Sweet River Studios

River and I participated in a barn hunt trial at Dogwood Agility in Ostrander, Ohio over the weekend. This was our first trial at the Senior level. River has to find 4 rats and complete the tunnel and climb requirements within 3 minute 30 seconds. We had a great time but only qualified in one run with a time of 2:09 which also got us first place. Another dog had a time of 2:03 and got High in Class but we were the only 2 dogs to qualify. Most of the time teams run out of time. Some dogs, like mine, alert very subtly and its pretty hard to figure out if they've found a rat or not. Even though we didn't qualify on most of the runs, we still enjoyed our weekend and it was great practice. It's a lot of work holding a barn hunt trial and we greatly appreciate all the people who volunteer to make each hunt run smoothly.

I signed River up for the scent league at Anything Goes for Dogs in Marysville. We had two trials in March and I'm pleased to say that River finally, finally got her level 2 Title. She's had Levels 1 and 3 but Level 2 remained elusive. On the second trial, I signed her up for 2 searches at Level 1 and 2 each. Usually, she's quite excited when she first goes in to search and alerts to the wrong box since she's more interested in just running around, so we get it wrong. But I'm happy to say that she seemed to focus much more quickly this time and she qualified in all 4 searches. These Q's at the levels she's already titled in now go towards her ACE in those levels. In order to get an ACE in Level 1, you need 10 Q's. This takes awhile since not many places are holding CWAGS scent trials in Columbus. River is also scheduled for the second scent league in April at Anything Goes as well. Next month is levels 3 and 4. Since we have no Q's at level 4, I...