Down the Rabbit Hole!

Yesterday marked the beginning of a crazy adventure for my young dog, Ziva, and myself. Ziva passed the basic evaluation required by Foothills Search and Rescue to be accepted into training as a wilderness search and rescue dog! Here's a copy of a post I made to one of the dog forums I frequent:

Yup, Z passed her eval today, despite the 101 degree temps (we were outside for about 45 mins).

She's not stellar in terms of toy drive with other people yet, but she works nicely for food and they think she should do well with some work with others using her tuggy and/or a ball. On the "search" test she did nicely, especially given the heat - she looked for her ball for a good 10 mins before she wandered over to get water and flop on the grass, which apparently is a good start.

Our homework is to build drive to the victim using "runaways" and "pop ups"; runaways are just that: the dog is restrained while the victim hides and then is released when they are raring to go, pop ups are similar except the person goes out of sight to hide and then "pops up" every so often so the dog gets glimpses of them.

Z's not to come to the next few practices until we get some more of the above training under our belt at home, but then she'll start training for real with the club.

I'm soooooooo proud of my little girl, especially because she'll be the smallest dog and the only mixed breed on the team!

It was certainly a great day and as soon as I was on my way home, I made calls to all my friends who know Z to give them the great news. Everyone is psyched for us - which is good since we'll need various practice "victims" to do our homework over the next few weeks!

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Today is one of my long days at work so we aren't doing much in the way of training, but on my lunch break Z and I went out in the light rain with her ball and did some baby object searches. As instructed, I'm adding the cue for searching already ("Find it" in our case) and only doing 3 reps of any one exercise to keep her in the game.

1st search: Z sat behind a tree while I hid ball in bushes about 15 feet away. Released to "find it", she sprinted toward the bushes and spotted and retrieved the ball immediately. Playtime and lots of "good girl"s, tugged with the ball.

2nd search: Z sat behind a tree while I hid the ball in brush about 35 feet away. Exact repeat of 1st search but she overshot the ball initially.

3rd search: Z laid down behind some low bushes while I tossed the ball about 10 feet away. Once released she zeroed in on it's location and retrieved the ball quickly. Praise and tug as a reward and back in the house to chill.

I'm happy with her performance so far: lots of drive to "find it", accurately locating the object even w/o seeing it hidden, and happy and upbeat throughout. She looks like a coiled spring when I leave her on the stay to hide the ball - she seems to really be enjoying this "game"!