P-A-P-A…who came home last night, even though he left yesterday morning with packed bags and surveying equipment.
See, there was no need to stress-out, be a little hellion most of the day, and refuse to settle down once you were home. He came home, just like I told you he would.
*Sorry for the poor picture quality: low light and taken with an iPhone.
Pongo spent this past weekend fully immersed in Nose Work.
On Saturday he took his Birch Odor Recognition Test (ORT), which is a test he must pass in order to compete in any Nose Work trial. The ORT is a basic box drill where there are 12 boxes lined up in two rows of 6. The dog is on-leash and walks up and down the rows sniffing for the Birch scent that is hidden in one of the boxes. Pongo is a pro at this drill and we have practiced it many times both in class and at home; nonetheless, I was still very nervous when we entered the training facility to take our test. As soon as we entered, Pongo knew what he was there to do and targeted the hide within 24 seconds. I gave a huge sigh of relief because that was all he needed to do to pass his Birch ORT. Steve came in with us to video his success but unbeknownst (well, known to us but forgotten-I know, I should have read the rules again the night before the ORT) we were not allowed to videotape or photograph the ORT. Steve immediately erased the video but it was not clear if that faux pas had disqualified us from the ORT. We had to wait a good 45 minutes while the entirety of our group finished the ORT before learning that Pongo had in fact passed! Never, ever again will we go into a competition without first reviewing the rules–lesson learned!
Since I don’t have any footage of his ORT, here’s a picture of what a box drill looks like and his scorebook with the most glorious letter: P.
Then Sunday, we spent 4 hours in an Advanced Nose Work seminar with Jean Richardson, who is a Certified Nose Work Instructor (CNWI) from Oregon; she is also the one who officiated our Odor Recognition Test on Saturday. We were able to run our dogs for three different types of scenarios and hides: 3 low hides, 3 high hides, and a paint can drill. The guest instructor used both Birch and Anise for her hides. Anise is one of the three target odors that dogs can search for. What surprised us the most, and really made us proud was Pongo has never smelled nor searched for Anise before and the two rounds that had Anise in them, he found it as his very first find. We now know we can move on to Anise and can hopefully do the Anise ORT in the Spring. Pongo loves Nose Work. It’s his job. What we love about Nose Work is that he has fun while doing it and is completely tuckered out afterwards.
Everyday, Pongo has been sitting at the front window waiting for hours for Papa’s truck to pull into the driveway; disappointed when it doesn’t. He has really been missing Steve this week so Reid, Pongo, and I drove out to Big Lake last night to spend some time with Papa. Our moping, miserable Cattle Dog turned into a bouncing, yelping, fiend who could barely contain himself when he saw Papa walk out of the rental house!
Steve and I decided to take the dogs out for a short hike after dinner. We chose somewhere where we knew we could let the dogs run free, where no one else was going to be around. We drove to a quiet, deserted area Steve had recently surveyed and walked into the woods. Both Pongo and Reid love being in the woods: running free, jumping over logs (that would be Pongo, not Reid), and exploring all the smells that come with hiking in a new place. It was refreshing to be in the woods, after a long work week, spending time with Steve and watching the dogs enjoy themselves.
As we were hiking along, Pongo began frantically running around in wide, sweeping circles with his nose to the ground. I commented, “He’s on the trail of something,” with images of cute little squirrels foraging in the area going through my mind. We called Pongo to us. He came but caught the scent again, and was off. Then, what was suppose to be a peaceful evening hike turned one of my biggest fears into reality: Pongo + Porcupine = DISASTER!
I look over to where Pongo is sprinting around and see a porcupine, ever so slowly attempting to climb a Spruce tree as Pongo is closing in on his prey. Steve is running toward the tree with the climbing porcupine, in hopes to intercept Pongo. Steve is on one side of the tree, Pongo is on the other, the porcupine is in the middle c-l-i-m-b-i-n-g at turtle speed. Pongo jumps up to grab the porcupine. He misses. He gives one last adrenaline-fed superman jump as the porcupine continues to work its way up the tree. As this whole scene plays out before my eyes, I hear myself screaming, “Pongo, leave it!” And when that doesn’t work, “PONGO, NOOOOOOO!!!!!” knowing well enough that when Pongo is in prey-drive, there is no stopping him: listening ears are off and wild dingo mode is on.
Steve is finally able to grab Pongo, leash him up, and carry him to a safe area away from the porcupine. We check him over not knowing if he was able to make contact with the porcupine. No quills protruding from his face–check. No quills on his underside–check. Then we see it…a paw scattered with porcupine quills.
Steve immediately pulls out his Leatherman and gets to work.
I’m more than sure it hurt like hell having those quills pulled out but Pongo was a trooper–keeping one eye on Steve’s Leatherman and one eye on the porcupine sitting in the tree 50 feet away. He sat quietly as Steve pulled out each quill, for the most part giving an occasional flapping of the paw or yelp. And all I could think of to myself, as Steve pulled each quill out is…It could have been worse.
Sadly, Summer is quickly coming to an end. We are moving into our split-second Fall and then onto our never-ending Winter. We decided to take advantage of the long weekend by packing up the trailer and the dogs, and head down to Discovery Campground in Captain Cook State Park.
It was a weekend full of…
Pull out the luggage and Reid starts pacing. Pack a bag or two and Pongo’s whole mood swings from Mr. Happy Go Lucky to Mr. Melancholy. Pongo doesn’t do well when his pack isn’t together. He becomes a whole lot more barky and turns into a super pill: testing, testing, testing. Basically, driving Mama crazy.
To Pongo’s dismay, Steve spent most of last week working out in the field at Port MacKenzie. He came home on Saturday night and you could visibly see the relief in Pongo’s eyes. He plopped himself down between Steve and myself happy as a clam. Unfortunately, Steve began packing again last night to head back out into the field this week, and Pongo knew exactly what that meant: Papa’s leaving again.
I now have one depressed dog on my hands.
Our No Rock Left Behind campaign is complete! It only took most of the summer for us to finally have a Pongo-Proofed yard. Every scrumptious bit of river rock that Pongo so enjoys to partake in has been removed. Every 6 foot board of jumpable fence has been replaced with a hopefully-there’s-no-way-he-can-get-his-body-over-that 7 foot cedar board. All that is left are 16×16 pavers, which there is no way he can wrap his mouth around these, and some pea gravel that he appears to have no interest in ingesting, for the doggie potty area. We are enjoying “Fort Buchanan” and the sense of relief that Pongo is safe when out in the yard.
Before: Delicious Rock Walkway
After: 16×16 Pavers
Before: 6 Foot Catapult Himself Over Fence
After: 7 Foot Fence With New Sod For More Play Area
After: Doggie Potty Area
I have to include some garden shots to remind us all of the glorious summer we’ve had this year!
It’s been one week since we returned from our road trip down the ALCAN. We drove from Anchorage to Seattle to Eugene, OR to Seattle and then back to Anchorage. Over 6,000 miles total and all in 15 1/2 days! It was a whirlwind of a trip but a fun way to visit family and spend some time exploring.
Pongo came along with us and did surprising well for being in the car so long. He made himself comfortable in the backseat of the truck and entertained himself for hours looking and most importantly sniffing out the window.
I can’t believe for all the time we spent in the car, and the time we had on our hands while driving, we took very few pictures?!? Some of the wildlife we saw on our way down and back up included: bears (over 10 black bears and maybe 1 grizzly-hard to tell she was pretty mangy looking), bison herds, elk, caribou, moose, a wolverine, rabbits, coyotes, deer, and Stone Goats.
While in Oregon, it was hot…a lot hotter than us Alaskans are used to: 85+ degrees. I loved it but both Steve and Pongo were melting. In order to cool off, Pongo enjoyed some time romping in rivers and in the ocean on the Oregon coast.
We were anxious to get home, once we started back to Alaska but did take some time to stop and enjoy the scenery, stretch our legs, and let the ol’ behinds recuperate.
Pongo earned a few bonus points for creativity this morning. Instead of chewing on his bone like a good boy while Papa and Mama ate breakfast, Pongo decided he was going to bury his bone. That would have been fine except the location of choice was not the best choice he could have made…
It was definitely hard to keep a straight face knowing all he wanted to do was bury his bone!
“Are you ready?” the rather intimidating Anchorage Police officer, who was judging our first search asked me.
“Yes. Pongo, sit. Pongo, watch. Good boy. Now, GO FIND.” Pongo takes off knowing his job at hand. He lingers at a pile of games on a shelf. “Could that be the hide?” I ask myself but Pongo is off pulling me around the room. His sniffing increases as he sticks his nose between the refrigerator and the wall. He moves around the refrigerator definitely on the birch scent. Pongo sticks his nose under the hot-water base board heater and not so gracefully, pulls it off it’s hinge. He’s found the hide.
“Alert!” I call pointing to the heater that Pongo had just destroyed.
The APD officer then completely threw me for a loop by asking, “Where?” Well…right here where Pongo’s nose is I wanted to say but I point to where Pongo first caught the scent at the heater, which was behind the heater and toward the floor.
“Ahhh…down in there.” I reply with a questioning tone in my voice. Please let this be it, please let me have identified it correctly as I only have a 4-6″ margin of error.
“Yes.”
My heart leaves my throat with that answer. I was very fortunate though because the hide was actually in the heater, sitting on the coils. I lucked out that I pointed within the allotted distance. We made it through our first search, three more to go.
This is our first K9-Nose Work Trial and while it was a mock trial, I had the nerves of a real competition. The trial was held out in Palmer at Spring Creek Farm. It was a gorgeous setting to spend the day working, sitting in the sun, and meeting others who are interested in the same sport.
We knew this was going to be a challenge for Pongo. Not so much the nose work part but the part where he has to be around 30 other dogs. We came prepared with the clicker, a bag full of treats, and a reminder to Pongo that we are here to work. Our latest strategy for handling his reactivity is to encourage Pongo to look at another dog (at a safe, comfortable distance). When Pongo looks at a dog: click, Pongo orients back to us: treat. He caught on rather quickly. Even though he had to wear a red bandana, which communicated to others that he needs a little more space than other dogs, he only had 3 reactions to other dogs. Two of them were my fault because I didn’t give him enough space; the last one, I guess the other dog looked at him funny and he went off. It was a lot of work to keep his reactivity to a minimum but it was great training for all of us.
I tell myself, “Don’t cry, Jen. Just don’t cry.” as the tears well up in my eyes. I felt like I had just failed Pongo. Pongo caught the scent during our second search: the vehicle search. He was showing a lot of interest in the wheel well so I called “alert.” It was too early. I was about 8″ off from the hide. The judge was very kind in showing Pongo where it was so I could reward him at the source but that still didn’t take the sting out of my mistake. Steve comes over to comfort me, which made the tears behind the dam rise. I don’t do well when I make mistakes in competitions. I tend to beat myself up and go over and over what I should have done, could have done differently. We still had two more searches to complete so I needed to suck it up and put my game face back on.
After lunch, we moved on to our final two searches: exterior and container. The exterior search is the most daunting to me because the hide, which is one Q-Tip end dipped in birch scent could be anywhere in the search area: under rocks, in the grass, in some totally obscure place. You have to trust your dog. I could tell right away when Pongo was given the “Go Find” cue, he was not mentally in the game. His tail wasn’t wagging like it usually does when he’s searching and he seemed highly distracted. It had been a long day already and a hard day for Pongo trying to keep it together. He was tired. I encouraged Pongo to “go find” a couple of times and followed his cues as he made his way around the perimeter of the search area. He stopped, interestedly sniffed a rock, and pawed at it. “Alert!” I call. Once again…too soon. My heart sinks as I realize I had completely misread his signals again. As I walk from the search area, I overhear someone say, “It looked like that could have been it.” I agree but there’s no comfort in those words because I had disappointed not just myself but I felt like I had let Steve and Pongo down because of my lack of patience and my nerves.
Our last search was the container search. I knew Pongo had this one in the bag. His alert signals are very obvious: smash the box. He rocked the container search with a time of 17.9 seconds. It was a positive way to end our day!
I am so very proud of Pongo for all of his hard work both working the scents and, most importantly, remaining calm around 30 dogs while on leash. I feel like we made a couple steps forward in our quest to help Pongo overcome his leash reactivity. Plus, I learned what I need to do at our September 17th Odor Recognition Test (ORT): stay calm, be patient, and work the whole search area before alerting. Pongo has always come back to a hide if he passed it. I need to trust him and his nose!
It’s been a long hiatus since I’ve last blogged. My parents and Uncle came to visit us and we’ve been going, going, going full speed ahead for the past two weeks. This task-master sure kept us busy…
(I know that’s not a word but it’s all I could come up with for putting in wood stairs).
We painted the laundry room, the gym, the hallway and I never want to see a paint brush again!
Uncle Art left on Sunday; Mom and Dad left last night. Today is my first day of “down time” and I am having a hard time settling back into a routine and relaxing. I need to heed my own advice that I give my students when they are not able to calm themselves or relax: be a S.T.A.R.
The Pongo Experience 