Last weekend I had an Elite Nose Work Trial at the Gathering Pines Adventure Center. It was not my worst trial but it was not my best either. Let’s say we are blaming it on horses.
As usual, there were four searches over the course of the day. I did great in my second and third searches. The weather was kind of hot but not too bad and I found all the hides in those two searches.
My first search of the day was in a horse arena and the last search was in a small barn with a tack room. Mom kept me on leash in the arena search because she was unsure of what I would do with horse poo. I always do better off leash but it was what it was. I was fairly distracted and in the end I missed half the hides which means four of eight. That it way too many to miss! Now I have an idea of a horse arena and how it smells and next time I think we would do better.
A small barn with a tack room was my last search of the day with a range of one to four hides. Because a rain storm was moving in, some parts of the search area were rather dark. I cruised through the area and landed at the tack room. The small area was packed with this stuff full of horse smells. I don’t know horses which made me cautious. We brightened the photo so you can see things but in reality it was quite dark. After sniffing for a few seconds I got scared and ran from the area. Nothing Mom did got me to go back. On the bright side, I found one hide in another space.
We headed back to the tack area and I was quite tentative. Trust me, it was a lot of horse smell. The judge said it was so dark so she turned on the light. Now I did feel better as I could see things and knew there were no animals hiding in the area. Mom decided one hide was enough and she let me slowly sniff my way around the “u” shaped room to learn horse stuff is not dangerous. We used the rest of our three minutes letting me sniff. Yes, I did miss one hide but getting to really experience horse smell should help me down the road. It sure was frightening at first though. I’m thankful Mom helped me to learn rather than forcing me to do something or being made we missed a hide. Team Lime Green is a good team even on a day when we miss five of eighteen hides.
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