Ole's mistake, My bad

So Ole peed in the bedroom. Drat. it was all my fault. He's had a perfect no mistakes record for a month. He and Elmo were running up and down the hallway between our master bedroom and the back guest bedroom wrestling at each end and then racing after one another to the other end to wrestle again. At one point it did pass my mind that he was going to need to go out and pee but I was busy carting things out of our bedroom because we are repainting it and getting ready to lay down new wood floors in there. I walked into the bed room just in time to hear Abner say " What happened here?" There it was , a big wet spot in the middle of Shelly's bed! Well he told her didn't he? Outside Ole went, and it was of course too late to do anything about his mistake besides clean it up. Unless you catch your dog in the act of sinning , it is too late to correct them. Dogs live in the now, I could kick myself.

Shelly and Elmo and Donna and Ginger and I had to drive to Tustin to take the Odor recognition tests Wednesday night. They were to be held at the same location our nose work classes are held but at a later time. I left Ole with Abner so that they could have some man time together. There were 30 dogs and handlers signed up for the first test which was to detect the odor of Birch. In the test two rows of 8 boxes were lined up 48 inches apart. There was a judge who stood to one side, a steward who guided you into the room and made sure procedures were understood, and a person who stood opposite the starting line at the other end of the room with a camera who videoed the each test. We were allowed 3 minutes to complete the test. Elmo was a rock star with Birch. He found the correct box within 15 seconds. He alerted me by sniffing the correct box all over and then freezing and staring right at me . He then put both paws on the box. I said "Alert!", the judge agreed. Everyone in the room clapped. It was exciting. Oh BTW, spectators were also sitting along the wall when we came in.
Shelly had a harder time on her 1st test as she is spooked by cameras. She associates them with flashes which are like fireworks to her. As soon as we lined up at the start , she saw the camera person pointing the camera at her and didn't want to move. I felt very calm strangely enough, and just sweet talked her in to moving and kept her aimed at the boxes, she loosened up and started sniffing while keeping an eye on the camera and found the box. She alerted by sniffing it all over and then staring at me. It took , so I'm told 2 minutes. I was very proud of her for over coming her fear instead of shutting down.

Ginger whizzed right through all 3 odors. She is an amazingly talented little nose hound. Shelly passed all 3 of her tests, Birch, Anise and Clove. Elmo however, who is always great at this ran into a snag on his final test with clove. He alerted me on the wrong box and disqualified on clove. I guess clove was Elmos version of quadratic equation word problems last night. Dogs are never allowed to think they failed in nosework, so the judge told me which box had the scent so I took him to it and he sniffed it very hard , put his paws on it and grinned at me. He got his reward and as he strutted out of the room I said " We'll be back!" They laughed.. It was a long night , an hour and a half drive to the test site , then from 6:30 to 10:00 for the tests and then an hour and a half drive home. Ole was thrilled to see us when we got home so I let him out of his crate and he took a little brief walk with his graduated pack mates. Then it was to bed for us all.