11 months ago my just-barely-six-month-old Cocker Spaniel Muggs got his TD at Coyote Creek near San Jose, California, defending me from a dead tree masquerading as an upright seal guarding the glove. This year we got into a TDX test at the same venue, but in a different field. We were hopeful it wouldn’t have as many “animal” distractions.
In a winter plagued with rain from numerous Pineapple Expresses, the day was partly sunny, pretty warm and minimal wind. Muggs got the scent at the start flag and took off down the first leg, made a turn, checked out the cross tracks, made another turn, found an article and ended up under a tree with torn up ground: one of the park’s many infamous feral hog wallows. He searched a while and did a bit of rolling (thank goodness dogs can wear coats or his hair would have been disgusting) and finally worked his way out toward a dirt road.
The track turned and paralleled the road a few feet in. As we were working our way down the track, two pedestrians with small dogs on Flexis approached on the pathway. Muggs is a dog who has to talk to dogs he doesn’t know, so I got him close to me and waited while the dogs ran around at the end of their leashes, perilously close to the track and Muggs. I found out later that folks in the gallery talked to the owners, who said their dogs hated other dogs and that one had been on Prozac. Lovely. Fortunately they were agreeable to not make their return trip on the track while Muggs was working.
After leaving the dogs behind, we’d only gone a short distance when he indicated a tennis ball on the track. I’ve never seen a toy used as an article but I certainly wasn’t going to leave it there, just in case. However, another traditional article was a few yards beyond.
Muggs then made a turn and took me over a puddled bridge (no big deal to a dog who has been tracking in standing water in Oregon all winter...) and into a grassy dead end. I knew there had to be a turn there but couldn’t get him to recross the road. Finally he got me close enough that I could encourage him to circle in the grass on the other side and pick up the track, which at that point was paralleling yet another roadway.
So, he barreled down the track, and I saw him sniffing something that looked like the glove, but before I could get there, two horses with riders came along the roadway. With even bigger “dogs” present, of course he forgot the job at hand and stopped to talk to them too. But unlike the “seal” on his TD track, the horses had the decency to move. Once he was sure they’d been chased away, Muggs returned to the glove so I could pick it up and wave it. TDX!
Use your back button to sniff out a new story