Yesterday we had the opportunity to do some dog sport demos at the Children's Festival. Our local kennel club had space at the Festival and invited a group of us to participate. It was a very long day, but it was lots of fun.
Maggie had a very fun day. She got to visit with many, many kids and enjoyed all the hugs and belly rubs. She adores kids and is very gentle with them. Maggie also helped out in the agility demos and the rally obedience demo.
Bosley had a fun day also. He, however, does not enjoy the attention of kids (he thinks they are a bit scary) but he got to demo in scent hurdle racing, agility and carting.
When I was asked to to a carting demo, I wanted to come up with something that was informative, as well as a bit entertaining. Carting is not really a spectator sport - people may say "wow, look at that dog pulling a cart" but to hold attention for a 15-20 minute demo is tough, especially with so many other activities going on. So . . .
. . . I made these:
A giant milk and cheese to pull in the cart.
I made a little skit (thanks to everyone who helped out) and then did some basic carting demonstrations. I think it went well - I had fun anyway :)
Here is our carting demo:
There were many other great demonstrations throughout the day including agility, scenthurdle, obedience, tricks, freestyle and disc. Here is a video montage of the demos that our group did.
Wow Bosley has some mad carting skills!! I'm going to say he has his open title. Was he a hitch and go dog?
ReplyDeleteThanks Erika :)
ReplyDeleteBosley took to the cart quite naturally, and he already had the foundation of backing up and left and right directionals before he got in the cart, which made things easier for me. The hardest thing to teach him when we started was that he couldn't sit down while in his harness or cart (that will fail you in a draft test here) and that he couldn't stop to pee on trees when we were carting :)
Here in Canada, we have 2 draft titles - Draft Dog and Draft Dog Excellent and 2 brace titles. Bosley earned his Draft Dog title last year and now we are working towards our Excellent title, but the last 6 months of snow has put a damper on our training. The most difficult thing (I think) in the Excellent test is that you must do an entire section of the test from behind the cart, so your dog must have very good verbal control as they cannot rely on your body language at all. There is also a 1km backpacking portion in the test with a pack loaded with 25 pounds. Bosley does not like to wear his backpack, so we are working on that as well.
So cool! I now live in a house with a big Berner (he's 7 months old and 90 pounds). My mom wants to work on carting with him so he can pull me around! After all I am the king of my castle!!!
ReplyDeletePedro
I loved your skit Kim!!
ReplyDeleteI LOVE that huge box of milk & cheese! I enjoyed watching the demos. They were very good!
ReplyDelete