Spring Has Arrived!

   It's been a while since I have had anything noteworthy to write about and I must admit that this entry is several days overdue. Winter this year was long and brutal with bitter cold and record snow for some areas. It made getting out to train with my already limited schedule nearly impossible and so Diva and I sat at home until we nearly exploded from the boredom. I finally started looking for something we could do inside that would stimulate Diva's thinking and give her the mental exercise that Aussies so deeply need. What I decided upon was nose work and what fun it is! Classes were out of the question so as with most everything we do I just started researching online and went work on our own. In the beginning I had no intention of using the actual scents used in competition so at the suggestion of an online friend I used vanilla. We started with 4 old shoe boxes but quickly outgrew that and moved to 8 Tupperware containers. Diva loves nose work so things progressed much faster than I expected. In just a couple of weeks she was searching my kitchen with every drawer and cabinet opened for just a q-tip marked with vanilla! Inspired by the simplicity and ease in which she learned I moved to doing outdoor searches and vehicle searches. I don't know that we will ever participate in competition but I did order the real scents and have started her on recognizing them.

    Nose work is great and it gives us something to do at home but nothing compares to working stock. Right as I was really about to hit an all time low Kelly staged an intervention and we set up a girl's day at Hog Dog. None of us had worked our dogs much so it was a very low key easy going hang out session and that's was just perfect. Diva and I revisited all of the basics after having so much time off which included fetching, rating, and fixing a broken "away". It was nice just being out and as a bonus we got to see the new baby lambs! Proof that spring has finally arrived! 

   The following week I was once again feeling blah so Kelly made the drive down to Hog Dog again and we worked dogs and hung out just the two of us. Diva and I went back to refreshing the basics. More lambs had been born during the week and neither Kelly's dogs nor Diva could seem to get past wanting to watch them, lol! I don't know what it is about lambs but our dogs love them and more than once we were left giving commands that were ignored while the dog stopped and just stared through the fence at the babies. It's both cute and frustrating ;-). Near the end of our time there I took a few sheep and went out into the big field to work on the free standing pen. My goal is always to be able to stand no where near the pen and have Diva do the work on her own. The group of sheep I had were very nice and so we accomplished our task a few times with relative ease and that made a good place to stop. It is sometimes hard to not go out with a big agenda for training but I think I have finally matured enough to see the value in easing back into work. Happy dog, happy sheep, and a happy handler is a good training day!