Following Turkey Day, Scout and I ventured into new territory; our very first Summit Trial. Folks that have competed at this level know, that “This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around”. The search areas are giganto, the hides placed in a variety of hard to locate locations, and each team will be challenged in a variety of different ways, depending on the dog and the handler.
On the day of the trial, Scout jumped down from the bed at 5 am (always a bad sign) and proceeded to vomit onto the carpet of our hotel room. The room was dark, I didn’t know where she was, didn’t know where the light was, and didn’t know where the vomit was. When I got the light on, she looked at me with a pitiful gaze and I wondered if we would be able to go forward. I was especially worried when….well…let’s just say her bowels were not happy.
Dogs being dogs they can bounce back from these kinds of things, but I watched her closely before we started the trial to make sure she could manage at least one search. She was a little better, so I gave it go.
At the start line I knew it was going to be a long day, because she was not her best. She came off the start line in slow motion and I thought I brought out the wrong dog! The unfortunate thing is that this search area included a giant parking lot, the size of a football field, with cars, a school bus, a skate ramp, trailers, tents, well, you get the idea, it required some get up and go to get around.
So, she wandered around the search area and when she finally indicated on what she thought was something that remotely smelled like odor, she alerted and we promptly got our first “NO” from the judge. Our very first Summit, our very first search and our very first call went down in flames. Now she was confused. Whatzup no cookie? She wandered around looking dejected, but we had to get through the search area! After what seemed like an eternity, she alerted on a hide, we got a “Yes”. Now I’m thinking we’re back in business, but no, we get another no! So sad. I made myself feel better by saying at least I’m not starting after the first search with negative points! Small silver lining.
She had decent searches in the afternoon, but still the little red dog was not rocking the house party jam. I felt like I was listening to the Megan Trainor song while we searched because despite finding a fair number of hides, we were also piling up the “no, to the no, to the no, no, no!”
During our evening walk Scout was looking like she was back in business, so I decided to give it another go the next day, and I’m glad we did.
On day 2 Scout bounced back to almost her normal search dog self. We found hides and got a few no’s, but this time it was sort of normal fair. I felt like we were a team again. We didn’t knock it out of the park, but we had some fun, discovered different challenges, and learned where there were holes in our training. We finished the day finding all the hides and getting through all the searches without one false alert (i.e. NO!). It was a relief and a reminder of just how fantastic the little red dog can be.
We ended the trial in the middle of the pack and was just a little more than a second away from a placement in one of the searches. I was happy with how she/we worked. Obviously, we have much to learn and work on, but in 4 short years we’ve come a long way and both of us have enjoyed the ride. As Arnold says “we’ll be back”!
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