This week it was noticeably dimmer when Rain and I left home heading to class. I keep thinking that one of these weeks, Rain is going to once again be difficult to load up to travel to class, not to mention she may start having problems by herself between turns. She really has been quite a trooper so far, waiting for long stretches before it’s her turn for five minutes of work and hot dog rewards before being asked to get cooped up alone again.
This week she was waiting extra long before her first turn. As our class slowly trickled in, Kristina placed something in front of two of us. I looked—it was a full bottle of Oregon white truffle oil from a place in the Willamette Valley! Almost immediately I opened it to take a whiff—I had never smelled truffle. It was kinda strong. Not bad. Earthy. I look forward to being able to use this stuff for training at home…but I’ll probably try some sort of modest culinary experiment as well, to see what all the fuss is about.
Kristina then pointed out the many doggy items strewn about the space. They were strewn about for distraction, but each and every one was up for grabs. Kristina was weeding out dog supplies that she was ready to part with. Throughout the rest of the evening, any time one of us took notice of or touched any of the items, Kristina pointed out “it can be yours!” I took a possibly rain-resistant coat for Rain to try on and two centrifuge tubes (“they’re for putting odor in the ground!”) but I think that’s all she managed to unload on our group.
There was also a fair bit of conversation before we got started. Were we waiting for the last person? Were the others just socializing? I’m not totally sure, but it meant we got started late and I knew it wouldn’t get better from there.
Our first search involved six hides in the great room, with a twist. Once the dog had successfully found one hide, we were being challenged to call the dog off searching and connect with us for a count of five. Kristina suggested feeding the dog treats during the time to sustain their attention.
When it came to Rain’s turn, Kristina thought Rain is already so handler-focused she didn’t need to do that particular exercise. (You may hear it mentioned on the video.)
Once again I was the only person in class with only one dog, which also means a long wait between runs. When Ajax wrapped up his turn, Kristina said “time for Rain!” I suddenly realized, “hey that’s ME!” Theoretically I should have already been outside waiting with Rain, so I ended up admitting in front of everyone that Ajax is so beautiful, and he’s so adorable when he finds a hide and looks at his person, that I completely spaced that I should have left to gather Rain. They were amused, I think, but I was a little disappointed in myself that I wasn’t doing my part to keep our class running quickly.
During our second run, when Ajax entered I made a point to everyone that I was shielding my eyes in order to avoid being mesmerized by his beauty as I exited the building.
Our second search didn’t even begin until AFTER class was theoretically over! This time there were two hides in the great room, then two hides in the side room. Many of the dogs kept checking places where there had previously been hides for the class before ours, but Rain never did that.
Something that Rain frequently does do though is hop up on objects, likely because she’s finding odor that’s above her head. A few weeks ago she jumped up on some Rubbermaid boxes without skipping a beat, and at home I’ve seen her finally find something only after she put her front legs atop the arm of the couch and stretched out to really understand where the scent was. Her lack of hesitation about jumping on top of things, incidentally, was one of the big reasons I knew she’d be good at agility.
One of our sometimes-classmates had a new ten-week-old puppy and brought her in to do some box exercises—mostly just putting treats in the boxes to give the puppy a good association with containers and searching. I stuck around for a few minutes after class to interact a little more with the puppy, but she was on a wild tear and I was pretty tired. We kept it pretty short and Rain and I were heading back home shortly thereafter.
Rain in the Forecast 