Canyonlands Canine Association Winter Show-November 11-13th, 2022
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Canyonlands Canine Association
Lottie entered into a full weekend of UKC conformation shows. She showed once on Friday and twice on Saturday and Sunday. Lottie took Best of Class, Best of Sex, and Best of Breed all five shows. On Saturday Mrs. Michelle Blackowl-Chavez placed Lottie 4th in group which allows her to be one step closer to earning her UKC championship title. Overall, Lottie has earned enough points and two of the three needed wins in order to fulfill the title requirements.
We took a friends showing advice and change our handling style a slight bit. It's common to see handlers looking at their dog the entire time and in return their dog learns to look at them. At the advice of a friend and longtime exhibitor, she advised we try to not look at each other and instead focus on our path of travel more. When we practiced this prior to the show we saw a noticeable difference, and when we did this during the show Lottie was able to show her true gait and movement without the restriction of her head and neck being focused up and to the right on me. When you study the movement of dogs and how this little details affects their body you begin to see that they will start to drop that left shoulder and tense up their right side more to help compensate for the turning of the head and neck.
Urban Deer Recovery-October 27th, 2022
If there is one thing about this recovery that I learned it's that we need to trust our dogs more when putting them to work. We received a call about a deer that had been shot and although they didn't see exactly where it was hit, it was suspected to be a gut shot given that the deer had lost a chunk of intestine while jumping over a barbed wire fence. After the hunter shared the details, the location, and pictures of the evidence they found I knew this deer would expire, but it was just a matter of when. We didn't want to push it that evening so instead we waited until first thing in the morning. After receiving written permission from the private land owner to cross the fence and pursue the deer we got to work just about 8am. Lottie immediately expressed interest in the instances and dug her nose right into the ground. This round of tracking was fun to watch as I took a step back and just let her work her nose. There were a couple of times that she seemed to realize she was off the trail and so I did help guide her back to the last place she had scent. She quickly picked right back up on the trail and let us over a barbed wire fence two more times before going into some thicker brush to where the deer had finally rested. She was definitely proud of herself for locating the deer, but didn't want to get too close to it after her initial praise. I'm extremely proud of her! This was a solo track and nearly .75 of a mile. She worked hard, persisted even when she lost the trail and took direction really well. I can't wait to go out again for another track with her.
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