Scenes from the weekend

This must be the place.

Meghen prepares one of her charges.

Showtime.

Over at Rally, contestants step off the course.

MaryAnne and Chance wait patiently.

It's our turn!

Chance scores a passing grade and earns an advanced Rally leg.

Kim enjoys a lighter moment in the Boykin ring.

Back to business.

A fun, but long weekend.

Surprising finish

Larsen placed 3rd in Rally Novice A to earn his third leg and his RN title.

I had to grab my reading glasses to be sure that the score, 83, was a qualifier, and not a 63, a non-qualifier. 

Larsen did pretty well along the whole course until the figure 8 near the end.  At that point, he became interested in something far away.  I rolled a hand grenade into the middle of his head by asking "is that Aki"?  Larsen came right back from wherever he was and looked around with great interest to see if he could locate Aki.  Of course, he could not, but it got his attention back to me, we completed the figure 8, and went about our merry way on the course.

It wasn't just Larsen with his head in the clouds. The judge took a minute to explain to me several missteps that I had made that brought Larsen's score down.  Sorry Larsen!

Due to the timing of the Rally competition, I missed the WSS conformation.  I caught the Boykins, though.  Here is Susan W. in the ring with Ritz.

 

Susan fusses over Ritz in the conformation competition.

Gentleman's C

Larsen earned his second Rally Novice A leg on Saturday, scoring a gentleman's C of 74 (a 70 is required to qualify). 

In my opinion, he did fine until we got to the far end of the room, near the gallery.  Larsen broke away a few steps, put his nose over the fence and started air scenting.  What he was after, I haven't the faintest idea.   It wasn't fried chicken or other food, he's smelled that before.  Sue R. thought it may have been a bitch in heat.  Another contested later said that someone popped open one of the doors to the arena and he may have been smelling the outdoor air that wafted in.  Whatever it was, it left me flat-footed and unprepared and made him seem like a disobedient dog.

We finally got back on track, finished a very tricky course, and earned the green qualifying ribbon. 

We are heading back today, Sunday, for our try at the third and final leg.

The Dogwood WSS club members prepare their dogs for the ring.

Got a leg

Larsen finished in 4th place in Rally Novice this morning to earn his first leg (of 3) toward a Rally Novice title.  He might have finished higher but for operator error.  It turns out I let the leash drag, which looks sloppy (according to the judge) and so nicks you a point.

Larsen was his usual happy self, and of course beside himself when he saw Susan W.  But when he went into the ring his head and tail droopped, which the judge pointed out to me.  Was he nervous?  But once we got going, both of us forgot all about it.  He basically stuck next to me when I told him to heel and sat near me when I told him to sit.  That is all there really is to Rally Novice.

MaryAnne and Chance earned another leg in their quest for the more advanced Rally Excellent title.  Chance was totally distracted in the ring for some reason, but he did what MaryAnne asked and looked good doing it.  Little Chance has filled out and is a nice looking dog.

Larsen relaxes in the hallway after returning home from his Rally outing.

 
Chance earns another leg toward his Rally Excellent title.

Rally-O this weekend

Tomorrow and this weekend Larsen and I will participate in Rally Novice A.

Rally is a watered-down version of Obedience. In Rally, dog & handler complete an enclosed obstacle course.  (In the Atlanta show, the course is indoors and marked off by a low gate.)  The obstacles are traffic cones with road signs that tell you and the dog to do something.

In the sign below, the handler and dog are asked to (1) come to a halt; (2) hup or sit; (3) go into a down position; and then (4) get up, come to heal heel and proceed to the next station.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the Novice A level will have lots of wiggly little puppies, but, what the heck, that is where we belong, really.  We are doing our best and will go for a passing score.

Larsen knows how to zig-zag around the pylons.  He knows how to hup and heal heel.  He's not that great on the "stand" command because we haven't practiced it much.  So it will boil down to whether he gets distracted and whether there are some difficult requests - -  asking him to play the piano, for example - - in the field.

It's still hot out there

A dog can succumb to heat exhaustion and move on to heat stroke very quickly.  Heat stroke leading to death can happen even to the mature, healthy dog of a caring and experienced owner. 

The dog has no efficient way to get rid of heat, and there is an inflection point in the dog's internal temperature after which things go wrong fast.  One minute the dog seems fine, and the next he is in dire circumstances.   

A dog's normal internal temperature is 100.5 to 102.5.  Above 103 F is a problem (source: about.com, citing to Merck Veterinary Manual, 9th ed.)

The internet provides all sorts of checklists to identify heat exhaustion and heat stroke, but the incipient symptoms are pretty obvious - - the dog returns from a run on a hot day panting like a MARTA bus pulling away from the curb, frothing at the mouth, and a tongue hanging to one side.

Pull that dog from the field for a moment and get him settled down.  Give him some water, or get him into some water to cool down.  Most lake water in Georgia is > 80 F right now, which is very warm, but still 20 degrees cooler than the dog's internal temperature.  Just sit for a while.  Get everyone back and centered.

If you've ever played a sport on a hot day, you may know how heat can sneak up on you and you don't realize it until you've been on the sidelines drinking water for a while, your ears pop, and suddenly the world, which seemed fine, comes into focus.  He doesn't know it either, and you have to watch out for him.

Pre-season training with an eager dog provides an opportunity for harm.  Watch for that tongue drooping to one side.  It's the first sign.  Get his tongue to hang from the center of his mouth before you go again.  Don't forget about the rule of 140.

Day's end

Friday rush hour.  We fought traffic up I-75 and past I-575.  We finally broke free and reached the Civil War fields around Lake Allatoona.  

We hiked the shoreline and explored the woodland pathways.   Clouds of bugs settled over the lake, where the fish snapped them up.  Deer moved in the gloom.  Larsen melted into the woods for minutes at a time.  He returned frothing from his runs, his sides working like a bellows.  I sat him in the water until he finally cooled.  The heavy evening air can be too hot for a hard-running dog.

We headed home in the near-dark evening.  We drove through a heavy rain that finally broke.  We got home, and got Larsen watered, settled, and fed.

Then Larsen and I sat on the back porch and watched it get dark.

Larsen enjoys the day's end.

Patience and repetition

Some good points from trainer John McGonigle in the autumn 2010 edition of Upland Almanac (John McGonigle, "Replacing Cruelty with Patience and Repetition," The Upland Almanac, Autumn 2010, p. 37 (not available online yet)).

 Few joys in life compare to watching a good hunting dog hunt with joy and abandon, search hard for birds and retrieve downed birds with his head held high with pride.

That's what we are after.  Here are some of McGonigle's thoughts.

• Training hunting dogs is a time consuming activity that takes a lot of patience, repetition, and consistency. [ed: but it can still be a good time, right?]
• Keep one's voice at normal volume.
• Train a young dog in a closed area or smallish fenced yard.  There's a reason it is called "yard-training," and the reason is that it is effective.
• When pup fails to respond immediately, it is best if the trainer hurries over to the pup and makes him comply with the command immediately.  Often that means picking pup up and bringing him back to the site of the infraction or returning him by pulling pup with his lead.
• Roughness is unneeded at this time.
• [When pup is a little older] grab pup by the loose skin at both sides of his neck, picking him up and returning him to the site of his indiscretion.  Once pup has a good idea [of what he did wrong] giving him a bit of a shaking while he's off the ground can be helpful.
• Do not hurt pup or treat him harshly.  [ed note: firm & fair.]
• Patience, consistency, and repetition will win out over brutality every time. 

This clumber gets a little tough love from judge Joe.

Quote of the day for the rest of us

The pull quote in the Upland Almanac story is inane:

The real secret with training hunting dogs is to never let them disobey.

Well, that horse is out of the barn.  Is it time to give up?

The rest of the story provides the context for the pull quote and a lot of information:

The real secret with training hunting dogs is never let them disobey.  If the do, stop them in their tracks and return them to the site of their misdeed and make them repeat the task correctly.  Repetition, repetition and more repetition train hunting dogs.  That is, repetition of correct behavior.

That's helpful advice and a good quote of the day for every amateur trainer.

Larsen and I can do our backyard drills ("here boy", "hup", "heel", "stay", "down").  We actually have fun, we zig-zag around some orange cones periodically, fetch a few things, and earn a treat or two every now and then.  Over and over again.

The Upland Alamnac article (John McGonigle, "Replacing Cruelty with Patience and Repetition," The Upland Almanac, Autumn 2010, p. 37 (not available online yet)) provides some other pointers.
Here's one that would have been useful to me last July.   

You must be quick to crack down on his misdeeds. You will likely find yourself chasing pup down and returning him to the scene of his crime.


If you can comfortably do so, [pick] pup up by the sides of his neck [and march him to the scene of the crime]. If you cannot do so easily, pull him by his collar towards his infraction and spin him in a circle once or twice and then correct him right there. Spinning him disorients him slightly and allows your correction to sink in even without fully returning to where he was.

That is helpful advice for those meltdown situations where there is no way either one of you can even remember where the infraction first occurred let alone find your path back to it. 

Backtrack Point 5

Last Saturday I left my compass-like Backtrack global positioning system on top of the car. It slid off while I was driving and another car ran it over.

The Backtrack is a limited GPS.  It does not do much except indicate the direction and distance to your car.  That's not much until you realize you're lost and the sun seems lower than you think it should be.  (I reviewed the Backtrack here.)

There is a reason why my Backtrack was on top of the car in the first place.

The Backtrack takes a long time to find the satellite and give you any useful information. I put my Backtrack on top of the car while we sat and waited for the owner of a lost dog to stop by and pick him up. I wanted the Backtrack to have a clear view of the sky and the satellite.  Predictably, I forgot all about it when it came time to leave.

I bought another Backtrack, this one BackTrack 2 (it is really called Backtrack Point 5): the upgrade.

Forget about the fact that it can set 5 locations rather than the 3 of Backtrack 1. Who can remember 5 locations anyway? There are several things to like about Backtrack Point 5:

• As advertised, Backtrack Point 5 finds the satellite faster.  Much faster.  Backtrack 1's long lead time needed to find itself was a real shortcoming with me.  If not for last Saturday's events, I would have lost Backtrack 1 eventually, leaving it somewhere else.

• A digital clock that links to satellite time.  You really need a watch when you are out so that you know exactly when you left the car, how long you've been traveling, how much time you have before sunset, etc.  Since I often don't wear a watch when hiking, I find the digital clock is a good add.

• Altimeter.  Maybe not critical, but another good add.  How high in the mountains are you anyway?  

• 4 buttons instead of two.  It actually makes the operation a little easier for some reason.  Somehow with Backtrack 1, I would always press the wrong button and re-set the locator so that it found the exact spot where I was standing when I really wanted the direction to the point I was going.

You can get Backtrack 1 on Amazon for $44.  Backtrack Point 5 is $99.  That's a big difference.  Backtrack 1 is just fine.  I would not have looked twice at Backtrack Point 5 if someone hadn't run over my Backtrack 1.  But if you are looking, I will say that the digital clock, faster satellite lock-in time, altimeter, and 4-button operation represent genuine upgrades to a  nice gadget.

The Backtrack Point 5 is a break from the old-school compass style of Backtrack 1. 

Blueberry season

It's blueberry season in the North Carolina mountains. 

We set off Sunday to resume our hike along the Art Loeb trail.  This time we had a special objective: the blueberry fields along the trail that start about a mile in and then go on forever.  We got a reasonably early start and arrived before the heat.  It was in the mid-60s, with a welcome chill that seemed to blow upward from the valley below, but must have been some sort of dropping convection.  It turned into a nice morning that attracted a lot of people as an after-church activity, and we gathered about 3 quarts of berries.  There are plenty left!  

Larsen looks forward to the blueberry hunt. 

Aki and Larsen check out the blueberry fields along the Art Loeb trail in the Pisgah Forest.

Pancakes?  Pie?  Blueberry buckle?  The possibilities are endless.

  
There are more over here!

Blackberrys, too. 

Frank and Larsen take a breather.

Art Loeb Trail, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina

Saturday was a lovely day for a hike along the Art Loeb Trail.  This trail is at about mile marker 420 or so on the Blue Ridge Parkway, not far from Waynesville, North Carolina.  It's in the Pisgah Forest at the cusp of the Smoky Mountains.  The trail is very popular this time of year because of its enormous blueberry patches. 

The trail is some 30 miles long, although we have never walked the whole thing, and it has uncountable side trails.  I brought along my Backtrack so that we could find the car if all else failed, but (and this is a longer story) I put it on the roof of the car, it slid off, and when I found it, it had been run over at least once. 

We were on our own, with only a curious little spaniel to act as our guide. 

We went out and back over the period of about 2 1/2 hours.  Not an overly long hike, but a vigorous one.  The heat of the late day turned us around.  It was about the mid-70s, which seems perfect relative to the mid-90s of Atlanta, but the direct sun was pretty hot and we didn't bring enough water for Larsen.  The path is a high one, directly in the sunshine which is a positive, but it lacks water along the way.  It was a nice outing.

Aki and Larsen get started on the Art Loeb trail in North Carolina.

A bright, sunny day along a wide section of the trail.

Back at the trail head, one hiker is ready in case  a barbeque breaks out.

Don't knock the Rock

Aki and I were driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Pisgah Forest on Saturday and happened upon a scrawny and completely lost tan, black, and white dog.

I don't normally stop for lost dogs along the roadway, but this dog had at least two tracking collars, judging by the antenna. A lost dog with that sort of hardware was likely causing some heartache somewhere, or, worse, was a sign of a hunter in trouble.

We pulled over and walked to the dog. A sweet and gentle guy if there ever was one, and just skin and bones. Had he been lost for a month? Since we had Larsen and his dogfood in the car, I poured a bowlful for the lost boy, and he ate it like it was his first meal in a year. He ate while laying down, wagging his poor scrawny tail.

Happily, the dog had a collar with a phone number.  Aki called, but without success, on both AT&T and Verizon's network. We loaded the pup into the back of the station wagon and headed back toward Waynesville hoping to get a signal.

We finally got hold of Blake, the young owner of Rock.  Rock, it turned out, was a Treeing Walker Coonhound ("with papers"). It seems Rock got separated from Blake during the excitement of a bear hunt, and Blake had been tracking him when he could, which included all Friday night and into early Saturday. Blake said he had taken a few hours off to help his mom and aunt put the corn up, and when he went back to his tracking, he saw the signal was fading in and out and he knew that someone had Rock in his car. That was us.

Blake was polite enough to ask about Larsen, and recognized that Larsen was a bird dog of some sort.  Blake offered that his bird-hunting friends had only about a dozen grouse to show for some very hard work during last fall's hunting season. He was not sure whether grouse would be up or down this year, but he thought that the birds had been dying out.

We parted ways--Blake and Rock off home to get fed (again) and kenneled.  Aki and I resumed our drive toward our hike on part of the Art Loeb trail (around mile marker 420 of the Blue Ridge Parkway).

Kind-hearted Rock, the Treeing Walker Coonhound, thanks us for our hospitality on Saturday.

WSS Video

I know you've seen this 100 times, but it is still a welcome diversion for a Friday.

Who dunnit?

I can tell you this, it was not the little Welsh Springer Spaniel.  In fact, the little Welshie solved the crime.  But now I am getting ahead of the story.

Aki and I settled into a comfortable summer evening to watch TV.  We had recently figured out how to program the DVR and we called on Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie, to watch the Mystery of Hunter's Lodge.  

In this adventure, the urbane Poirot was enduring a holiday in the blustery English countryside at Hunters Lodge to participate in, or at least watch, a driven grouse shoot.  The holiday assembly included the rich uncle, a scheming brother and his alluring wife, the tormented game keeper who was also a half-brother, a bitter nephew, and other hangers on.  That evening, a shot rings out.  The rich uncle is dead.  Who amongst the party did it?  Who was the mysterious bearded man?  Poirot, Hastings, and Inspector Japp get busy. 

The episode is solved by the nosework of an intrepid Welsh Springer Spaniel.  Here's the little heroine in her climactic scene as everyone waits for her to drop the dime on the bad guy.