Back and Forth

Last weekend was wonderful, we finally got some sun and it meant staying out as much as possible. On Friday morning me and Bella took two short tracks and since the weather was so good we went on a walk where she could be off leash.

 

I did the track to decide whether to sign up for the tracking test on 7th July. I thought it might be alright to go with the sole purpose of seeing how it would go. Another part of me wanted to be ready/was scared. I ended up deciding not to and wasn't too bothered.

 

Today I went and laid a rather complicated track, I meant to do a longer fairly simple one but I found such a nice spot with tall trees that I had to do all sorts of turns. It went well and Bella is already getting very good at marking with the method I eventually chose.

 

Then came the kicker. After I come home I check my facebook and the first thing I see is a notice that the sign-up date for the tracking test was pushed back until July 1st. Cue the start of yet another rollercoaster of what I want to do!

If I enter it won't be because I know we will pass for certain but rather as a test and seeing where we stand. I have until July 1st to make up my mind.

Those Warm Summer Days

Bella has received some comments that she appears too busy and must be careful to not forget her naps. So here's some proof that there is downtime in our household.

Today we had the first super good summer day so me and Bella tanned out on the deck we are building in our back yard.

In the evening, I went to watch an Obedience test while Bella practiced lying still in the sofa while I was gone. Last time I went she dumped the trash all over the floor so we're already improving in the sport, right?

A Different Sort of Adventure

I recently tried my new bike carrier recently and took Bella and my rarely used Mountain Bike to a very exotic (ha! ha!) place right next to highway number 1. Like under 25 yards away from it. In my defense a small river separated us from the highway and it was late in the evening and I live in Iceland after all.

Considering the photos were taken around midnight I'm not sure I should say the lighting conditions were crappy, but it explains the blue hue.

Anyway, I biked 2 miles on a dirt rode with Bella unleashed and I haven't seen her this genuinely ecstatic for a long time. She ran like around the little devil she is, running some distance in front of me and stopped to sniff and enjoy the scenery before running off again. She ran alongside me and looked at me with pure joy in her face.

I'm glad she had so much fun because I love mountain biking and have been wanting to do this kind of biking with her for over two years but due to physical constraints and not having a bike carrier I haven't been able to. I'm not ready for more than dirt packed roads but we'll get there. I'm healing fantastically!

On a worse note, after getting home tonight from biking in the neighborhood I saw an announcement that a foreign guest judge will be judging Tracking tests for the German Shepherd division in early July and that other breeds are welcome to enter. My competitive side really really wants to enter but I'm not sure we'll be fully ready by then. Too many challenges, so little time! We'll see what we can do, at least I can observe the test if I fail to be ready.

A Dog and her Hats

Things are crazy in every sort of way here at home. We received seven large boxes full of baby clothes for the little one. They were so many we lost them all. When Bella had finished locating the kids under the stashes of clothes we started a hat party.

Magnus was easiest to find, he screams the loudest

We also discovered an 80's baby, we tried to bring her back to our time by adding a classy hat.

The big sister was even buried under everything. Bella was getting bored of her own party by then and hid under her hat.

Yet she couldn't resist trying on one more hat before calling it quits and returning to her daylong nap.

We're also building a deck. I would be lying if I said that my home is clean and tidy these days. However, me and Bella are very patient for now as we foresee a lot of late night cocktails in July in the privacy of our fenced deck.

Tracking

Me and Bella did some tracking this evening, I did a mini-tracking test simulation with 3 articles, two turns and half the distance a tracking I test is. I tried inserting the track below.

Sjá Capital Region á stærra korti

I'm really happy with how it went. This is the longest track I've done with Bella so far. It was aged about 10 minutes when I started and it took us 15 minutes to complete. The first leg was very good, then when reaching the turn she missed it but worked herself back to it after some swaying back and forth.
When she was securely on the second leg it was all rainbows and unicorns as before, until we reached the turn. She didn't quite catch the turn, but was a lot more confident in searching for it and it and was back on the final leg.

The final leg was without a doubt the most challenging. She worked half of it without a fuss but then she had clearly gotten less focused on the job and was swinging to the sides sniffing and biting grass. She even tried to roll but then I finally interfered and told her to track. Which she did. And finished. Yay!

If I nail the marking, we'll nail the test. I have the entire summer to build up distance. I think I might even just train for the Track II test in October because the Track I test is so simple. (Please no one bring this post back up if I fail the test down the line! haha)

Last Few Days

Last weekend me and the whole family went to a cabin we've been to many times before. We were hoping to get some sun and mild weather but spring in Iceland has been aborted so we got rain, lots of wind and cold weather.

In general it was a good excuse to be lazy. I did lay one track for her and it was excellent, except I jumped the gun a bit and forgot to give her plenty enough time to pee before putting the harness on. Once the harness was on she was just running around trying to find the start of the scent and when she found it she got her moment of zen and decided to pee on it. Pure handler mistake there!

I really need to start working on teaching her to mark objects when tracking. I am just torn between whether to teach her to  pick it up -which I just recently knew was allowed- or sit/lay down. I had started teaching her to sit down when doing the peppermint detection training but haven't gone very far with it as I had to throw my idea of using balls into the ocean. She's not toy driven. at. all. It had turned into her seeing the ball go down, then instead of trying to get the ball and sniff where the scent was she just stood back and stared at me, except she sometimes sat down because she knew that had something to do with it. Stalemate!



On Monday I crashed something awful, I barely got out of bed without getting ridiculously dizzy and whatnot. It took me two more days to snap out of it and yesterday I was next to normal, just in time to watch an Obedience competition. It offered Bronze grading and Obedience I. I am aiming to do a tracking test next fall and have been considering if I should give the Bronze obedience test a try. I spoke to a trainer there (and a Border Terrier owner!) and she was encouraging me to give it a go.
What cripples me the most is the fear of Bella running away from me during testing. Memories of me chasing her around the agility arena still haunt me. Since I'm on maternity leave this summer that it's an excellent opportunity for me to train her in areas with distractions and see where it gets us. I know she can do this, we just need to work hard.

A Day Off

Two weekends ago me and fiancé went to a hotel out of town. I was so busy taking care of what to do with the two year old and packing for the little one who would stay with us that the night before leaving I realized I had completely forgotten to make arrangements for Bella.

There's no such thing as dog friendly hotels in Iceland and just recently some camping sites have started allowing dogs to stay. I was really disappointed in myself.

But to make the best out of things I decided to check the weather forecast and the following night promised cloud and rain. If it would come true it would mean Bella could sleep in the car overnight. Despite it being spring the temperature is fairly low.

The drive was a lot of fun, we drove through a fjord that's called Hvalfjörður which translates as Whale-fjord. It's a short driving distance from the city and used to be the only way to get to western Iceland but a tunnel rendered the road useless and now it's barely used.

When we reached the hotel I was freaking out because the sun was shining and there was no way I would let Bella stay in the car that way. I was trying to figure out if and how I could smuggle her inside or what else I could do. Thankfully, while I was agonizing over what to do, the sky thickened up and it started raining in the evening. Bella was in excellent shape the morning after.

On the way back home (and actually also on the way to the hotel, but I discarded the photos) we stopped to let Bella loose.

There was some running. And then:

 

Emergency brakes!

 

There's sniffing to do.

 

Sniffing at the beach.



More sniffing to do.

 

Back to the beach to.. yep, sniff!

I am fond of this last one, it just lacks the tracking line and we would look like professionals.