NORWEGIAN BUHUNDS
Those of you who read these notes regularly will know that there are several Buhunds doing scentwork, including Sarah with Jack, Kirsty with Blaze and myself with Time. There are so many activities you can you do with your dog’s nowadays, but for me scentwork is ideal, now that I can no longer run around as I used to, Time can do the searching and I can stand and watch him and hope he finds the hides! and you do not need a big area for training. Of course, like any activity for humans’ equines and canines there must be training. We go to a lesson once a week, but this is in a hall, so we also go workshops in various places like farms, searching the farm vehicles and building, museums inside and out, heritage railways and a couple of weeks ago we were even able to search of the outside of a windmill. I love these searches with no pressure of competing, and they give Time the chance to search various areas and things that he would not normally see, so when he competes in trials, he is happy to search anything he might come across. A week or so I had booked a workshop with a retired police officer, who had worked for many years with dogs looking for explosives, searching very large areas right down to small venues wherever it was felt there might be a threat to a person or a group of people, and making sure that the area was safe.
It turned out to be a very enjoyable morning with a twist. We were given a scenario that a high-powered guest was arriving in two and a half hours, and we had to search the large outside venue and make sure it was safe as in the scenario a local informant had told the organisers of the visit, that explosive devices had been hidden in the venue. To make it more real the policeman had hidden several packages the night before round the venue, the packages contained wires and mobiles phones but rather than containing anything that might go bang! they smelt of gun oil, the odour the dogs normally search for.
There were three large areas to be searched, there were six of us and we were put into pairs with an area to cover in half an hour so one dog worked for half the time and then we swopped over, with the person that did not have a dog being the spotter making sure the whole area was covered, as it is very easy to miss things. Each pair also searched each of the three areas, we were given a walkie talkie and we had to report back to gold command (the policemen) when the dogs found a device, with the word Biscuit or Burbon if the dog seemed to think there was something but could not actually find it, we only used Biscuit! The café was the operations room, and I am glad to say all 8 devices were located and made safe, so the very important guest could arrive! The policeman observed all the dogs working at some point and was able to give us helpful feedback It was great fun and obviously helped Time with his searching, as five day later he won his first Excellent National Nosework Association trial.
Sarah Stonton as well as doing scent work with Jack also does Rally and below tells us about her most recent competitions.
“The NBC of UK is approaching it’s AGM which will be on April 6th.Following the meeting there will be the presentation of the club annual awards with a large array of ribbons and perpetual trophies, followed by a fun day. In 2022 the club launched a new award in memory of the late Michael Quinney, our Versatile Buhund Award, to congratulate and encourage any activities we do with our Buhunds.The Buhund is a clever breed, independent and sometimes stubborn but likes to work, and is capable of achieving in large range of activities.The awards run from Pewter to Gold with 6 awards in total. To date only 2 dogs have achieved their Gold award; my late Loxy (Trelowen Andrea AW(S)) was the first having accrued enough points from the start for showing, agility, scent, rally, good citizen, Obreedience and Bu Bumbles. Next came Margaret Deuchar’s Time (Ch Rikarlo Gable JW) last year for a combination of scent, showing, good citizen, Discover Dogs and Bumbles.
Following my Jack’s (Ch Arnscroft In Di Ana Jack RL2) success last weekend at rally he will be the 3rd to get his gold, subject to NBC approval. In addition to rally, Jack has achieved points through show, scent, good citizen and Bumbles. Jack and I travelled to Derbyshire Equestrian College on Sunday 11th February through patchy fog. In the morning, he competed at Level 3 rally which is all off lead, only the second time he had done this level, he did all the exercises I asked but was distracted several times by a barking dog, so I was overjoyed when he gained a qualifying score of 180/200. The afternoon class was Level 2 on lead, and he flowed beautifully through the whole class achieving a score of 199/200 which enabled him to upgrade his suffix to RL2.
So, club members please get your claims in to Jenny, the points table is on the club web site and keep having fun learning new things with your dogs.”
Thanks Sarah will look forward to hearing about Jack’s future success in Rally. However, as I said earlier in the notes Sarah and Jack are also being very successful in scent, on Saturday 17th Feb they headed off to Oxfordshire for an NNA pre-entry trial which they won giving them the final badges to move up into Entry Level. The next day they went to a SWUK L7 trial in Peterborough where they were 3rd with only 3 qualifying. Many congratulations, great results.
Stay safe everyone.
Margaret Deuchar margaretdeuchar@gmail.com
Any views expressed in Margaret’s Breed Notes are hers and hers alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Norwegian Buhund Club of the UK