A "Wild" Morning..

Maybe not what you thought.....It seemed that everything showed up at once this morning! We had two pileated woodpeckers sceaming at each other, sandhill cranes flying above, and to the west were five deer luckily spotted before I went out with Blast.

Trust was at the front window, excited about one of her bunny "friends" inside the fenced area. As they race around, she runs from window to window to watch. They are now almost all brown, obviously not realizing that snow is being called for on the weekend.

And worst of all, directly behind the house was a porcupine up a maple tree. Look at the claws on him; looks like a miniature grizzly bear. I'm afraid he was up there all day, snoozing and eating the new buds on the maple tree. I'd rather have a bear out there, you can scare them off.

So now he is down and I've no idea which direction he went in, therefore, a big issue taking the dogs for walks. I sure hope he kept going someplace....off our property!

Tracking Blast this morning.

Nothing better than an early morning field track...Blast just took his second corner (shown in orange) siting the 2 tall pines in the background. He's just over 11 months now, and doing very well. He did a 450 meter track with 4 corners, 5 legs and didn't notice the nesting Canada Goose in the background!

The Rodent Wins!!!

We have a ton of red squirrels this spring. They seem to take over the bird feeders, hanging upside down and jumping from one to other, chasing the birds away all the while they are here.
However, one in particular has kind of won me over with his determination to "own" this one feeder. He's worked and worked at the lid for days and finally managed to get it off. I might put it back on three or so times a day, and he always gets it off again. He won, I gave up!

He sits here eating until he's full and heaven help any other squirrel that tries to get on the feeder. Maybe he'll eat until he explodes.... But he is cute!

UTDX track - Blustery day

This track was done in North Bay on Friday, April 9th. After gorgeous "hot" weather, this was blowing and blizzardy at times. It's often hard to see the "perspective" on maps or google earth with these tracks; so hope this gives you an idea. Trust just moved off the scent pad above. The blue arrow on the left points to an open pavilion way over in another area where we were about 1/2 way along the track. The middle arrow is the arena out by the street where we tracked behind. The arrow on the right is the building we moved out behind and around, ending the track.

This is the first of 3 bridges we crossed. We are on the 2nd leg here, after going through a sandy area with playground equipment. There was a plastic article in the send, we were upwind and totally missed it! Interesting, Trust had NO problems at any of the bridge crossings.

Coming off the 2nd bridge, crossing gravel, asphalt walkway, into grass - over near the previously mentioned pavilion. Very open here and winds were horrendous. She nailed the corner, but had a hard time getting going on the next leg. I figured it was the strong winds, but also found (after) a truck had been driving around this area - see next 2 photo descriptions!

She finally got the direction to go, crossing another gravel area and heading towards the large playing field. We were on our fifth leg here.

Almost the same spot as the previous photo above. I am rewarding Trust here as she has indicated another plastic article. It was totally smashed to bits, with big tire marks over this are

We've now moved out along the side of the field. She shortly moves up towards the track (she is left of it here) and will search out the corner, a right turn onto leg six.

You can see some snow flurries in this picture; she is almost at the corner here. In both this picture and the one below, the line appears slack due to the strong wind blowing it. It was impossible to keep an even tension on the line.

Trust is tracking strongly into the wind here, and I can't keep my jacket hood on!

Sock article here, she nailed this one, I'm picking it up. She's anxious to get going again....

We move off the grass, over a running track where a lady just ran past while we waited, and out into the gravel parking area for the arena. Not far ahead is a right turn down a very long stretch of gravel driveway until it changes to paved parking near the end.

This building to the left was shown in the first photo, and the building way ahead of us (here)was the one shown on the right in the first photo. This was a long, long leg (7th) on gravel. Up near the end, past the building, was a metal article. Again, she was tracking upwind, had come out of any protection when passing the building, and completely missed it. I was watching her body language closely, and not even looking for articles (dumb!) but she was working so well, I was very happy with that.

We have moved off the parking area and followed a curved pathway which goes around this building (the far right one in the first photo). I guess this would be a 'curvey' leg 8. It made a couple of curves to both the left and right as we moved around it. We then crossed another bike/walkway before coming to the final bridge crossing. She was still working really nicely.

No hesitation, right up and over the bridge, two ladies passed us on the bridge, and we waited for a fellow on a bike to go on. I knew she had missed articles, but was happy with her enthusiasm. Conditons were awful with the high winds, some areas were very tricky, and it was aged over 3 hrs. Of course, if it had been a test, we would have failed for missing articles!

Curious: The one article driven over - but she indicated - was smashed so much, & driven into the dirt, I didn't even consider trying to pick up all the tiny pieces - would I have if it had been a test?????

The track curved slightly to left to the article pointed out with the blue arrow. I stopped at the base of the bridge. She had been scurrying along over the bridge, and had to stop and turn toward the scent from the article.

What a great girl!!!! It was hard work, this track. The final article is a piece of white leather which looked like another "letter" of the 'Keep Right' sign painted on the bike/walk way. Of course, we came right through the middle!!!!

Carmspack Trust CD RN HIT TDX UTD Pet Therapy Dog

The above photo was Trust moving out on her first leg of her Urban Tracking Dog test in Ottawa.
We are presently training for the Urban Tracking Dog Excellent title. This is a tremendous amount of work and time and a constant learning process, mainly for the handler!

A few years back we attended a Herding Instinct Test, which she passed. Trust had never seen sheep previously, and the instant she was brought to the fenceline, she perked right up. I couldn't believe "that instinct" was still so strong in her and she just "took over" the sheep when she was placed in with them. It was amazing to see. She was also very kind with them. Unfortunately, it wasn't something we could continue here, as I was not about to "get into sheep farming"....

Trust has always been a "pretty serious girl" and always was reluctant to "play" much. For this reason, I wanted to see what she'd do with Agility, just for fun, and to my amazement once again, she loved it. You could see a smile on her face when she finished her run. We continued to just do "fungility" when time allowed, sometimes as a reward after a track.

Trust has also done pet therapy work, but is not doing it on a regular basis now. Being a German Shepherd, it is too bad, but some people are nervous of them. Trust loves to visit and is, without doubt, the most suitable and friendly of all our dogs.

We are concentrating on UTDX training this year, it is very time consuming and demandng work, for both of us, and amazing to see what our dogs are capable of.

Mourning Doves

I love the mourning doves. They are so soft-looking and their "cooing" voice is so soothing. I took a series of pictures, and discovered something new. When they blink, the light blue rim around their eyes is a blue eyelid that closes over the eye. You can see this in the top picture.
It's really neat. At first I though something was wrong with this one, but other pictures show the same thing. This pair has been here for about a week, so we hope to see young ones later on.

The purple finch (which are red) and goldfinch and woodcocks are back now also. The grouse comes every late afternoon to feed, and I've watched her take the same route through the bush each night. I'm sure she has a nearby nest in the forest and just hope the raccoons don't find it this year....

Buddies.....???

Nope! Just opportunists!! This is about as close to "friendly" as it gets. A moment later, the nasty little red squirrel ran at the grouse's head and kept going.....
The grouse didn't even know what 'hit' him...and immediately went back to scrounging for seed under the feeder. The squirrel returned to it's "spot".