Today marked another Mollie Milestone Moment.
For those of you that have an environmentally sensitive and (previously) unconfident dog, you will appreciate this. If you don’t have this personality in your pack, it may not seem like much.
Had NoseWork class today off-site. I think it’s really important to take your show on the road and see if your dog can work in novel environments. So, off to Flat Top Park in West Richland we went.
The group of dogs in class is Novice/Advanced level. They all love the game. They are becoming terrific teams. After they all worked, they asked me if they could watch me work my dogs.
Of course.
Simple hides, really, but interesting. There was 4 in total. Jake went first and did three in succession. He was his normal, goofy self…this included drinking water from the slide in the play area, then bonking his nose and barking on the hide beneath…then on the next hide, poking his nose on a soccer ball, laying on it barking, and then turned around and put his nose to the source, barking all the way. I just love that dog.
Miss Mollie was going to face a couple challenges. One I saw and one I didn’t predict.
I had placed a hide in a “bus hut”, one of those 3-sided enclosures with a bench. The hide was on the support brace of the bench seat. As we were about to approach the start line, a bus pulled up. We waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, I decided to give it a go. She tore off the start line, sniffed a bus wheel, and started to detail for odor…when…wait for it…the bus brake let off that puff of air. My first thought was “oh $h!&”. She startled, looked at the bus, then started detailing again and alerted. WOOT WOOT.
The next challenge: there was a dog playing with her human in the vicinity where of the other three. We headed over and they were sitting at a bench a good distance away, so we started the first hide. She located it and we moved to the second location. That’s when things got interesting.
To his credit, the owner did have the dog back on the leash. Mollie was diligently searching and I saw them approach the area. Mollie went on medium alert…on the MAN, not the dog. That was my first surprise. I quietly removed her from the search area, asked for a down, and she complied, kicking a back leg out, staring at me. As they walked by, she went on alert again, but no noise…just staring. Once they cleared the perimeter, she worked to source and alert. GOOD GIRL!
The fourth hide was just plain funny. It was located on the bottom of the slide, and she initially caught odor by jumping on the slide, drinking a little of the water Jake left behind, and then tried to source it from the top. She jumped down and alerted.
In the not too distant past, these events would have rattled Mollie to the point of distraction and inability to work. Today, she had the confidence in her ability (and in me) to work hard and be successful. I am enjoying this journey more than I can convey. She is my little heroine.
