No surprise

Sunday Legend and I attended the local UKC nosework trial to compete in the Advanced containers class.  She knocked out her title by qualifying in both rounds and earning a first and second place with a total time for both rounds of 15.27 seconds.  Yep, we invested a half day for 15.27 seconds.  But she loved it.

Normally I would say this accomplishment comes as no surprise but since boxes have tripped us up a bit in our last few NACSW triasl it was not necessarily a given, but did turn out to be a good confidence boost.

Ten years together

Once upon a time I picked out the name Legend for my next dog. It was supposed to be a male. But the little red dog on the rescue webpage was a female. And I couldn't get her out of my head. So I bought a pink leash, drove to Nebraska, and called her Legend anyway. Ten years,  56 titles, one crazy journey and a million memories later, I wouldn't change a thing. Happy 11th birthday Legend-if I could stop time now, I wouldn't think twice.

Sundae Sunday

Here are few fun pics of Sundae that I took on Sunday.

I took Legend tracking yesterday to see how it went, since we have not done any in over a year I bet.  I'm trying to decide if I should buckle down and put the work in to try and get her TD or not.  I want to, it's just the time commitment, especially over the winter.  But she did well so I think I will give it a shot.  Especially since there will probably be a time lapse before our next NW3 trial.  Otherwise, no other excitement!

NW3 try number 4

Thursday we drove to Davenport for another shot at getting our second NW3 pass. We started with vehicles, which was a pretty straightforward 3 vehicles end to end search. I was a little nervous as we had failed vehicles on our two most recent trials. But she rocked it, found two hides and cleared the rest of the area nicely. I felt good about it and we were off to a good start. 

Next was interiors. Usually a strong spot for us. She worked the three areas well and I felt as good as Icould about them. There is always some second guessing!

Exteriors was next and by this time the temps had dropped 20 degrees and winds were gusting over 20 MPH. Plus the search area was pretty "busy" so I was worried about this search. She found one hide but checked a lot of areas with interest so I worked until the 30 second warning and then called it quits. I was pretty dubious about our success here but you never know!

Last up was containers. She found one hide and then we had a false alert on a box where some odor has apparently been collecting.  I was super bummed to get all the way to the end of the day and then blow it. Especially when we found out all out other searches had been successful! Yay! But on the plus side, we found all hides, improved our search times, handled the wind well and overall had our best outing since our first try. 

Plus we got a pronounced in exteriors and earned our NW3 element titles in interiors and exteriors. 

Absent

So it's been about 3 weeks since I've posted. I looked at my calendar to see what i have been doing and apparently it was just working. And since I'm still on track to run 1000 miles this year I just go home at night and run. 

We've had no races and no dog trials and really no excitement. But summer has made a full recovery, Tehani is doing well and everyone else is fine. We had a bonfire this weekend with a few friends. And this upcoming weekend we are off to Iowa for an NW3 trial. So hopefully we will have news to report!