17
May
2008
This morning we met up with the others at Sviland and after a very leisurely and sociable start, we were 2nd out. After Wednesday’s ’speed of light rundering’, I decided to use the main track at Sviland as the midline in the hope that the terrain would prevent Mist from running at a totally uncontrollable speed.
The first two loops were messy - she seemed to be on the right line out to Johannes on the right, but then found something of interest (trail?) and didn’t go quite far enough out. When she eventually came in towards us on the midline, I called her, but although looking for a while as if she was coming to me, she suddenly turned and off she went on the other side looking for Aud. Sadly, after waiting some time to see if she’d find Aud, I called her, apparently just as she was on her way to Aud (i.e. she’d got scent of her and was following it up). Arrgh 
Anyway, I decided to have a sound cue from Johannes next to ensure she found him, and to allow us to actually train what I’d intended! So, this time, out she went, worked for a while and eventually I heard the long-awaited barking. Yes! 
In short, the session went well, after the first two loops were out of the way (note - should consider using cues for the first loop to keep Mist’s head on straight at the beginning and avoid her running madly around the forest). In the easier terrain (left hand side) Aud held on to Mist while I went in, and I called her in from the track and managed to direct her where I wanted it out into the terrain the other side. On the right-hand side, where the vegetation is thicker, I got Johannes to come closer to the track with me and hold Mist while I went in, then called her. On later loops Johannes stayed out at 50m and Ola held Mist 10-15m out in the terrain and let her go when I called her, and she passed just as intended. On one ‘pass’ Mist came in from Aud and onto the track some 30to40m+ back from where I was waiting to send her out, but by running out into the terrain with her as she came to me, managed to send her straight out as intended 
.
In summary, ‘passing’ much better than Wednesday. Barking needed inducing, and she needed help to keep barking especially when she heard me coming - this doesn’t concern me since today I specifically wanted to concentrate on passing. Will make sure we spend some more time on just indication training to get the spontaneous barking again.
In the afternoon, we (J,T,me + Mist) drove into Stavanger so that Mist and I could take part in the 17th May parade.
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I didn’t know how Mist would cope with the big event - thousands of people, loads of noise - airhorns, drums, brass bands, random hands reaching out of the crowds to stroke, other dogs (some unfamiliar), warm and sunny…… But she did me proud I let her go to people (who wanted to stroke her) lining the sides of the route and she didn’t jump up once! She even managed to sit, lie down, walk to heel, bark on command. We were 6 in total (KristinM, Ghita, Svein Magnus, Tone, Trond and me) and all the dogs behaved extremely well and were very popular. Lots of people commented how good they were - although I did hear one child ask “Are those people blind?” 
. True to form, Isi managed to take a hotdog sausage out of a small girl’s hand as she walked past, much to the hilarity of everyone around, apart from the very shocked little girl herself But all in all, good publicity for NRH….. and the sun shone
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Do you think Mist was tired this evening?
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Posted: Miscellaneous / Diverse
15
May
2008
Training was at Vigreskogen Wednesday evening and for once, I was completely decided on what I would train, and how. I wanted to start training ‘passing’… i.e. while rundering, when Mist comes in from a loop on one side, she should cross the mid-line right by me, allowing me to direct her where and in which direction I want her to go in next. I therefore decided I should minimise the ’search’ part and stick with barking just at the body (no shuttling) so that I could concentrate on the new part, ‘passing’.
It soon became clear, though, that my idea of making things easy by training in the ‘baby forest’ (mature, widely spaced trees with pine needles covering the ground) wasn’t necessarily the best plan. For starters, I parked the van face in, and left the door up (as I usually do)…. and so Mist got to watch Ola and Leo train first. She yelped, barked and howled in frustration that it wasn’t yet her turn. And when it was finally her turn, she had obviously wound herself up so much, it was like letting go of a balloon full of air without tying the knot
Focused out into the forest in the right direction, I thought Mist was concentrated and ready. Let her go, and…. zoom… off she shot like a rocket, straight out 50m (just as it should be)… and straight on (not as it should be ). Right past the body at full speed! There was no chance she’d notice anyone at that speed, unless she trod on them (and perhaps not even then!). Over to the left 50m or so, then back again, passing Kristin again and taking a tour of pretty much the whole baby forest. Eventually, after she’d let off some steam, I called her in and tried again. This time she found Kristin. She barked fine and Kristin kept her barking until I got there.
Then came the planned ‘passing’ part. Kristin would hold Mist and I’d go in to the mid-line and call Mist to me, then send her over to the next body (KaiErik) by taking a few steps with her as she crossed over the path, thereby showing her which direction to run out.
Well, the speed she came in at, there was no chance of taking any steps with her. I was almost scared of the blur that passed me, thinking she’d either completely deck me, or collide with something in the forest and do herself an injury. So, anyway, as she whizzed past (note to self - too much running with greyhound friend Sisco 
) I managed to mumble ‘runder’ and off she went out towards KaiErik. Fortunately, she was on the right line and I thought maybe it would be ok…. but no, she flew past KaiErik at top speed and took another tour of the forest before coming back towards me, at which point I was ready to bring her in and send her again. But at last moment, she turned and ran out again towards KaiErik, got some airscent and after a little work, found him.
Basically, the rest of the session continued in the same way. Flat out mad running all the way! Physically she could have gone on like that all night, it seemed. Her barking got worse as she became more mentally tired and hoped to shortcut the process by a quick bark and wait for me to turn up. But I stood still (instead of walking/running out towards the body) if she stopped barking, and the bodies encouraged her to bark, so she didn’t get away with it!
Not a complete disaster, since she did cross the midline relatively close to me, and in the right direction. But it was at least 50% luck, and there was very little ’steering’ on my part.
So, next time, I will be avoiding any ‘easy’ terrain with the intention to avoid this top-speed running in the hope that I might get a chance to direct her a little……….perhaps even say ‘Runder’ as she passes….
Posted: Rundering
11
May
2008
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 . 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 
. 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 . 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!
Posted: Miscellaneous / Diverse
11
May
2008
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 . 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.
Posted: Indication / Melding, Rundering
7
May
2008
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 .
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
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.
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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.
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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 . 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 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 . Even funnier was hearing Norwegians speaking English to each other, forgetting that they no longer needed to
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 . Don’t ask!
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
Posted: Indication / Melding, Airscenting / Overvær
7
May
2008
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 And thanks Ronny for pushing Thomas in his pram while we trained .
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 .
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!
Posted: Article search / Feltsøk, Tracking / Spor, Rundering
