Ole meets a ghost and Elmo wins a title

It's been a very busy 4 days since last I blogged. Thursday and Friday I spent a good deal of time working on my art piece, made 2 trips to Fiesta Island with the dogs, and Ole spent 4 hours on Thursday at Daycare where they found a flea...DRAT! I had to give him another Comfortis pil on Friday to keep the critters at bayl. I've tried several organic flea repellents but they weren't hacking it apparently, so had to bring out the big guns. We had no flea problem until it finally got a little warmer just a few days ago. At daycare they have a strict no flea policy so they gave Ole a bath. When I came to pick him up he was relaxed and happy. Hiromi said that after his bath Ole ran around in circles to celebrate his flea freedom.

Friday night I spent getting ready for the Canine Nosework Trial in San Pedro. Donna and I had both entered our dogs in the nosework trial1 event on Sunday and had also signed up as volunteers for Saturday morning so that we could both help out and learn the ropes. I left Abner and Elmo and Shelly sound asleep on Saturday morning, none of them even raised their heads. I had to get up at 5:00 AM to get ready and Ole tried to help by also getting up and being as under foot as possible. While Ole was outside doing his AM potty, I came back in the house and bundled up a large sheet that was laying on the floor and placed it just in front of the back door which enters into the garage. When Ole came back in he lay down in the hall in front of the back door to get his morning cookies. All of a sudden he started barking and leaping backwards . I looked and saw the sheet heaped in the corner and quickly ran over and stomped on it till it was dead! Ole wagged his tail kind of sheepishly and then tentitively came over and sniffed the sheet completely relaxed and I praised him for being a big brave German Shepherd that even his dad Rex could be proud of. He is very sweet. He was sure that he would be able to talk me into letting him go also but alas, I was hard hearted and left him home putting him in his crate with some biscuits .

It was a long drive up there with a bit more traffic than we were expecting, but that's LA for you. We had a bit of a problem figuring out which toll exit to take to pay our toll for the 73 toll road which ended out costing us an extra $1.50 in fees but after a few wrong turns we found the place the Trial was being held right about the time we were suppose to be there. Corrine from nosework class was waiting for us and had saved us a spot in the parking lot by some trees. We were real happy to get out of the car and we now knew how to get to the place when we drove up with our dogs on Sunday. We all signed in as volunteers and were given our assignments for the day. Donna was to be the time keeper for the exterior search , I was the time keeper for the interior search, and Corrine was to be the container mover for the container ( suitcases, purses, boxes and bags) search. The trial we assisted in was for the most advanced and experienced handlers and dogs called NSW3 (Nosework 3). There are 4 components to all nosework trials: the container search where the dog handler team must find and alert on 1 or up to 3 odor hides., the interior search which involves the search of 3 rooms with 2 or 3 hides & one of the rooms has no hide in it and the team must find all the hides as well as figure out which room is clear of any hide ( very difficult!), an exterior search which can be in a grassy or concrete surface. It is about 1000 sq feet of marked off space, and the vehicle search which has 3 or 4 vehicles and 1 up to 3 hides. The handlers and dogs must determine which vehicle/s have hides on them , which vehicles are clean and the dog must locate exactly where the hide is and alert near it. The difference between Nosework 1, 2, and 3 is the number of odors the dog must identify and the degree of difficulty of the finds. Each of these searches is given a time in which it must be completed, anywhere from 2 minutes for a container search to 4 minutes for an exterior . In our interior search, the teams had 4 minutes to search each of the 3 rooms ( total of 12 minutes). If they went over 4 minutes in any room they were disqualified. (In nosework 1 only cardboard boxes are used in the container search with no distractions such as food or toys placed in any of the containers like they do in NWS3.) These guys had it tough! We tested 12 dog/handler teams and it took until 2:00 in the afternoon. With me in the interior judging, was the judge,named Nicole, the steward and myself. both the judge and I had stop watches to back each other up on the timing and the steward photographed the search of each of the 3 rooms by each team. It was a tough one and I think only 4 maybe 5 of the dog teams passed this particular part of the test. In order to title in nosework you must pass all 4 elements of the trial with a score of 100 points. In Donna's group(exterior search) only one team passed and in Corrine's group (containers) only one passed! In fact no one passed the NSW3 trial at all and we heard later that only one team passed the NSW2 test which was given after we left to drive back to San Diego at 2:00. Speaking of that drive., the traffic was hideous!!! It took us over 4 hours to do the 2 hour drive back to San Diego and there is only one rest stop between San Pedro and San Diego. Bladders were tested for sure that day.

Sunday was a tough one. I got up at 4:15 AM and quickly got dressed and cleaned up and slugged down my AM breakfast drink. I carried Elmo who was in no way ready to get up, downstairs, put him down to take him outside to potty and he sprinted back upstairs and burrowed under the covers of my bed. He woke Ole up so I had to sneak Elmo back downstairs and put him on the leash . I put everything in the car and made sure Ole was quiet in his sleeping pen and Abner was asleep in bed, before Elmo and I headed off to Donna's house to ride up to San Pedro with her and Miss Ginger. The ride back to San Pedro was much easier this time and we had Donna's husbands pride and joy to ride in , his immaculate1960's ?? volkswagen camper van. We got robbed by the coin machine at the toll road toll booth and had to pay twice to get through the barrier. There were no attendants at 6:00 in the AM on a Sunday. Once we got to the Trial things went a little smoother. Corrine had the shady parking spot saved for us so we set up camp, pulled out the vans awning and set up chairs and dog crates. There were 48 competitors for NSW1. They divided us into 3 groups A,B,&C. Corrine and I were in group B and Donna in C. I was designated as number 7 to do the box drills and then exterior search with Elmo, Corrine and her Tibetan Terrier dog Gus were #8 and poor Donna and Ginger were # 48! That meant she had to wait 4 hours or more before she and Ginger had their 1st turn at boxes and vehicle search. Dog sports in general are like this, hours of waiting for only a few minutes of competition. At least we had a good comfortable place to hang out in between our turns. Elmo was a real little pro and ready to work. As soon as we walked into the auditorium were the 18 boxes were set out for him to search his nose was working. I said "Find It!" and he trotted purposely to the first line of boxes, dismissed them as unimportant and headed to the 2nd line. He hesitated slightly and glanced up at me at the second one from the end but did not alert to it. I thought it was probably the one but that he just wanted a chance to sniff them all and we had a whole 2 minutes for the search so I went with him to the rest of the boxes and as soon as he kind of gave up on them had him take me back to the box of interest and sure enough, he tapped it with his nose,
gave me his AHA! look and sat right next to the box. I called "Alert "to the judge, she said"Yes!" and we had it, our first leg of the trial journey. Elmo got his hotdog pieces at the box and a butt rub and lots of praise and the steward sent us off to the exterior search area. Oh, I forgot to mention that before the trial started they also divided us all into groups of three and each of us in the group had to pick either interior, vehicle or exterior as an element. at the end of the trial the group with the fastest combined scores would be the winning team. Elmo and I selected interior search as our part of the team competition.
At the exterior search area we had to search an area of about 800 sq feet that was located outside between two classroom buildings and was divided in half by some school lockers which had an awning over them. It had a concrete surface and was hedged in the back and sides by shrubbery. Elmo was ready to go! He practically leapt across the start line and immediately checked out the east side of the lockers. as we got to the far edge of the lockers his head snapped to his left because he had caught the odor and he honed in on a picnic table . He circled one end of the table and stood on his hind legs up under the table and tapped the underneath surface with his nose. He then sat right down and gave me his most happy I did it look. I said "Alert" and the judge asked me to tell her where the hide was . I said under the table top next to the metal bar supporting the top. She said "Yes", and Elmo once again got to celebrate his successful find. We were both thrilled to say the least. The interesting thing about this all to me was I was not nervous at all during the whole day, a little excited , but not nervous and I think it helped Elmo because he was the same way. Dogs pick up on their owners energy and tend to mimic it. After that we had to wait until 2:30 for our next turn at the vehicle and interior searches. Corrine and Gus didn't have as much luck as Gus did not alert at all in the box drill but got the exterior search, and Donna, when her turn finally came at 2:00, Ginger aced the box drill but was 4 inches off her find for the vehicle search so did not pass vehicle search. After a late lunch, Elmo and I were up for our vehicle search. Once again I could just feel his confidence rolling up the leash and he found his odor with in 34 seconds no problem. One of the observers said that Elmo made it look easy, and I was amazed at how much he was enjoying the competition. Corrine's dog, Gus had problems with the vehicle search( usually Gus's best event) and did not pass it . Elmo and I were 3 for 3 with interior search to go which was also our team event. I had my fingers crossed that we wouldn't let our team down. Elmo sailed into the room gave his head a flick to the left to check a corner of the room and then (this was our off leash search) zeroed in on a big work table near the center of the room. He seemed very interested in a stool just under the table, stuck his head under it , and Bingo sat and smiled at me. I said" Alert", the judge said "yes", and we had it!!! our first title, NSW1! The long and short of it is , out of 48 teams 17 passed the NSW1 trial and Elmo and I were one of them . Our team won first place in the team event, also a ribbon. Donna and Ginger won everyones hearts with Ginger's determination and work ethic and charm but did not pass the trial this time. They did a great job however and if Ginger had been two inches taller probably would have passed. GInger couldn't reach the exterior search hide to alert properly at it but knew where it was. She worked so hard and with such enthusiasm that the observers all cheered and clapped for her at the finish and she strutted out very proud of herself. She was mentioned several times at the awards ceremony afterwards. It was a long exhausting day and fortunately there was very little traffic on the way home, got there in 1&1/2 hours. Ole was thrilled to see us and is very proud of his big little brother Elmo. He wants to grow up and be just like him , without the girly tail of course.