11
May
2008

Mist takes matters into her own hands!

Well, I was looking forward to yet another day in the sun at Tjørn, but it was not to be. Thomas woke more times during the night than he has done in a very long time, since he was just a few weeks old I reckon. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong, so maybe he’s just trying his luck :wink: . In addition I’ve had an upset tummy for a couple of days which still hadn’t gone away. So, we cancelled, and I thought maybe I could do one tracking session from home.

A couple of weeks ago, I visited the farm who own the land directly outside our house and asked if we could have permission to train tracking there. They have cows in the field/woods in summer, but apart from one, seemingly ’stray’, cow the other evening, it seems they aren’t yet out. So, off Jon went into the woods with objects to drop and tape to mark start/finish etc. This was apparently just too much for Mist…. she yelped, barked, jumped up and down, dug at the ground by the gate where he’d left. I tried to call her away, but she was too focused on where he’d gone. Confident that the garden is fully fenced, I returned (no further than 5metres away!) to play with Thomas on the floor. And suddenly I heard rustling in the woods….. and there she was :shock: . Trying to find her way down through the rocks to where she’d last seen Jon. I tried to call her back but she wasn’t having any of it. Her best friend had disappeared and she was off to find him. I’d been sitting shading Thomas from the sun so couldn’t just jump up and open the ‘gate’ (which is quite a job in itself) and go and fetch her. By the time I’d thought about what I could do, she was gone anyway. So I just had to sit and wait.

I knew Jon was going to set the trail through the woods and would then climb over a fence to get onto Ragnhildsnuten to come back. So if Mist was on his trail, she’d eventually come up against this obstacle….
About 20minutes after he set off, I heard Jon come back, through the woods… and carrying the tapes, finish and objects he’d laid out. He also had Mist :roll: . As suspected, she’d followed his trail up to the point where he’d crossed the fence and then, unable to continue, had stood there barking. Jon by this time was on top of Ragnhildsnuten and heard her barking… and soon realised what had happened. Luckily for Mist he climbed/ran back down to the fence and ‘rescued’ her, bringing her back to the house through the woods.

So, Mist…. next time wait for me! :roll: :lol:

11
May
2008

Back to Weds night training

Now that the evenings are long and light, it’s nice to be back to regular Wednesday night training. This week it was split training, for Group1 at Dale. Since the Tjørn weekend, I’ve been moved into the same group as Bjørn and Sylvelin since they both are training barking indication too. So there was the 3 of us plus Ola, all to train rundering.

I wanted to try out the shuttling in a rundering situation (all the weekend’s training was open air-scenting). Sylvelin was the body on the right-hand-side and Bjørn on the other side. It went generally well, although Mist needed quite a bit of help to get started at Sylvelin, both times (she went out to each body twice before I called it a day). At Bjørn she barked spontaneously, and even came running back to me without me calling on the second go :grin: . Hard to know whether the ease with which she indicated at Bjørn and relative difficulty at Sylvelin was due to her being used to Bjørn as a body, from the weekend, or the terrain. Sylvelin was sitting near the terrain boundary of the forest and the open field/rough ground. I’ve seen lots of dogs distracted here, and Krimp showed the same tendency today. Never mind, she needed help and she got it, and we had a good session. I stopped while we were ‘up’ after 4 finds.

7
May
2008

Tjørn training weekend with SARDA (Lakes) instructors 1-4 May

I’d been looking forward to this weekend for some time…. 4 days with instructors from SARDA (Lake District) at Tjørn, training open air-scenting in the extensive open hill terrain around the Rogaland Friluftsliv hytte. The idea began last October when Jon and I were in Keswick (Lake District) and I joined an evening SARDA training session at Grizedale. Over the following few months we agreed a plan, and last Wednesday I drove to the airport to collect the 3 instructors, Kaz, Benny and Les.

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We had an excellent weekend, and after one day of the usual grey skies and rain, enjoyed some very un-Tjørn-like weather on Fri, Sat, Sunday - glorious sunshine, blue skies and warm :shock: .

Search dogs in SARDA are trained to air-scent only (they don’t do tracking) and they search mainly in open fell terrain, although sometimes other types of terrain such as forest too. In NRH we concentrate a lot (many would say far too much) on the structured corridor searching, rundering, and on tracking, which are the two skills which are specifically tested in assessment for qualification (although open-area searches are a part of the assessed week also part of the qualification prosess). This is despite the fact that open-area air-scenting is the most common method used in callouts. It was therefore a fantastic opportunity to get instruction from some real experts in these methods and I think all the weekend’s participants learnt a lot and took away lots of new ideas and points to discuss further.

In addition, all SARDA dogs indicate by barking and shuttling back and forth between the body and the handler (see videoclip on front page of their website, link above, to see what it should look like!) - no bringsel indication at all in the UK. After visiting in October I’d decided I’d like to use this method of indicating with Mist, and have started on this in the last few months. It was good timing from my point of view since it became clear that I was making one or two ‘mistakes’, which were quickly corrected, and I now have a much better idea for how things should progress. It was great to see real progress in the 4 days we were up at Tjørn, and even more fantastic was how tired Mist was when we got home :lol:

It’s only a week since the training weekend, but I’ve already forgotten details of what exactly we did , when (:roll: ), so I’m not going to split things out according to each day, but will summarise the main points.

Mist and I were in a group with Kai-Erik & Umi, Ghita & Tara and Bjørn & Krimp.
Our instructor was Benny (Dave Benson) who is an assessor in SARDA (Lake District) and is a graded dog-handler team with a lurcher of all things!!

My main aim for the weekend was to train the barking indication and get a good start on the shuttling. In addition I was keen to learn about area coverage, in particular to see how close/far a dog had to be to a body to pick up the scent - obviously depending on location of the body, wind direction and stregth etc.

We started by going back a little, getting Mist to bark at the body while standing with me, then getting the body to run away and hide, letting Mist go, and getting her to bark. Since we’ve trained quite a bit of this, she didn’t need any ‘help’ to start barking. We then searched a small area, and Mist fairly consistently barked spontaneously when she found them. Where I have been going ‘wrong’ is that the body has rewarded Mist after a certain number of barks, whereas the SARDA method requires the handler to be with the dog and body before any reward is given. This reinforces to the dog that it has to get the handler to the body before it will get what it wants (usually a toy). So, we put this right, and I had to start legging it across the tussocky heather, bog and rocks to get to the body in a reasonable amount of time. If at any point Mist started to lose focus on the body, they would induce her to bark by either using the bark command, Hals!, or small gestures to keep her attention and encourage her.

Helen + Mist

Come on, let’s get started

I think it was the second day when we started on the shuttling. Mist searched as usual, found the body, started barking, but the body didn’t induce her to keep barking when she started to look around for me. At this point, I called her in to me and asked her to bark. I was pleasantly surprised that she came all the way to me without much encouragement, and also didn’t try to sprint back after one measly bark. After a few good barks, I sent her back to the body, where she barked spontaneously (as required) almost every time we did this exercise. Over the course of the weekend we mixed shuttling indications, with just barking at the body’s location. Not surprisingly, when the shuttling is introduced the dog can often try to take shortcuts and not bother barking at the body first, so it’s good to consolidate by going back to induced barking at the body with no return to handler.

Helen + Mist, searching

Mist has found someone and wants me to hurry up!

We worked small areas as well as doing A-B-C searches, where we just walked a line such that we first came into the scent cone of body A, and then later body B and so on. On the second day, we took all 4 dogs out to the area just over the hill behind the hytte and tied them up. I think we were all a little nervous about it since none of them are used to it (apart from Krimp perhaps), but it was certainly a good opportunity to try it out. And they pleasantly surprised us :smile: . Even Umi, who can’t bear it if KaiErik even walks away, never mind out of sight, managed to lie down and calm down after a while Mist coped with the whole experience by spending every minute that she wasn’t searching, excavating a large hole… there was a small puddle when we arrived and a small pond when we left :lol: Still, it kept her out of other trouble. I hope this is something we might use in future, in order to make better use of time and terrain - we avoid all the time-wasting of going back and forth to fetch dogs/get ready. Maybe not so much fun in ‘normal’ Tjørn weather, on the other hand!

The weekend was fun in other ways too….. having never heard most NRH’ers speak English before (I requested that people only speak Norwegian when I first joined, such that I learned quicker) it was quite odd hearing and speaking English for the weekend. As ever, even people who said their English was poor, sounded practically fluent :roll: . Even funnier was hearing Norwegians speaking English to each other, forgetting that they no longer needed to :lol:
On Saturday evening, after thanking the instructors and presenting them with a NRH gilet each, we asked Benny if he’d like a challenge. “Yes, of course!” he answered…… and 20minutes later was crawling around in sheep poo outside the hytte, decked out in a Redningshund triangle bikini-style over a pair of waterproof trousers, nose to the ground, and urged on by Les as they found out what it’s like to be a tracking dog, on a ‘coffee-trail’. We explained that at the end of the trail is always something that the dog considers high-value…. in his case a blonde Norwegian (Tone) prepared to whip him with a juniper branch :shock: :lol: . Don’t ask! :roll:

Thanks very much to the SARDA instructors who taught us lots, were really good fun and even brought some very uncharacteristic weather! We hope someone from NRH Dio06 will be able to come across to a SARDA (Lakes) training weekend sometime next year. Just hope it’s not me as I’m sure Benny will have a suitable return challenge lined up :lol:

7
May
2008

Update at last…

Where did the last month go? :???: For various reasons I haven’t managed to keep the ‘training diary’ updated, so will no doubt have forgotten a few sessions here and there. Anyway, here’s an attempt to recap on some of what Mist has been up to…

4 April - Tracking, grassy field, Sviland
A couple of 100-150m trails in the grassy field with 2 articles each. Went fine, nothing particular to comment on. Mist still picks up fabric objects and stops at plastic/other objects but rarely picks them up. Something to work on….

5 April - Tracking, Arboret
Not able to train with others (the lice issue!), we had a family outing to the Arboret. Jon laid out a couple of short (<100m) trails with the main challenge being path-crossings. We waited just 20-30minutes before setting off. And it was as if there were no paths! Mist crossed both small woodland paths and a slightly wider gravel path without even checking out alternative trails along the paths (including one of mine, which was very recent). Yes!

9 April - Search square, Sviland

KristinT laid out 3 ‘corridor’ searches for Mist. The first two had a single object each and Mist saw Kristin go out, the last one had 2 objects and we waited 15minutes before going back and searching. All went well. At the moment, I reward Mist with a toy for picking up and starting towards me. She isn’t required to bring the object right to me. The idea is we’ll shape this gradually, and it seems to be working. She certainly comes in at quite a speed!

12 April - Tracking / Search square, Dale

Krissi laid a 200m (?) trail for Mist which crossed the main path up to Dalevatn, twice. It laid for a couple of hours. Despite becoming a little distracted in the young, thick trees about 10metres before the first crossing, and struggling again a few metres after, Mist seemed to tackle the crossings themselves without a problem. Certainly the second crossing was excellent - Krissi had walked down a steep bank to the path, and then at a 45degree angle down into the forest on the other side (it wasn’t possible to go straight across due to fallen trees/branches), and Mist followed it as if there was no path. Well done Mist :grin: And thanks Ronny for pushing Thomas in his pram while we trained :smile: .

In the afternoon, Krissi laid out a large ‘corridor’ for Mist to search - about 20m x 10-15m. We definitely made it too easy! She raced out, found the objects in no time and came in at top speed. Need to make things more difficult….

16 April - rundering, Sviland
3 weeks since the op, and both Mist and I were itching to get back to ‘real’ training! It was nice to meet up with everyone at Sviland and train rundering. Don’t remember many details, but I do remember that it went well. She barked without any help each time she found a body. And she even had her first ‘blindslag’ (loop without any body) - totally accidental but although she searched for some time, she didn’t find the Bjørn, so I just called her in and sent her the other side. She certainly didn’t seem to mind!

17-21st April - holiday with Marie & Sisco
Jon, Thomas and I went to Scotland for a long weekend and Mist went to Marie’s for a holiday with best friend Sisco! It’s lovely being able to go away knowing that she’ll be having a great time :smile: .

22 and 25? April - tracking, Vedafjell

Not sure about the dates but sometime around then, Jon laid two longer trails for Mist. We have mostly trained up to 200m previously, sometimes a little longer. We’ve increased the time to up to 2.5hours, so thought it was about time to increase the distance too. It’s also easier than increasing the time even more, as I can get Jon to lay a trail when he comes home from work, then follow it later once Thomas is in bed - giving us a ~2.5hour old trail.
500m one day and 750m the other. Both with 4 objects. The first one, Mist picked up the fabric objects, marked one plastic object and didn’t notice another. The second, she only found the first object which was plastic (!) and I think didn’t get any of the others because they were along the top of the ridge (leading up to the concrete building halfway up Vedafjell), and there was quite a strong wind, so I think she was tracking quite a few metres from the actual trail. Still, the extra length didn’t seem to bother her at all and she worked well the whole way.

26 April - search square, Sviland
Jon was running Siddisløp (10km race) in the afternoon, and I wasn’t 100% well, plus Mist was back on antibiotics as a tiny part of her scar was infected….. so I didn’t go to NRH training. Instead we had a family outing to Sviland (!) and set up 3 short trail searches. Mist chose the right direction each time. The first one she went right over to start with, but when I wouldn’t pay out any more line, she came back and turned at the right place. The other two, she ound straight away and set off in the right direction with no hesitation.

Sometime during April we also did some more search squares at Sviland on the grassy area. Still working with ‘corridors’ - i.e. the full 30m out, but 10-15m wide. Mist found and picked up both objects both times. I have a suspicion that she sometimes finds one, but continues to look for another in case it’s more exciting. Still need to work on interested in non-fabric objects. She does pick up plastic/leather/paper items, but not with the enthusiasm she has for fabric!

1
April
2008

Taking it easy after her operation

Yes, in theory at least, Mist is taking it easy this week after being spayed last Wednesday. Clearly, noone told Mist that she should feel groggy and tired for a few days, as 24 hours after the operation, she was shoving her football between my feet trying to get me to play, when she was supposed to only be outside to have a wee :roll: Almost a week later, and she’s struggling to stay calm in the house - fortunately her collection of Nylabones keeps her occupied at least a few hours each day - although they have to be taken away when Thomas is sleeping as she has a tendency to lob them around the room and ‘kill’ them which is very noisy if you’re trying to sleep downstairs (I know, I’ve been in bed when she’s started that game!).

We were given strict instructions to use the plastic collar for 10days whenever we can’t keep an eye on her. As Jon put it ‘it’s like putting a sack on a chicken’s head’ :lol: . For the first few days, whenever the collar was put on, Mist ‘froze’ where she was and refused to move, and looked very, very sad. Now she sits at the top of the stairs when Jon goes to work and howls until I get up :roll: .

Roll on another 10days when she can get back to normal exercise.

Don’t take pictures of me in this horrible thing

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The surgical wound is really neat - I’m impressed. This was taken the same day as the operation.

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25
March
2008

Home alone, wee beasties and NRH nannies…

Well, Easter was supposed to be a holiday - we had tickets to go to the UK for 5 days, staying with family and friends and competing (Jon) in the JK orienteering comp. But this little evil creature changed all that :evil: :sad:

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Lice!

Although she’d been treated, Mist was/is still contagious and so Marie couldn’t look after her as planned, and no kennels would have her (no surprise). So, Thomas, Mist and I stayed at home while Jon flew to England and caught up with various friends and ran his races.

Not looking forward to the prospect of an itchy, frustrated dog becoming even more frustrated and unsettled, I sent out a plea for help to some NRH friends for a little babysitting, so I could give Mist a decent walk each day. And they came up trumps :grin: I am very very grateful to Tone, Ghita and Krissi who were so kind as to look after Thomas for an hour or so on Thurs,Fri and Mon. It helped me keep my sanity, and Mist’s too! Seems Thomas had saved up one of his ‘madras specials’ for Tone - sorry :razz: :roll: , and I need to learn the song Krissi sang to him which promptly sent him to sleep. THANKYOU! :grin: Also thanks to Nina and Kristin who looked after Thomas while I trained with Mist on Saturday - I really appreciated it :smile:

Training on Saturday was a bonus - I’d gone along more for the social side, and given the gorgeous sunny cold weather, thought if nothing else I could go for a little walk. Anyway, Nina and Kristin offered to take Thomas off my hands so I chose to do a little rundering, with indication. Bjørn and Ghita were ‘bodies’. I wasn’t sure whether I was going to use cues or not, but Mist’s focus was so definitely in the right direction when we got ready for the first runout, that I sent her without… and it went fine. So, I didn’t use cues at all and all runouts went well. She was a bit overexcited to find Bjørn lying on the ground and got a bit carried away with jumping on him and trying to lick his face (we haven’t tried with bodies on the ground before, only standing and squatting), but for the next go, he asked her to bark before she jumped all over him, and by the third time, she barked without ‘attacking’ him first :lol: . I asked Ghita to use 2 tennis balls as Mist’s reward - Mist has not been good at bringing back any toy, for quite a while, so I’ve been using mainly tug toys as her reward. This works fine - she loves the game - but I’d like her to be able to play throw/fetch/swap with other toys too. As I suspected, Mist was more willing to bring a toy back near Ghita than she often is with me. So, will do more of this when the terrain suits - i.e. open enough that the ‘body’ can easily move around to pick up the ball that Mist has dropped a few metres away. Hopefully she’ll eventually be as good as she was when she was 3 months old!!

In total we had 8 runouts. One go Mist failed to find Bjørn, but we just took it as an ‘empty circuit’ (i.e. no ‘body’) and sent her out the other side…. well, that was the plan - she actually ran out of her own accord when she saw Ghita moving in the forest :smile: . On one ‘find’ Marshall, Hugo’s (8-month-old?)GSD, came to join us - they were rundering on the other path and we were a bit too close. Mist was not impressed at the intruder and was quite clear in her body language that he wasn’t welcome, but Marshall just bounded around trying to get her to play! It’s the first time I’ve seen Mist like that - she normally wants to play as much as the other dog. But maybe it was the fact she was ‘working’ - it was interesting to observe…she tried turning away and ‘freezing’ first, but that didn’t work, so she showed her teeth and growled at him and tried to chase him away from where her tennis ball had been (we’d actually removed it to avoid any arguing). Fortunately, Hugo came and dragged away the disappointed Marshall without any further issues.

It’s Mist’s turn babysitting

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15
March
2008

Rundering again after a long break

It’s months since we last trained rundering (10th November!), so I was quite unsure of how things would go today - rundering training at Vigreskogen.
As it turned out, Mist was on top form! After a quick walk with Krissi and Lara to get rid of at least some excess energy, we were first out in the open/’easy’ forest. Ritva and Ronny were ‘bodies’ and Sven Magnus kept us all under control from the track. I opted for a sound cue for the first run out. It seemed this was enough to remind Mist of what she was doing and on the 2nd and later goes, she was clearly focused out into the forest, and I sent her out without any further cues. I’d chosen to get her to indicate at the ‘body’, but without running back to ‘tell’ me. I’d also asked the ‘bodies’ to give Mist her bark command if she didn’t bark immediately. Overall, she needed ‘help’ (command) about 50% of the time, but given how long it is since we last trained rundering, I don’t see this as a problem at all. Much more important that she gets it right rather then being allowed to wander off, or start digging… It was clear, though, in the morning session, that she tired quickly and so I chose to finish after 4 runs.

After lunch, we had the same setup - run out, bark, reward. Henning and Ritva were ‘bodies’. Henning asked whether he should get her to bark again during play, by stopping the game and being passive. This was something I’d thought of doing before, but hadn’t crossed my mind today. It worked really well - really getting Mist excited, and it gives her more and more opportunities to practise barking at the ‘body’. Must remember to do the same next time. This second session also went well. I sent Mist out without any cue each time (6x in total) and she ran straight out every time :grin: . On the last run out, I asked Henning to run away from her when she found him - to really get her excited. It worked well - she sprang along after him and she barked enthusiastically to get him to play with her. All in all a really good day… and the sun shined for most of it too :grin: :grin:

12
March
2008

Progress at last!

Well, after months of incredibly slow, at times backwards, progress with training a retrieve…… we have finally got somewhere. Incredible what you can achieve when you choose a training method that suits your dog!! I’d been trying to teach Mist to retrieve in the way I learnt with Thule (who also took a very long time…. she clearly thought it was boring…. and can’t say I blame her :wink: ) - teach her to hold an item for 1 second, then 2 seconds then 5, 10, etc. etc. Then teach her to hold it sitting at my side, then get her to take it from my hand while standing at my side and sit down….. this is where we got stuck! And it took months to get that far. She could hold an item I gave her as long as I wanted, but didn’t ‘offer’ anything more. If I indicated to her with my hand that I wanted her to sit, she dropped the item and sat!

So, in frustration, I decided to ’shape’ the retrieve instead. A few evenings ago, I took 4 items (a sock, a knotted piece of fabric, a small plastic child’s toy and a piece of hosepipe) and laid them on the floor in the hall while Mist watched through the glass door. Then I opened the door and waited to see what she would do. She went straight over to the objects, tail wagging. I clicked/treated for sniffing, then picking up an item, and within 5minutes, she had progressed to picking up each object and holding it still in her mouth while looking at me - this earned her a good game of tug! Not bad for a first try :grin: . Next evening, I did the same again and within the same time, she had brought each item towards me a few steps. The third session, she was bringing each item to my feet!

Ok, so I need to work on the ‘delivery’ and ensure she is good about not chewing them, but her enthusiasm for this new ‘game’ is such a relief after seeing her become less and less excited about holding things I gave to her in my ‘old’ method.

Not being too patient at the moment (I’m just so happy to be back to training again!)…. today, while we were out for a walk, I thought I’d try a little test. I got Mist to sit on the gravel road (Vedafjell), while I tramped out an area about 6m x 4m, showed her that I was holding a glove and then dropped it at the far side. I went back to her and said ‘ok’. She shot out, clearly searching for something. Whether she really knew what she was searching for, I don’t know :???: but anyway, it wasn’t long before she found the glove……. AND BROUGHT IT BACK TO ME :grin: :grin: I rewarded her when she was about a metre from me, as I was fairly certain she would otherwise drop it before getting to me (I can work on that last bit). We did the same thing again with the glove and again, she searched, found it, and brought it back to me! After a short walk, I set up the same exercise although with a ~10m x 5m area and using a cardboard tube from a firework that I’d found on the way and put in my pocket. Even though the item was totally ‘new’ for Mist, it had my scent on, and she searched as before, found it, looked up as if to say ‘hmmm, is this really what I was supposed to find’ and then picked it up and brought me it.

So, I’ve found a fun way to train Feltsøk (article search) and retrieve. I’ve even noticed that she’ll bring a toy back to somewhere near me too…. something she hasn’t done for months ( :roll: )…. so I’m feeling quite pleased with myself (and Mist, of course!) :grin:

9
March
2008

Tracking in the sheep fields

Jon laid out a short (100m?) trail for me in the sheep fields below Ragnhildsnuten, with 2 objects (a bike reflector and a sock). It lay for about 1 1/2hours. I wanted to practice tracking on short grass, especially where there had been sheep as an added challenge. She started well, turning onto the trail in the right place (Jon had drawn a map for me to show me where it was). The ground was waterlogged, making it extra difficult in places. But, Mist tracked fine, only going ‘off’ in really wet areas, but I was really pleased when she found and picked up both objects (without encouragement) and even brought them in my direction, although not right to me (with encouragement).

8
March
2008

Hiding in a tent and some indication practice

An exercise had been arranged at Alsvik for the B-qualified handlers and I was one of the ‘bodies’. Nina and I were shown on a map where we were to hide and off we went with warm clothes, flasks, food, and a tent to stay dry in. 2 others were hiding elsewhere in the area (separately). We found the area we were to hide in, set up the tent and made ourselves comfortable. Just as Nina was starting to pour her coffee, we heard something nearby. Seconds later, paws were scratching at the tent as Clara tried to find her way in. Kristin followed soon, and so we were ‘found’. We were supposed to act hypothermic so that Kristin would have to treat us before getting the ok from HQ to continue searching. So, once Clara disappeared to tell Kristin she’d found someone, we threw ourselves out of the tent to lie on the ground shivering :lol: Kristin took good care of us and offered us chocolate and nuts - which were very welcome…thanks :grin: (not sure we were supposed to eat quite so much of them :wink: ).

This quick find meant that Nina and I had some time to train our own dogs. We agreed to have a quick turn each of indication training - Nina/Bina with bringkobbel, Mist/me with bark indication. I wanted to practice her running back and forth. I let her see Nina go out and then sent her to ‘find’ her. Her initial barking was excellent - keen and continuous. I called her back to me and asked her to bark, but she was too excited and ran back to Nina. But, getting no result there, she came back to me again and barked, and so I sent her back to Nina, she barked again (without prompting) and was rewarded. We repeated this 3 times. Once she tried to bark only once at me, but I insisted on more and although on her way back to Nina, she came back to me, barked a few more times and I let her go! I’m really pleased :smile: with the progress with this part of her indication training. Hopefully with a couple more sessions under her belt, I can get rid of the prompting for barking at me….. watch this space!