Nov 8-9, 2008

The Task Force had a training day in Philadelphia on Saturday.  Juno and I went Friday and stayed with one of the TF members and her 4 dogs, parrot, and cat.  The cat was the most worrisome for Juno.  She adjusted well to the dogs...

Juno went for a walk on the rubble first thing and had no issues.  I kept her on lead otherwise, because the Phil Fire Academy is right on the river - a big temptation - and there is deer poop everywhere.  Birds and squirrels abound.  Way too much temptation for Juno.  If she goes into the 'bird zone' she could end up miles away before she stopped.

Training was very successful.  She learned how to walk on cars and search for people in cars.  She searched well on the rubble.  She is still learning how to use her nose in this situation and still uses her eyes a lot, but I'm fine with her using all of her senses to find the victim.

In the bark barrel, the victim decided that she could bark longer than 5 or 6 barks and wouldn't reward her til she got to 25 barks!  I was about hysterical, but she hung right in there.  Unfortunately, she still doesn't know what  a bark barrel is.  I'll have to remedy that pretty soon.

On Sunday, she worked a few small problems at the fairgrounds during a WV K-9 training.  She had some problems working outdoors - too many interesting smells, but I forgot to take her out and get her used to the area first, so that is somewhat my problem.  She is so different from Rascal.  When a victim ran away from him, he would watch and follow her exact track.  Juno goes directly toward the victim, shortcutting turns.  Unfortunately, in this setting, the walls of the barn and stalls got in her way.  She put her nose on the ground and tracked slowly - over-running a track and searching back to the turn and back onto the track.  She has always tracked, but with her head up and moving fast.  So she is improving her skills and putting them to use in searching for people.

She finished with a building problem and did an excellent job.  She identified heavy scent quite a distance from the victim, but was persistent and methodical in her search for the source.

I'm starting to believe that she has a shot at this!!