Sweet River Studios

River and I have been taking a tracking class at SkyDogs in Columbus over the last several weeks. She does a lot with scent work and barn hunting and seems to like to use her nose but tracking classes are not really popular and hard to find. However, one of the owners of SkyDogs lost their dog who is both blind and deaf a few months back and she thought a tracking dog might have been able to find her but there wasn't any available. Thankfully, she did find her dog about a mile away from her house, but this experience gave her the idea to start a tracking class in the hopes that some dogs could be trained enough that if someone has lost their pet, a group of tracking dogs could try to find them. The group of people who are currently in the tracking class, already has some good experience with scent. Now, we just have to teach the dog to track a certain scent over a distance and outside. Over the last few weeks, we started slowly. We did simple easy finds with lots of rewards an...

On Saturday, April 18, River and I attended a C-WAGS Scent trial at Anything Goes for Dogs in Marysville. Although, there were 3 levels River and I entered Level 2. There were two searches at Level 2 and she qualified in 1 search.  Most of the dogs didn't do well on the first search for some reason. As for River, she's pretty excited in new areas and won't settle down for a while but she got into the rhythm on the second search but barely. There's also going to be a Scent League during the summer what should be a lot of fun and hopefully River will be able to earn a title or two.

On Saturday, March 28, River and I participated in our first CWAGS scent trial hosted at Anything Goes for Dogs in Marysville, Ohio. It was a Level 1 and Level 2 search and I signed us up for all 4 runs. I figured if I was going to drive an hour I wasn't going to go for just the Level 1 searches. Besides, it's good practice for River. I'm happy to say that she got 3 out of 4 Qualifying Scores or "Q's."  She was really excited to be in a new place and I had a hard time getting her focus on what I needed her too.  On the first search, she barely used her nose at all but in the last few seconds of the allotted 2 minute search, she sat down and alerted to the scent. The second Level 1 search, she did much better.  She still ran around a lot and walked past the scented box several times, but she alerted around 1 minute 3 seconds. The first Level 2 search was fairly hard.  There was probably 30 items to search. There were chairs, pots, a set of cookie sheets, ...

Well, this is my first post for 2015!  I hope everyone has a great year but as for me, I'm just hoping River can master her own impulses a bit better and finish her weave poles reliably in agility. And yes, she's always watching me and my husband. She's discovered that propping her head up on coffee tables, end tables, TV cabinets, walls, people legs or whatever she can find gives her a lazy advantage in people watching. Clearly, this conserves energy which is important to dogs. Looks darn right uncomfortable if you ask me but she doesn't seem to care. I got my Babylock Unity back from my local quilt shop on December 22.  They found a little glass head from a glass head pin in the port of my embroidery machine so let's hope that fixes the problem of the machine stopping during embroidery. No one likes to have their very expensive machine not working correctly. I'll be like my grandmother breathing in a bag when I'm upset. Not good. I've gotten bac...

Hello everyone! My name is Lisa and I'm new to blogging.  That sounds more like a confession doesn't it?  Well, that's okay.  Today is my 41st birthday (gasp!) and I decided to start a blog to inflict my life's activities on everyone my blog happens to come across. I enjoy cooking, crafts, sewing, quilting, embroidery work, dogs, nature in general and photography.  I live in a small suburb of Columbus, Ohio along with my wonderful husband of 17 years and our 2 year old german shepard mix, River.  I worked as a paralegal for 12 years before a series of layoffs left me permanently unemployed. After hearing "your over qualified" or "this is entry level" from everyone who granted me an interview out of hundreds or even thousands of applicants, I realized that I just didn't have to work for someone who couldn't understand that I wanted to work, had great experience and entry level position was just fine.  I simply got tired of trying to make them ...