SAR Conference

Tucker met his first blood hound at the SAR conference this past weekend. His name was Forest and he was a riot. Forest weighed in at 100 pounds and is a trailing dog from Virginia Beach.

Tucker went to the dog park and decided to have a drink of water, but since he was getting beat up by the bigger pooches, he decided to deprive them of the water. Watch the video above.

Will he ever grow into these ears?

Union Springs Road

On Sunday we went to a new area (at least for Gail and I) for a practice session with Blue and Gray. The map said we were in the George Washington Park. That has to be a huge park.

We started with an exercise with Ronnie and Saibra that took longer than expected, but I'm glad I went as the flanker because I learned a lot about a flanker's responsibilities. Rick from the Virginia Emergeny Services was kind to share his knowledge.

Tucker did okay on his exercises, but not stellar. He missed a subject on both outings due to tricky wind conditions. I have so much to learn about scent and wind!

Boys Will Be Boys

Tucker discovered that playing in the mud is lots of fun. Gail and I can attest it wasn't so much fun cleaning up the mess!

Tucker's search dog training has been going well. We are doing more difficult problems and he is now getting used to finding some strangers. Gail and I are going down to a SAR conference at the end of April to learn more about this discipline. He gets dirty on search practices, but not this dirty!

Training at Yancey

Here's another picture of us with Tucker. It was rather cold out there in the woods.

Below is a video that Gail took of Tucker out finding a "victim." It was really just Laurel with some stinky hot dogs!

Yogurt is Yummie!

The doctor says 1 tablespoon of yogurt a day. Well Tucker will get it any way he can.

Training At Kennedy Fields

This is Matthew, Laurel and Uzi, a 2.5-year-old Chesapeake Bay Retriever. They joined us today for an informal training session at Kennedy Fields close to Waynesboro, VA. We ran him on an exercise. Part of the video is below. Watch Uzi in action!

Tucker did some more puppy walks and we increased the difficulty on the second run by walking through the woods and not alongside a road or path. The subjects also hid deeper and Laurel even laid down behind a log. Tucker missed her completely on the first pass, but then caught her scent.

Tucker also played with Saibra in the creek and got some experience crossing the creek with Saibra as bait. He wanted to dive in after the sticks like Saibra, but couldn't quite muster the courage.