WE NOW NEEDED TO DO A LITTLE TRAVELING TO “FIND PLACES TO WORK ON OUR EXCELLENT BUR- IED AND MASTER TITLES. THERE WAS A LESSON I HAD NOT YET LEARNED… TRUST YOUR DOG!”
Barn Hunt) and was quickly becom- ing quite the little hunter. We moved up to Advanced, now there would be two hides in each element, Birch and Anise. Bella did nicely in Advanced and we soon were on to Excellent. Excellent had three hides in each el- ement with Birch, Anise and Clove, and Buried was no longer in the tub but in the ground. They bore holes eight inches deep to place the hides in. This was something we had not really worked on, AKC Scent Work was still new and we were part of the pioneer group moving to the higher levels. We moved up the first day and saw that even though she found two of the three hides, I needed to get her to understand that she needed to check the ground. So, we moved back to Ad- vanced for the last trial of the week- end and then began to work on getting her to understand this new way to
play buried. At home I would throw a scent container over my shoulder so I would not know where it was and tell her to go find it. She quickly got the hang of that and we took a few les- sons with Kim Hall so we could get the real feeling of the trial. Between the lessons from Kim and Terry, Bella figured out the new twist to her favorite game. We were only doing local trials up un- til this time offered by to local clubs. We now needed to do a little traveling to find places towork on our Excellent Buried and Master titles. There was a lesson I had not yet learned… Trust Your Dog! In Master you had one to three hides, it could be Birch, Anise, Clove or Cypress. With the food dis- tractions I soon learned that even though she sometimes hit on them it was not her normal alert for odor. It was frantic pawing, so I learned to tell
her, “That is not what we are looking for, go find it,” she soon learned there was nothing to gain from telling me about food. We went on to learn the Excellent Buried and found that with the hides in the ground the wind and the sun were a factor as well. I was walking her through trying to guide her to where I felt we were covering the grounds completely. Hindsight, I feel I was slowing her down and hin- dering her searches. Then I broke my foot. That was not Scent Work re- lated but it taught me a lesson about my searches with her. Again, trust your dog, don’t try to micromanage the search. Because I couldn’t walk well on the uneven terrain, I had to use a long lead. She went out on her own and we worked as a team. With her searching and telling me and me alerting to the judge we finished the Excellent Buried! We moved up to
54 • T op N otch T oys , M arch 2020
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