Today, my agility training club had our annual picnic at the lake. We talk about dogs, eat, and let the dogs run-a-muck. Like my hounds, I'm pretty food motivated, so I'm always happy to talk dogs over some lunch, but I'm not a big fan of the run-a-muck. There was a time when Travis used to catch other dogs. He is wonderful now, but when a bunch of dogs are running in all directions, he isn't quite sure what to do with himself. He doesn't really play and wrestle like the other dogs do. Katie never runs-a-muck. She works for food and that is it. She would stand there staring at me the whole time..... never giving in to being distracted by the chaos. Reagan.... don't know. The biggest concern is that Reagan could get distracted and stop listening to me. Being ignored is not something I want to practice. It happens everytime.... eventually you start to hear certain people calling their dog's name over and over and over again.... usually while the dog is running in another direction.
We arrived early. I wanted to take them hiking first, so they would get plenty of exercise. We found another turtle. Turtles are great because they just are not good for chasing. Other than one squirrel mishap, I have always been able to distract my guys from the fox, deer, and one mama possum with 3 babies on her back..... knock on wood.
When we got back to the lodge, a few other humans and their dogs had arrived. We went down to the lake for some swimming. Katie swam along the dock a few times for food. I introduced the idea to Travis and he seemed to like the idea of swimming for food as well. Reagan tried offering downs on the dock.
I put Travis and Katie back in the van and decided to let Reagan try running-a-muck with a couple of coonhounds, standard poodles, and American Eskimos. She played nice and stayed very attentive to me. She fetched her toy from the lake.... just chest high water.... while the other dogs ran around. At one point she took off running with other dogs in pursuit. This led her to finding some dead fish remains to roll in. My other greyhounds have never done much rolling in gross smells, but Reagan is all over it. That was good for me... time to go back to the van.
All in all we had a fun time.
