to time rewards when the paw wasn't part of the action, but I wasn't always successful. At one point she gets a little crazy for the food and we have to work through it - obviously something we have to train in our sessions. Often I was rewarding her for simply pointing her nose back toward the hide, approximating the final picture. You can't really see what she's doing for an indication because the person on the camera doesn't move, so we are pretty distant for most of the search. Still I was pleased with her efforts.

Exterior 1 video - She does a nice snap back on the first hide. Goes around the orange rack to pee in the grass and misses the hide there. I really should have taken her off the search, but I didn't - chalk it up to my migraine and back pain. She gets the other three hides nicely. We make a full break at the end before coming back. She gets all five hides on the way back.

Note: She has since come in season, which accounts for her marking during this search. Doesn't excuse it, just explains why.

Exterior 2 video - The instructor moves the hides a little bit for the second round, but keeps them on the same racks. Gimme gets the first one, misses the one on the orange rack and the one after, then found the last two easily. She got all five on the way back, indicating nicely for every one.

I notice I keep turning her around to get myself into position to reward her with my right hand. It's a habit I really have to break - it's just inefficient training to essentially pull her away from the hide before going back to it for a reward. I just have to get in the mindset to transfer the treats to the other hand - it's not like she's going to race off out of control when I have treats in my hand, so I don't need a firm grip on the line as I'm changing hands. I probably need to practice working the line with my right hand; I do it in tracking.

Exterior 3 video - There are three hides along this sidewalk. Gimme does a great job finding all of them. Her indications were really solid too. By this time my back was hurting a lot from her pulling, so I was especially clumsy with rewarding her and line handling.

Gimme enjoyed this class. Twenty-three hides and 3-5 treats for each of them; not a bad haul for the spotty girl.