Norbert does Earthdog (pic heavy)

This morning we as a family headed over to Canby and a paintball place to let Norbert experience the terrier sport of Earthdog the local Dachsund Club was putting on for people. $25 for an hour, one on one help and six out of eight stations.

Here's Norbert getting to see the rat in the cage. The cage is then moved and he's supposed to follow it. He did but after a few times, he's like - is that it? The lady commented that the 'smart' dogs are the hardest to do these with. Um, yeah. Okay.

From there we moved on to follow a rat track along the ditch. Find the three tubes along the way. Two of them empty (but stuff inside like rat bedding) and one with a rat inside. We found all those:

Leeloo was along also. She ended up having the best seat and the best viewing - from William's jacket:

Next up was tunnel introduction. They had wooden three sided tunnels that the dogs could practice going through. They were pretty short, unless you're a tiny puppy or a dachsund. Norbert was less than thrilled with the idea of these tunnels. This from a dog who had fun in puppy agility going through the chute?! So we moved on to the short wood tunnels underground. This was a two person job and the cameraman (AKA Brandon) had to change jobs and help with this process. With some persuasion to enter, he zipped across and out - some nudging and cheese/dried liver were involved with that. (So no pics here with these two.) He did very well with the little mini-tunnel with the rat in the end (of course he found it above ground first, little snot.)

They had a bunch of cardboard boxes piled up with a rat in another tube (all of these other rats by the way other than the store bought one in the cage were wild.) There was even supposed to be a rat trail to it. He found the trail, found the previous dog's p-mail and said - "yeah, there's a rat in there. what? you want me to go in there? don' think so"

With one last area that we could go to, the Junior/Senior course - opening and three 45 degree turns to get to the rat with a rat trail laid in, all under ground of course, with a rat at the end. He found the entrance to the tunnel then went around the area and found where the rat was  - all above ground again. Tried to get him to go through the tunnel and he got to the first turn and said "don' think so" again and backed back out. 

All this 'rat stuff' was hard work, as evidenced by the tongue hanging out. He has an incredibly long tongue too.

There was cheese involved with this picture of absolute attention:

Norbert says he doesn't feel like an 'earthdog' right now, he's more of an 'urbandog' with a rat kill already to his credit. He's willing to give it a go if there's another one like this.

William and Leeloo hanging out in the chair waiting for us to finish up, then her running to come join back up with us:

Leeloo still wasn't too thrilled with the car ride on the way over, but did much better on the way home. It was a long hour with lot to see/smell/hear with all the dogs and people, so she was tired out. Leeloo enjoyed the sunny weather and showed more interest in playing in the backyard this afternoon. She's terrorized the little blackberry starts that 'were' growing as well as some Hazelnut starts (the birds bring them over the fence and crack them in the maple tree, we get starts from the shells that Nessa missed foraging through the winter) and some grass taller than her. She also tried carrying around some sticks and did a pretty good 'shake-kill' with one branch almost as long as her. Its funny to watch her play bounces, that are kind of like little twisty circles. Confidence is growing and making some leaps, will have to watch that none are from the furniture or the bed!

ETA: Missed the Spinning Bee today and found out that because of Mother's day there won't be one in May. Looks like June will be the next one, if we're home. We have hopes of using the stepparents cabin up by Steven's Pass for that week. We'd like to hang out by the Foss Creek, take walks in the woods and go into Leavenworth.