05-26-2009

Duece is getting to be more confident and is willing to try more things, especially if Ziva does it in front of him. This evening he climbed up a stack of pallets and stood on them waiting for a treat. One of the empty wire spools was stolen and was moved by the house to be used as a garden table. Now it's pallets pile; to old washer; to other spool; and back again. Over the long weekend it was up into the Polaris Ranger and back out again, many times with lots of short trips and an occasional longer trip. We made one trip with a Bloodhound, Corgi and Aussie sticking their heads through the roll cage, with their noses into the wind. Have to bring a camera along next time.
We put out some cadaver scent in an area we seldom work and left it for awhile. Duece got his vest and command and he went right for the area we do most of our training and it wasn't there. He decided to check a larger (former stock watering tank) flower pot by just jumping up and walking through it and not just jumping up on the side. Even though we ended up circling almost the entire yard and had to work through a number of distractions, Duece did rather well. He stopped to watch the neighbors racing horses, with their dog, down the road next to where we were working and other dogs barking. Duece was impressive when he didn't even slow down when the grass got tall or when checking out some old vehicles. He almost crawled under one vehicle checking it out. When we got downwind of the scent he made a 90* turn into the wind and walked directly to where it was hidden. He stuck his nose right in the area, stopped for a little bit, but then moved on. He circled the area and we ended up back in the area again and after I asked him to show me he sat down by it. Overall it was a pretty good search but the indication isn't where is should be - maybe my fault for changing the scent source for every search.