Facebook page.Dropped by to brag a bit on my girl, Geyser. She's three now, and I finally felt she was mature enough to handle the stress of competition.
So, we competed in our first K9 Nosework trial a week ago. This is for the NW1 title, which basically just proves that your dog understands the game (only one hide per element; interior, exterior, vehicles and containers). At the NW2 level, there are multiple hides per element, and two interiors to search, and 4 vehicles instead of three, but you know how many hides you're looking for in each element.
At the NW3 level, they start to mess with the handler. HIdes can be up to 6 feet off the floor. There are three interiors, one of which may not have a hide at all; the other interiors will have up to three hides, but you don't know how many or if there's a hide in any given interior; you have to state when you're done finding hides, and if there are none, that it's clear, etc. There are 5 vehicles (the easiest element, IMO). No one passes NW3 the first time at it, and once you do, when you've done it three times, that's NW3 Elite, and that's as far as you can go.
That's our ultimate goal, of course
.So, back to our trial last weekend. We earned the NW1 title. We took first in interior, first in exterior, first in vehicles, and second in containers. Then, we took first place overall (total search time was 1.00.10, out of a possible 11.5 minutes). This is out of 38 dogs.
I was high for about a week
. And, we had a blast during the competition.Good girl!
