January and February definitely gave us a run for our money this year. In early January, we learned our old gal Rylie (almost 14 y/o) had lung cancer. We opted for surgery to remove the primary tumor, then started her on chemotherapy. Chemo didn’t work out for her, but we know that the surgery bought us a bit more time with her.

In the middle of Ry’s recovery, I flew back to Arkansas to support my sister Dawn during and after her brain surgery. Yup, you read that right. My 34-year-old sister found out she had a brain tumor in the fall, and after months of battling insurance companies and the health care system’s red tape, she was finally scheduled for surgery at the end of January. Just like Ry, Dawn came through her surgery like a champ and is finally feeling like herself again.

Once the crises passed and life evened out at the beginning of March, our training goal for this spring became finishing Piper’s overarching novice nosework title. Pips has one qualifying leg in each of the events (interiors, exteriors, containers, and buried) so we signed her up for these four PLUS handler discrimination at the March 23 Northern California Golden Retriever Club’s Scentwork Trial. A fun bonus of the trial was that the main novice judge was Donna Soderstrom, Piper’s nosework and obedience trainer.

We worked hard on Handler Discrimination and Piper really seemed to have a handle on it at home and at class. However, she did another false alert at the trial. I’m not quite sure if she knows what I’m asking of her here:

Just like last time, we used that false alert to approach the rest of the events more tentatively. It worked for containers and buried (the events she seems to hate the most in training). Interiors was an NQ, partially because I didn’t recognize her interest close to the hide, and partially because she false alerted away from it. Looks like our teamwork broke down. We need to keep practicing so I get better at differentiating true interest from guesses. Also, Donna gave us the option of competing off-lead in interiors and I wish I would have taken her up on it. I think this would have let Pips move more independently and not get distracted by me. Lesson learned.

Donna gave some overarching advice to those who NQd in interiors about not crowding your dog, and I heard her loud and clear. You know when someone gives general advice to a crowd but you know it’s aimed at you? Yeah, me too :)! So, I gave Pips more room in exteriors and she performed beautifully:

Overall, it was a great day with friends, Piper set three PRs, and we made more progress towards her titles.

So here’s our current scentwork tally:

• Handler Discrimination: No qualifying runs
• Interiors: One qualifying run (needs two more for title)
• Exteriors: Two qualifying runs (needs one more for title)
• Containers: Two qualifying runs (needs one more for title)
• Buried: Two qualifying runs (needs one more for title)

We’re signed up for two more trials in April, so hopefully we can sew up the SWN title between the two. Stay tuned!