Soaked to the bone, Emma.

Emma had a "short" TDX type track on Wednesday. It was across from the cackling sandhill cranes, which caused her some pause at her start. It also turned out to be in the adjoining field where Blast and I ran into the deer leg last week. The rain began about the same time Emma started her track, and it never let up.

And guess what?! I believe this was another part of the deer from last week. This one was about 6' to the side of the track, and Emma never noticed it. I was actually hoping she would, as Tascha didn't think Emma would leave a bone on the track, after hearing Blasts' story. It would have been interesting to see what Emma did.

Emma is just entering the top of a very deep ditch. At this time I told Tascha she could help her across the bottom if "need be". It was very mucky and had water in the bottom of the ditch, and very weedy all the way. When I laid this track, it was difficult climbing up the far side into the next field.

Almost to the top on the far side. I love obstacles like this and so do the dogs! Both fields were in lovely condition.

I felt badly for Emma. She was just so wet, and had begun to shivver a bit. The temperature was much cooler than we've had for so long, and it was a pretty tough track for her..almost all of it was in fairly short grass, but by this time it was just pouring. She's a tough little dog.

Back to Birds!!!

Not the greatest shot, but put on as perspective to size. The hawks have arrived as they follow the blue jays in early fall. What a racket it is here! People think we live in the "quiet countryside"..ha.ha.ha. We have krestels hunting the jays as well, as I always know when they are here due to the screaming jays. I swear they play "cat and mouse" or "bird and hawk" with them.

This is a very photogenic merlin who is just biding his time, it seems, waiting for a careless jay.

I took these pictures from the bedroom window, and he obviously saw me there a number of times. It didn't seem to bother him at all, I wish the kestrel would slow down a little as he just zooms through and so far, too fast to get a picture.

Sandhill Cranes in Tracking Fields

The VERY noisy sandhill cranes are back, not sure why they are more "grey" right now, and earlier in the year they were quite "brown"....perhaps feed, or type, I really don't know.

Although not trying to scare them off, as soon as I got out of the truck, they began to take flight...however, I did want to try and get pictures of this......

We don't see a lot of them, but I've heard where the flocks are huge, everyone dislikes them intently. They are loud, they croak and cackle and some people describe the noise they make like chalk on a blackboard. I find them very interesting, if odd...

This is just a small part of the flock. There were about 20. I think the two on the right are immature birds, and they seem to be more of the brownish colour. They are in a field where grain had been grown and not really in one of the tracking fields we were using.

New Title! Carmspack Blast TD

Blast earns his Tracking Dog Title in Sudbury on Sunday, September 6th. He was 16 months of age on the 4th. Nice fields and very wet conditions from the 2 days previous. And COLD!!! After such a terribly long hot spell, it was quite a shock. I'm wearing a winter jacket.

He had just dug down into a clump of clover and found his glove and then just stood over it until I came up. I think he wondered why it was buried in the clover clump!

After I held it up to show the judge, we played tug a little with it...and then I had to try and keep it from him.....ha! You cannot play too much with it after the dog indicates at a trial, and the last thing you want to do is to lose it!

We stopped on the way home and took a few pictures, as it was raining too hard to take them with the judge at the trial presentations. This was unfortunate, as it's nice to have the presentation photo with the judge.

I think we took about 20 pictures to finally get a couple where he wasn't jumping around. He really wanted his glove - you normally get to keep the final article if you pass the test, and he knew I was trying to hide it at that time to keep it in one piece. He gave me heart failure a few times, as he kept turning around to the judges and tracklayer wanting to say 'hi'. But he did a good job and now has his first tracking title.