What a GREAT day!

At the crack of dawn we all managed to pry ourselves from our bed and rise, gulp down breakfast and head out the door. We managed to get to Keilor without getting lost *once* which has to be a record for us!

Everyone was just being divided up into groups so there was enough room to work the dogs without overlapping eachother too much when we arrived. I didn't have tracking harnesses for Cade or Sierra and so one of the club members was kind enough to loan me her harness and tracking lead. (For anyone who hasn't seen tracking before, tracking leads are a lot longer than your average leash... like about 11 meters long and require a bit of getting used to in order not to tangle yourself and/or your dog up!)

We had an absolute blast and learned oddles courtesy of the Tracking Club of Victoria, which I am recently a member of and in particular Andrea Sciberras who helped me learn how to lay tracks and introduce the dogs. Now I am going to have to sew up some harnesses and leads for the dogs, get some tent pegs and hunt up some old socks for articles! How COOL is it to see the dogs start to get what we want them to do and follow a trail we can't percieve in the way they do!?! (Scent-wise, humans being utterly nose-blind compared to dogs!)

It was such a gorgeous sunny day and the park we were at was absolutely lovely, with cockatoos and lorikeets and rosellas flying overhead, plus big airplanes for Nic and Laurent to watch. (It was near the airport.) Nic took Laurent on little adventures while I did our tracks and in general was an absolute trooper, while Laurent was a little charmer the whole time. We also got to meet a number of the other club members and in particular were lucky enough to meet a herding judge who mentioned a herding test coming up (!) and another member who may be able to help us with our desire to get Sierra into Croyden, both of whom were super nice. WOOT!!! What an awesome day!!! Not to mention how nice it is to be around other doggy-people who really GET where I'm coming from, both with my obsession for training and working with my dogs and with how much I don't like living in the city! I think I'm going to be pinging off the ceiling and walls for awhile to come! To top things off, one of the photos Nic took of us herding is going to be in the ASCV newsletter! :-) How neat! He's really chuffed!