Today I’m super happy to share the news of my Summit Title with everyone! We had a hard three day weekend of nose work at Stearns Scout Camp in New Haven, MN October 11th – 13th. It was my fifth Summit Trial. Losing Madison put a damper on everything for us, but we still managed to have an amazing nose work weekend and I earned my title with some placements. The only camp sign was on the side of the busy road, so I didn’t get out to pose with it.
For those of you not familiar with nose work and Summit, I borrowed this paragraph from a trial website a while back. It kind of gives you the feeling of the challenge of a Summit Trial and why a title means so much. Normal trials are a full or half day, but Summit is two full days which zaps our energy physically and mentally, both for the dog and the handler.
In our previous Summit Trials, we’ve had a great day and then a bad day, or a bad day and then a great day. This time we felt like we had two average days but it turned out to be an amazing two days. Mom cried a lot on the way to and from the trial, at the trial, but she still managed to forget it all and have fun with me searching. Madison was there with us and she knew a great trial would help Mom be happy. One sign she left for us was this pink streamer hanging from a tree. It had nothing to do with our nose work trial and was just there. The camp is huge, so we had to drive to most of our searches and we almost always passed this streamer and thought of Madison and Mom would cry, but it was a good thing.
Our favorite and best search of the trial was our second search, the beach search. The area included the beach, the inside of the beach house, and all the boats and canoes. I took off running as always and worked like a dog! We had six minutes to find an unknown number of hides. It turns out that we were the only team to find all six hides which gave us first place in that search. It was such a fun search and we are so happy to have done so well! The video is from the GoPro, so it isn’t the best ever but it works. Mom will buy the videos from the professional and the still photos when they are available.
Mom and I are so happy to have earned this Summit Title, it is the top of the top for nose work and to earn third place overall, and a first and third place in two of the eight searches is amazing! I think you can tell how happy the two of us are. Mom is so proud of me! It was also a very teary time for Mom but happiness won out.
My first search of the day had a hide on the deck on this chair, so we thought it would be a good place to take a couple photos. Mom says losing Madison has zapped her creativity and desire to take photos. In time it will get back to normal but for now we are making do with what we muster up the ideas to do.
In a happy moment, Mom took this photo of me with my ribbons, the Summit bandana, notebook, and pen. It will take a long time for the excitement of this achievement settles down with the two of us, but we will enjoy it because we worked so hard for it. Team orange will keep doing Summit Trials and who knows how many more titles we may be able to earn as our team gets better and better!
My GBGV Life is happy, so we’re joining Comedy Plus for Happy Tuesday!
English (US) · 