Let’s get the hard part over with.  I drove to San Diego on whim once.  So driving to Spokane and back to Seattle randomly it just one of those things.  It happens.

I went out with the plan of teaching myself to sit and watch.  I realized not long ago that i’ve never gone to an ASCA trial and just watched.  Take it all in, and see the trial the way a competitor does.  It might help me present a better trial?

In a moment of Deja Vu, i went back to the handlers to say “hi” and the next thing i knew i was helping to sort sheep and asking if adding Molly to the mix would be too many dogs? This happens fairly often… i just can’t seem to sit and watch like a normal person.  Anyway.

The setup at Black Sheep is not one that i’ve ever seen anywhere else.  Stock are presorted into groups and then the alley way is partitioned as there are not enough holding pens for the number of stock.  As one group goes out, everyone is moved up one space.  The last two spaces before the take pen are metal sided boxes with sliders that separate.  They always remind me of something you’d use in calf roping or similar – though i’ve never seen the stock handling side of calf roping.  Each star in the diagram indicates where a dog/handler team were located along the way.  Up front was Ron and Tigr/Kiki, then me and Molly and finally Randy and Ben.

With everything being solid sided in those last two spaces before the Take Pen you have two options to move your stock: you can use your stockstick to encourage them or use a dog to create pressure.  While using your dog *sounds* easy enough the space is only about 4″ high.   After a lot of cajoling, including me on my hands and knees trying to get Molly to look underneath – which there are no pictures of.  Thank doG.  She did however, watch Tigr the Open Border Collie stick her little red nose under there and wanted to know why.  Little black nose went down, stock moved, dog was praised and the habit begins establishment.

The goal was always to have her do what she needed to do to move the stock. Not necessarily to get into the chute, but if that’s what she thinks she needs to do i’ll give her latitude.  After a little work, she started sliding under the divider and would stand into the middle and push them at. It was interesting watching her learn how to manage her power standing still.  Molly’s power is typically by movement, but it’s hard to move in a bitty box.  At first she went from zero to head – which isn’t the best solution.  Don’t be confused by us all being happy that the stock is stressed.  Molly has traditionally not been the ‘tough dog’.  You can bring that behavior down and shape it – but it’s hard to build in.  In time though she started to use move eye, more of the cow moving skills that we worked on at Summer Spectacular.  Holding her ground until the stock turns and then releasing pressure.  Being fair to everyone.

The last task after moving the groups in the chute up, was to take the newer group from the last holding pen and putting them into the chute.  Even though Molly has been doing take pen work, i was concerned about her moving light trial sheep and something not going well.  i do like to be careful with other people’s sets. What you may not see in the end of this video because of the additional fencing is that she is backing the sheep up into it’s group.  This was not unusual and allowed us to practice that slow methodical walk up and stay to hold.  As a side note, i did try to down her a few times, but realized about the third time that she didn’t take the command that if she did lie down and release any pressure those sheep would have run over her.  She stood quietly and never dove in.

We got a lot of nice compliments, which i loved.  A competitor came back to watch just in time for me to accidentally let a sheep (another brown sheep come to think of it!) down the alley instead of going into the chute.  Molly was hot on her tail, turned her before the end of the alley and stopped completely. Then walked her up slow and careful back to pen and finally her chute.  Thankfully the competitor missed the part where i was on my hands and knees trying to get Molly to nose under the chute… only realize that she was disinterested because the sheep had already left.  I’d like to imagine Molly’s thought bubble read “are you ok?” and not “are you blind?”.

Dog is wise…

“The definition of insanity is to the same thing over and over, expecting different results” Unknown(really, look at the link!).

Molly and I have had a strange relationship with cows. At first, she was an epic fail. Flat flat flat – when she actually tried to interact. Which made me start to wonder if she’d every actually turn on to cows. Then on a whim i used her a little in larger pen spaces with calves at April and she started to maybe sparkle a little. She wasn’t “on” the way that you always hear about dogs turning on to cows:

She just ran right at them. It was amazing. I was so scared

Or something like that.

At April, Molly was a little timid and defensive, but not freaked out. Just not so interested that I thought she’d ever get real presence.

Mea Culpa, Molly Moo. We tried things a different way and got different results. Everyone act surprised so i can feel better please.

First, the disclaimer – If I had been in the cattle pens alone i would have never done this as i’ve not started a dog on cows by myself. I had an experienced and well respected trainer/handler/friend in the cow pens and i didn’t intend to use her in the trial pens. More importantly, those were ‘his’ pens and would have not hesitated to kick me out if there was anything inappropriate going on that might skew the runs or similar.

We found in the cattle pens when we were running low on ‘fresh’ cows we needed a little dog pressure just outside the pen to get that last set to walk in without a lot of work (this is why we use dogs on stock remember, it is supposed to make less work). Since our dog choices were Abject Power and Molly, i told my handler-mate that the cows might not move off her but we’d give it a shot. All they needed though was a little pressure… and pressure off. Cake, right? Right.

With a little victory, and some breakfast I grabber her leash and started bringing her in with me to do my job. First not making it a big deal that she was there. Molly has a good Follow, which also means not to interact with the stock. We got cows out of the repen, moved them into the group of ‘used’ cows and then eventually when we needed a little dog pressure to move the last fresh set into the pen, we used her again inside the pen this time.

And we both had more confidence.

Then we upgraded to really using her (still on leash) and showing her what i wanted from her. The take pen work we’d been doing really shined. She took her flank and got to the back of the pen nicely. Still a little timid, but as the ‘used’ section grew, the cows started to try to stare her down. At this point i was out of my element. My first thought was to just let her go to head and be done with it. My handler-mate explained how to teach her to hold the gaze, win the stare down and release the pressure – essentially to be fair to the cow. Molly got good at this before my timing got better, but eventually she was staring down pretty consistently.

She did have one good tussle and rolled under a cow – no contact, but she was under and inbetween legs. You’d think that with that, little miss would have given up. However after that i started to drop her lead when moving the cows from the repen to the ‘used’ section and she had a real confidence about her. I started dropping the lead more, and she was really making herself quite useful.

I can haz move cow.

She did a great job today and got porkribs for her hard work.   We’ll try again tomorrow and see how things move along!

Weird, right?  We didn’t qualify in the Ranch Trial and i’m good with it.  We had problems in the places that we have had inconsistent success when training and did pretty awesome in places where we had very little experience.  Which leads me to think that most of our problem are in my head.   The good news is that these last few months i’ve been on a mission to get out of that spaz-head zero confidence place i’ve been for a while. I think that this experience gives me a good barometer of where I am.  I seem to be coming along.

Let’s break down the Ranch trial, so i can get on with bragging on Molly and Simon.

1. CHUTE WORK ( 20 pts.) Time begins when the gate into the barn yard is opened. Move the 10 sheep
from Barn Yard through Footbath and Drafting race.

For the Chute Work we got 16 points.  The judge indicated that “the dog seemed a little off contact”.  Which she was, in order to avoid eminent blow up disasterness.  We had a hard time getting the sheep from the Barnyard to Footbath.  She wasn’t totally confident pushing that many sheep into a small place with those scary fences<sarcasm>.
2 . SORT WORK (20 pts.) Draft 1st five sheep into Barn Yard, last five sheep into Gate Box.

I think that what we ‘lost’ in the Chute work was a blessing in disguise as the sheep walked through the Footbath one by one and almost seemed break into groups of five on their own.  I had a moment of brilliance, and backed away from the sorting gate so i wasn’t standing infront of the sheep heads – thus stopping them.  We got ALL 20 points in this section and a ‘Slick Work’ comment. YAY!
3. PEN WORK (20 pts.) move the sheep from Barn Yard into Gate Box through Alley, Sorting Pen to Test
Arena.

We got 11 of 20 points here and no comments.  So i can only assume it was that we didn’t stay in control of the sheep from pen to pen – the sheep headed right over to the gate they were supposed to go to.  I understand, but i’m still good with the pen work she did.  Actually i’m good with what she didn’t do.  She didn’t chase or bounce sheep or freak out. Score.
4. PASTURE WORK (20 pts.) move sheep into Chicken Field, pass sheep through panels in middle of
field. Repen sheep into Ewe Lane. Time ends when the gate is closed.

Pasture Work was a combination of all sorts of things going wrong.  The first problem is that i have no idea what the standard operating procedure is leaving a gate and into a pasture.  I know that sounds stupid, but i just don’t.  The sheep took off and Molly took off around them; tight all the way around.  Annnnnd it went downhill from there.  There was no Down.   My brain was melting and in an effort to try to get it back I misunderstood the time warnings.  I heard 3 minutes, but what either was said or should of have been said was 10 minutes.   With only ’3 minutes’ left i gave up, skipped the obstacle and headed to the repen.  Even though the sheep were freaked, Molly pushed them off the repen gate very smoothly and got out wideish to bring them in.

After all of that mess and a non qualifying score of 67, why Sparkle?  My pups did things that were hard for them and didn’t give up.

On Saturday Molly helped me push cows through the Cow Alley for the Started Runs.  She was so appropriate.  A cow turned on us and at first she was a little hesitant, but didn’t give ground. So I walked up next to her and helped her turn the cow.  She didn’t bark. She didn’t jump. She didn’t freak.  I barely had to lean forward to add that little bit of pressure and help her build confidence.  I wanted her to see and understand how i wanted her to behave.  Calm and quiet until you need to break out the bark and teeth.  I want her to learn how to powerup her presence and power it down.  She moved three or four sets just cool as ice.  A lot of people will poopoo moving cattle on leash, but i promise you, those cows knew exactly where she was.  No matter that they were probably under the impression that she didn’t have legs.  Poor thing got out of the pens and had mud up all four legs and all along her belly, but never laid down once.

Molly also managed to not get bitchy on Saturday.  It was a really long day, first in the cattle pens and then over to watch the Conformation dogs.  Shelly H was kind enough to do “structure 101″ with me and Molly was our model.  She put up with the prodding and lording over very well.  Molly has proven herself to be a good little trial dog.  I can tie her up to anything and she doesn’t take off.  She rode with Shelly, Evie and I on the back of the truck from place to place and didn’t freak out.  She presided over an ASC of WA Board meeting and then finally got to sleep while we were all eating dinner.  6am to 10pm is a long day for anyone.

For the last few years, i’ve not paid much attention to socializing Simon.  I had all sorts of excuses like not having supplies to help keep him under threshold (or distraction LOL) and that Molly needed to be socialized after her big crash.  On Sunday, Simon came out and hung out with some of the handlers and one of the judges and a handful of dogs.  Once he settled a little, he did a great job interacting with people and just relaxing while we all talked.  The crowd grew and he kept his head about him most of the time.   He heeled pretty consistently to and from the barn. He didn’t try to pop off at any of the dogs (one little frustration growl in the very beginning) and even tried to flirt with one of the other dogs there.  He was so good.

So ::Sparkle:: !

In the last lesson, we talked alot about small steps.  Molly has always done big steps very effectively, but little steps are new.  So here ^ is our diagram.  In this exercise,  you and the sheep are in the middle of the circle at the cross and the dog is out past the point where the dog applies pressure on the sheep.  How far that is depends on the dog.  Step 1 is to be able to flank your dog and stop (down) your dog on all the points or bases to keep the analogy and not effect the sheep.  Since i own the great circling wonder we wouldn’t do full circles, but if your dog doesn’t circle its stock as a habit then that might be a good way to start.  For us, we mix up the direction (away, away, comebye, away, comebye comebye, away, away etc), but always stopping at the quarter section mark.   For part 1, i’m finding i have to turn with my dog to face her.  I got slopping with what Down means.  Part 2 is doing the exact same exercise, but you face one direction or object and do not move from it.   Swivel your head to see where the dog is, but the body stays facing your chosen object or place on the horizon.   Eventually you should be able to face your chosen object, call out your down without facing or looking at the dog.  Remember to keep your dog out so as to not effect the sheep.

And we’ll get there, eventually.

While learning this exercise took up a good portion of our lesson time, we still had the opportunity to talk about goals for 2010.   As a team, we’ve decided that finishing her ASCA started title is a have-to-do.  We’ll be entering in ASCofWA’s Lakebay trial at the end of August at Sue MacDonald’s farm.  Which leads to goal two.  It might be the very last trial in Winter Series… but I will enter Molly as a Novice/Novice team at Winter Series.  These last few years, more Aussies (Vicklund’s Tick & I believe John Knepper’s Teton) have been entering USBCHA/WASH – lovelying referred to as the Border Collie People trials.

As large field trials they are very different from the Arena trials i’m more comfortable. The long outruns are often associated only with Border Collies.   Though they don’t really have  monopoly on that aspect of working any more than Aussies are only Pen Dogs or Border Collies can only work sheep.  Not to suggest that any Aussie can do Pro-Novice or Open Handler work.  The 70yard outrun in a Novice/Novice run is enough to make some Aussie handlers twitch a bit.  So Aussie Handers, if the self described Biggest Chicken in Aussiedom can stand up, do a BC trial and have a great time doing it…  Please don’t let me go alone.  PLEASE!

Many of the NW clubs are starting to plan their 2010 stock season and if last year is any indicator, we will all be very very busy.

AHBA – These trials are a Barb Davenport and Elsie Rhodes production unless otherwise indicated.

Oct. 30 – 31 & Nov. 1, 2009 AHBA Herding Ranch Trial (HRD) Sheep and Herding Trial Dog (HTD) ducks. – Frog’s Breath – Winlock, WA

Nov. 20, 21 & 22, 2009 Herding Trial Arena Dog 1 (HTAD) sheep & ducks – Frog’s Breath – Winlock, WA

Feb. 12, 13 & 14, 2010 Herding Trial Arena Dog 2 (HTAD) sheep & ducks, Herding Trial Dog (HTD) sheep and ducks. Junior Herd Dog (JHD) PackLeader – Gig Harbor, WA

March 12, 13 & 14, 2010 Herding Ranch Dog (HRD) THE RALLY TRIAL -PackLeader – Fido’s – Frog’s Breath

April 9, 10 & 11, 2010 Ranch Large Flock. (RLF) – PackLeader – Gig Harbor, WA

May 1st & 2nd AHBA Cattle Trial – More info as available – Fido’s Farm -  Yelm, WA (Contact Fido’s for info)

June 12th & 13th Ranch Large Flock (RLF) - Fido’s Farm -  Yelm, WA (Contact Fido’s for info)

Oct. 29, 30 & 31, 2010 Herding Ranch Dog (HRD) – Frog’s Breath – Winlock, WA

Nov. 19, 20 & 21, 2010 Herding Trial Arena Dog 1 (HTAD) sheep & ducks – Frog’s Breath – Winlock, WA

ASCA Trials – by ASC of WA

Jan. 9 & 10, 2010 Farm Trial Dog (FTD) sheep – Frog’s Breath – Winlock, WA

Feb. 6 & 7, 2010 Farm Trial Dog (FTD) sheep Frog’s Breath – Winlock, WA

April 25th & 26, 2010 A & B Arena Course Stockdog Trial, Cattle, sheep and ducks – Arlington, WA

July 3 -5, 2010 Stock A&B Course, cattle sheep and ducks; Conformation Obedience – Graham, WA

Aug 7, 8 & 9, 2010 A & B Course, Sheep and ducks; Monday Ranch (RTD) sheep – Eweful Acres – Lakebay, WA

ASCA Trials – by ASC of Idaho

May 14, 15 and 16th 2010 Spring Fling Arena Course Stockdog Trial – Boise area (location not indicated), ID

WASH – Washington Assoc of Stockdog Handlers (WASH trials are also known as the Winter Series to our BC folks)

Oct – March – Winter Series at the Crockers and MacDonalds – Whidbey Island and Lakebay WA

Dec 12th & 13th – Helsey Trial – Caldwell, ID

Non-Sanctioned Learning Series

Nov – March - Learning Series & Trial Prep at Fido’s – Yelm, WA

March 6th & 7th – Cathy Knox Clinic – Arlington, WA

May 8th & 9th – Livestock movement clinic with Elsie Rhodes (more info to follow)

Oct – April – Cattle Lessons with Elsie Rhodes at Fido’s

Oct – Dec – ASCA C course lessons/stock rental at Packleader Farm in Gig Harbor

Various Winter/Spring Dates – Lessons with Scott Glenn, Karen Childes, Elsie Rhodes or Chris Soderstrom on sheep or ducks at Fido’s

——————————————-

There are other trials going on, but these are the ones that are in the Winter – Spring time frame or have confirmed dates that I could find.  I’m almost done running updates on NWDog.org and we’ll have more solid information after the first of the year. For now, this will have to do.   Enjoy the fall weather and tie down your lighter items, this upcoming storm will be interesting.

Why a doughnut hole, you ask?   What better description of something in the center, that is pliable, satisfying and wonderful than a doughnut hole?  Centered Handler, Centered dog.  You come up with something better, i dare you.

Also, because I watch entirely too much Food Network. Whatever.

This weekend was really wonderful.  I’m not really sure where to begin.  The last few weeks i’ve been searching for that desire to go train.  Don’t get me wrong I enjoy working my dog. I think we all find these little walls.  Not insurmountable, but just a bit like the winter blahs where you need a good douse of snow or a great wind storm to light a fire.

On Saturday, I audited the George Costa clinic at Marti Parrish’s home.   I learn well from watching other people.  So when I think about going to see a new-to-me clinician, I like to audit the first day.  For this clinic it was audit space only.  Boy did I want a working spot after 15 minutes, but i think I would have fought 2 other people for it!

As most are aware, i have an unhealthy obsession with learning theory in dogs.  I was so excited to see the clinician handing out free clickers and talking to new handlers about Patrica McConnell’s book Other End of the Leash and For The Love of a Dog.  Then to start in on learning theory and new skills in relation to stock work. I was so right there.   To top it all off, I got to see other people with their own perpetual motion machines.   Is it bad that it made me feel better to see experienced handlers with their own little speedboats?  Hope not.

After all of this, Marti hosted everyone in a BBQ to help fund the ASCA Stockdog Finals.  There was just food everywhere.  As a group (club + other folks) we party well together.  There was salmon, lamb and chicken. Green salad, potato salad, pasta salad, and the most wonderful corn fresh from Dan and Evie’s garden.  Dan spent a lot of time during the clinic methodically shucking. He’s so good.   We also sang to all the birthdays and ate pie.  There might have been other dessert items there, but I tend to be rather myopic about dessert; pastry, creme brulee or pie. tks.

i’m not spoiled at all. i don’t know what you’re talking about.

So after all of this wonderful inspiration… i went to work on The Perpetual Motion Machine™ at Fido’s on Sunday.  First I channeled my homework, but instead of working in the arena I took Molly up to the small field space where the yearlings are.  Remember that i’ve not worked the yearlings in months, but i was pretty well bent on controlling footspeed as per the clinic.  For the first 10 minutes it didn’t go so well.  Not worse than normal, but no real improvement.  We argued. “i was to here, i want to go over here. Oh look there are sheep over there that you aren’t around. ohh fine i’ll stay back here and help for a little while. you suck (complete with ears back, such the prima donna).”   But i was not discouraged!  Since i was not finding success i needed to stop this mess and change the game for a while.   I started doing fence to fence work.  The sheep were in the corner and she had to go from perpendicular fenceline to fenceline.  Sounds easy, right?  She’s never successfully gone from 1 fence line alllll the way to the other fenceline.  She’s also supposed to be moving back away from the sheep as she does this, but as was pointed out at the clinic sometimes you just have to focus on one thing.   Going from fenceline to fenceline was my one thing and after a little while of having her try to bomb off – note to self “Hey what are you doing??” is not the right way to bring her back… – we finally got it done with a fair amount of consistency.

Once i had her actually going to the fence and stopping, i started to have her walk up into the stock in a nice quiet corner.  The first time she took off. “I donwanna. you suck”.  Insert backward ears here. The second time i caught her with a more appropriate reaction before she bombed off. “No”.  Tried to do the corners from various directions.  Then of course she starts being all perfect and does laps with the yearlings. “well ya shoulda just said so… you never just ask for stuff. it’s always all foofy and confusing and half the time you just” “Good girl, Molly. Shut up and walk”.

Most trainers will tell you that once you find a success, call it a day.  Meh, any other day.

Off to the dreaded Round Pen with the evil heavy sheep.  It’s not that the RP is bad.  It’s just that it’s so easy to ruin a dog using a small space too long. And lets face it, i’m not the most coordinated person on this planet. In close quarters, timing is essential.  I was looking to slow things down enough to allow Molly to actually find balance.  When she gets to moving fast like she does, she doesn’t feel the subtleties of the sheeps pressure.  So when they turn on balance and the pressure change, she’s not catching that change in a timely manner.  The same way that when you’re doing 100mph you don’t notice the random stop sign until it’s entirely too late.  Like for instance if you’re driving highway 26 from Seattle to Pullman and encounter the stop sign in the middle of nowhere.  Not that i’ve ever had that experience…

Anyhow, we were very successful slowing down and finding balance with the sofa sheep.  So maybe the next step is to start putting lighter sheep in the round pen; rinse and repeat?  Though really, I think I have slugs in my garden faster than the sofa sheep. 

With all of this, we’ll see how things go in Spokane with Black Sheep ASC.  The trial is full and then some (yeh!). So we’re heading over for the traditional after trial little fun thing they do.

OH! before i forget, George Costa will be at Jan Wesen’s Oct 17th & 18th.  Note at Jan’s there is no taping allowed.

We had a great weekened in BC on the 11th & 12th.  Not only did I get to handle some cows that were more squirrely than i’m used to (not unworkable!), but Molly competed in her first Started Sheep trial and took 3rd place in a very large started class!  She was very good; none of the fireworks that can sometimes happen on a dogs first run.

Thanks Joanne for the video.

The bombing off is bothersome, so at the suggestion of our judge I sped up in my next practice session and it was magic! She was spot on, and i didn’t have to handle her at the obstacles at all. She stayed back where she needed to be in order to not catch the sheeps eye and risk turning them back into the obstacle.  Beauty!

Hopefully, we’ll have more pics soon.  There was a person taking photos around the site, though not of our run.  Stay tuned!

After a long 6 week absense, the Slimey-Dog (Simon) is home and settling in nicely.  Not only is it a huge releif to have him back to even out the estrogen overload in the house, but it is so great for Molly to have someone more fun than me to play with.  Watching them run around, chase and wrestle reminds me that the injured dog is long since gone.  That dog has been replaced by a headstrong, thoughtful young bitch with more potential than I have brain cells.  It’s really rather intimidating.

Molly and I trucked off to Spokane to pick up Simon and to work stock for the weekend.  Simon has developed a wonderful amount of restraint with his stock.  It’s really just amazing to work him now knowing that he does not grip inappropriately anymore.  The next step is for me to step up and learn to trust him while working him.  No easy task as we’ve nicknamed my apprehension Post Traumatic Simon Disorder.

Molly worked the sheep very well.  Our focus continues to be keeping her behind her stock and keeping her stress level low enough that she stays in contact at all times.  No easy feat, but I could see slow stead progress.  Can’t ask for more than that.

This coming weekend will be the ARPH Raffle Booth and Parade of Rescues in Graham Washington in association with ASC of WA.  The following weekend will be cattle handling in Hope, British Columbia with the ASC of BC.  It’s always a pleasure to be in the company of such supportive clubs.

I’ve made some pretty major updates to Obedience, Stockdog/Herding and to DockDogs. There are a few large kennel club events this summer in Portland, Redmond WA, Ephrata, Tacoma, Spokane and Enumclaw. So the Obedience section is very long. I’m trying to work out a quick and easy way to list those events but have them fold into the larger event name. So for instance you’d see the Rose City Kennel Club show in Portland and then could expand it to see all the clubs hosting Obedience. However… that creates some coding issues. I’m working on it!

One big project this weekend has been attaching club sites to their events. Without a long and well researched list, attaching the club links has been tedious and time consuming. With the help of Zotero (http://www.zotero.org/) I’ve finally been able to start making and keeping a workable collection of event links. While this might not seem like much it’s a HUGE weight off my shoulders. I can’t wait for the server edition! Also, i’m almost ready to post the sitemap. As NWDog.org is growing, I really want things to be easy to find. For the site map, i’m using another new-to-me tool called FreeMind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/). If you’re a visual learner, manage large projects or really need a good way to dump your mind out on paper this is a great tool. It’s very user friendly and easy to navigate. I’m currently using it to help work through the logistics of ASC of WA’s April Showers stockdog trial.

Good luck and happy Trials!

I’ve been busily working along in getting the new ‘highspeed’ site up and going. This will allow for a more pics & videos in each event area. The information on events will mirror the basic site framework and links will be provided back and forth. it’s important to me that dial up and lowspeed users have the basic info to make decisions, but will have access to all the fun toys. I’m hoping to have the new framework beta tested by June and be up to full running capacity before the 4th of July. Wish me luck!

As a general update, we’re please to now be listing events for the American Sighthound Field Assoc. This group is locally in both Washington and Oregon and typically competes as a group in Coursing AKA Lure Course. If you own a dog that is traditionally a sighthound, this is a great organization to learn about the original intent for your breed as well as information on Lure Coursing.

We are also starting to advertise information sessions for the Delta Society. If you have ever been in the hospital, you know how depressing the whole experience can be. The Delta Society works hard to help people train appropriate dogs for hospital and hospice visits. We at NWDog appreciates their commitment to their community and encourage people to look inward to decide if their dog could share some of that doggie-magic with those in need.

Also, I’ve updated the Molly Page. In short, she’s doing wonderfully. Her vet is over the moon with her progress and has asked for a full log of her recuperation. Maybe she’ll be famous after all?

-Amy, Molly and Si