NORWEGIAN BUHUNDS
With no prospect of any canine activities starting again soon, to help and lift peoples spirits there are a number of good people going above and beyond, by organising on line shows and other activities. I reported on a breed show last week, and a number of breed clubs and ‘Our Dogs’ are running these with various classes. There are also on line Rally competitions and Scentwork UK is also running scent trials for various levels of dogs. These last two of course need videos to be sent in. As I said last week someone to one outside training is taking place certainly in agility. Our scent training club has a zoom lesson every week, the trainer talks through what she wants your dogs to do by showing you with her dog, she then gives us homework! We practice with the dogs and send in the videos for her to see. She can then comment the next week, it seems to work very well and as Time loves searching, he is really enjoying the homework.
The club Obreedience team also took part in an online Obreedience heat run by Julia Bodsworth with a small entry fee for charity; there were Rosettes and cards down to fourth. You had to have four dogs but they did not all have to be of the same breed, but we decided to enter 4 Buhunds and under our usual name of Quatre Bu. We were given a heel work pattern which included a pole to go round and three cones to weave in and out of as is usual in an Obreedience heat, the size of the area that should be used was also stated as all the heel work rounds were going to be timed, with the aim that the team members should all be the same, in the end we were all within 2secs of each other. As in a normal competition each dog had an exercise to complete. Send to Bed was the only exercise that was the same, the other 3 were different. The distance for each exercise was also stated, and the camera position as with the heel work was also documented. Our normal team members are four from Alysha Branchflower, Jacqui Cobb, Sarah Stonton, Lisa Strong and myself. Alysha did not have a Buhund as she co owns Knytshall Moon of Josephine with Jacqui,and she was with Jacqui, and Sarah is a vet and did not feel she had time, as being a vet at the moment is quite difficult. Michael Cobb stepped in to make up the four and under Jacqui’s guidance handled Knytshall Angel Delight RL2 EX with Angel doing the ‘Send to Bed’ exercise, the bed had to be 10 paces away from the handler. Lisa had decided to retire Loki last year as he had never really enjoyed it, so worked her Leggatts Dancing Queen At Draccus(Eris) doing ‘Go around a Pole’ being sent from 2metres away an exercise she had been practicing for agility. Jacqui worked Knytshall Eloise doing ‘Retrieve own article from distractions’the retrieve had to be at least 3metres away, Jacqui had been training her to do the scent exercise, as Fizz who had always done the scent exercise also retired last year as he will be 13yrs at the end of this month, she adapted to the Retrieve really well. I did ‘Change of position from a distance’ with Rikarlo Gable (Time). The dog had to start in a sit and be told to go down from3 metres away, so we had three new recruits all under 2rs old. We all sent our videos to Lisa who kindly sorted them out and said if she thought we needed to do it again, when she was happy she sent them in to the organisers. Filming was quite interesting, I measured out a course in the garden for the heel work but it was in the sun all day, so had to move to the other end as David could not see with the sun. We did it a couple of times but the video did not come out well, then a squirrel ran over the fence and that was that for the day. The next two days were really windy so were out for doing anything, when the wind had died down we did it again and decided we were not going to get it any better. Then it was a down from a sit exercise, Time has his Good Citizen Gold where he had to do a down on command, but decided he had never heard of down and certainly not if I was 3 meters away! So a day or so of practicing with a lot of praise and a few special treats, he is very fussy and not food orientated at all, which makes things difficult when you want to give him a reward, in the end he did it perfectly. We were 25th out of 31 teams the results were very tight we had 8.3 for the Heel work Retrieve 9.7 Go To Bed 9.9 Go Round Pole 9.7 and Change of Position 10 so a total of out of 47.6 out of 50. There were only 3.9 marks from the first and last team. We certainly had a lot of fun doing it and I know the others did as well, as did the dogs, Time became quite excited when he saw me pick up his lead, I think he has missed his training classes and seeing his doggy friends, so each day now we do just a few minutes round the garden and the Go to Bed exercise that he had to do for his Gold, which he just loves doing, why I don’t know but he does.
For those of you that are club members you should have received your Spring Bu News by now, please let me know if you haven’t.
Stay safe everyone.
Margaret Deuchar margaretdeuchar@gmail.com
The 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.