Elbereth - the nose

Today Elebereth has been tracking in the woods for the first time.  She has of course followed scent trails on her own initiative many times before, but this time we practised with Kjersti from Klikkerglede.com.

Kjersti started the first trail by dragging one of Elbereth's toys behind her. She went out of sight for a little while and then reappeared from another direction. When she came back to us, she showed Elbereth her empty hands - no toy - and Tom put Elbereth on the trail. She needed no instructions, put her nose to the ground and went ahead - a little to fast and then suddenly she had lost the trail and had to sniff around a few seconds before she was on it again. Tom was instructed to make sure she couldn't go so fast. She then sniffed her way to the toy, barely nodded her head at it and continued to track Kjersti's trail back to the starting point. Then it was my turn making a trail. No problems this time, except that she again didn't stop at the point we defined as the end of the trail. The toy didn't interest her, and when I left a little heap of food, she didn't care for that either. She just went on following my trail back to the start and it seemed that she had great fun.

Kjersti was impressed with Elbereth - that she figured out right ahead what she was excpected to do - and told us to go right ahead with longer trails the next time. We will, maybe already this evening. :-)

Elbereth and Kjersti
after the third trail was successfully completed.

Coughing and training

Elbereth was coughing enough on Friday evening that we decided to take her to the wet on Saturday morning. She would cough and vomit water all over the house. The vet examined her - she seemed fine to us except for the coughing - and said it probably was a virus. No medicine - just let her take it a little bit easy and keep an eye out for worsening symptoms. So, we stopped using her collar when walking her, we put on her harness instead, and took only a short stroll in the woods yesterday and a slightly longer one today. She seems to be coughing much less already, and we are confident she will be fine.

We are taking three private lessons with a dog trainer with emphasis on clicker training and tracking. The clicker training is fun. The first week we worked on teaching Elbereth to bite and paw at a cardboard box. :-) Now we work on getting her to offer the same behavior several times in a row. Last Friday we also learned how to teach her to follow a manmade trail on a lawn. We will be having our last lesson next Saturday and learn how to lay out a trail in the woods. Looking forward to it - I'm sure tracking is an activity both Elbereth and we will enjoy.

Our hike today took us to a sand quarry.

Elbereth was intriged by the gravel rolling down the slope.

Frost 1 and 2

Frost I

Frost is Elbereth's sweetheart. He is a German Shepherd who is only two weeks younger than her. They usually meet every Thursday evening at the area's dog club where we go for socializing and training now that Elbereth has completed her second class in "dog school" (we will not talk about her "grades" yet, she was the youngest in her class and we continue to work).

Frost and Elbereth are obviously very happy to see each other. When allowed to get together, they will mostly wrestle on the ground without making a sound. Last Thursday we all went together to Frost's home after obedience training. Frost is very lucky. He lives on a farm, with large fields surrounding the house and the woods with elk and deer at the edge of the fields. Elbereth and Frost ran happily chasing each other over the fields in the dark.

It is not easy to get good pictures of these two as
they move constantly. These are from September 5th.

Frost II
Yesterday was a beautiful day, the clear blue autumn sky a magnificent backdrop to the wonderful colors in the woods. Elbereth and I took a long hike along some of our favorite paths. The first touch of frost had put a thin crust of ice on the puddles along our way, and Elbereth was at first carefully exploring this hard water. She seemed a little puzzled, then startled as the ice crackled at her touch. Then she got bolder and stepped on it, only to be sceptic to the moving air bubbles under the ice. She had to growl and bark a little at them. In the end, she lifted herself up on her hind legs, better to be able to smash her front paws into the puddle and scatter the ice. Joy and happiness. Now I'm looking forward to her first experience with snow.

Forgot my camera yesterday. This is from Steinarvannene, October 1th

Vacation

It's fall, the weather is nice, the woods are wonderful and there will be no school nor work for either of us the coming week. Elbereth will get her share of hiking and playing.

A day of sun and fun

Instead of hiking in the woods today, Elbereth, Tom and I rode in the car for 30-40 minutes to reach a "dog field" near Sem Gjestegård in Asker. It's a fairly large fenced field that borders on Semsvannet (Sem lake) where dogs are allowed to run loose.

The weather turned beatiful after the foggy morning and we enjoyed running and playing dogs for more than two hours. Elbereth was thrilled. She hardly ever paused, but once in a while the dog pack ran down to the lake to drink and then she went in for a quick swim before entering the race again.
Dogs and owners came and went while we stayed there, and there seemed to be a majority of young dogs Elbereth's age or a few months older. It was perfect - we humans enjoyed it as much as the dogs. We will go back soon - maybe even give up our traditional Sunday hike tomorrow to go there again.

It was a grey, foggy morning...

The woman and the young dog left the sleeping house quietly. After 20 metres they encountered the oldest cat, who didn't budge when the dog went up to him. The dog realized there would be no hunt and went willingly with the woman towards the road with all the exciting smells.

The couple proceeded towards the forest and managed to pass all the houses without meeting a single moving car. The woman sighed with relief as they entered the woods. The dog was let loose and they started the climb towards higher ground.

Suddenly the woman became aware of a small black and white head appearing over a rock ahead. She spun around and realized that the dog hadn't seen anything yet. The leash was put on again and they proceeded towards the strange cat who was not happy to see the dog. As the cat ran, the dog tried to follow, but soon behaved well again and heeded the woman's commands. The woman sent a friendly thought to her husband and their dog trainer who had been working hard the last couple of weeks trying to get better manners into the young dog.

The rest of the walk was uneventful. The light was growing, but they didn't rest at the highest point to admire the view as they usually did. The pile of horse manure was passed without trouble this morning, it had obviously become to old to be tasty and the dog preferred a snack from the woman's hand instead. Back on the road it was still too early for people to be moving around in their cars, so the woman and the dog trained sitting and staying and then walking heel for a few steps before going indoors to eat breakfast and wake the rest of the family.

Weekend hiking

Elbereth proved to us earlier this week that she can't be trusted to run free when we go for a hike in the woods. She ran off to meet some other dogs and didn't heed our calling at all. One might wonder what she uses her big ears for - she's got very selective hearing, that's for sure. We've learned our lesson and now she has to pull a long line in the woods.

We've had two wonderful hikes this weekend and made some unsuccessful attempts at making her follow a track. At other times she is more than happy to put her nose to the ground and follow the scent of another dog long passing, but when one of her humans go into hiding, she runs around with her head held high sniffing the air - and of course she find us anyway.

On Saturday we climbed over rocky ground and dead branches,
around wet marshes and through bracken. We rested on this hill top.

Today we managed to get Sebastian to come along and we went for a long walk to this lovely lake.

The September sun warmed the air today and Elbereth enjoyed
the water and chased the dragonflies that hunted over the lake.

Hot dogs were definitely not the right Sunday snack for Elbereth - although we humans
enjoyed them. Here she makes sure one of the pieces she was given is well buried.