On paper, Bern celebrated his 6th birthday earlier this week. Registering dogs to participate in performance events requires a birthday. With rescues, the vet makes a professional judgement guess and you go with it. Happy Belated Birthday Mr. Bern!
Grace cried and banged on the "gate" at the bottom of the stairs last night about 12:30 pm and woke me up. I got a pillow and a blanket so I could sleep on the couch while we rode at the storm. With the recent heat wave, her yeast infection has flair up causing her much discomfort. Lets just leave it that neither of us got much sleep last night. I opened the door to my room downstairs and Bern slept in there away from the Grace hub-bub.
Making sure I remembered to wear my waterproof boots, we met Tracey for some tracking this morning. Grace ran a track that was ~15 minutes old with 4 turns. Unlike Sparkle and Lego (beagles), Grace (and Bern) both work the scent cones as much as the actual track. Grace walks/trots an S-shaped pattern back and forth across the track. Even though she hadn't tracked in several weeks (I promised Tracey I will do better), she remembered the sniffing game and drove all the way to the glove. I dispensed a small pouch of tuna for her efforts. Bern did a very short, very fresh (5 minutes old) 1 turn track baited with freeze dried liver every few steps. He starts great and then looses interest but we are seeing if he can get confidence in sniffing for the glove (versus looking with his eyes for it). By keeping the track baited he is keeping his nose down and not his eyes up.
When we got back from tracking I checked out the former golf course property behind our neighborhood. I now need to identify a neighbor along S Fairview that I can cut through their yard. The W Fairview cut through I use near my house now enters a muddy construction zone. If I can arrange access, it will be a great tracking area.
