Weekend at "Camp"

Every July I get to enjoy a long weekend of water play at the lake at Sandy Overton and Jim Smith's place in Port Orchard, WA. The last two years, we've shared our weekend fun with Kathy Simmons and Kathleen Jose and their spouses. This weekend was as enjoyable as anticipated with a litter of 7-week old pups to visit with, beautiful weather, warm water, excellent food and good friends.

Stoker made excellent progress on her Courier exercises. We worked on a "go boat" cue and retrieving an item from someone on another boat, as well as sending to the marker and a secondary target. Stoker really enjoys the send to the marker and past more in the water than on land. We don't have the time and resources to make getting her Courier title this year a reasonable goal, but starting to introduce some of these tasks will make next summer's training even easier.

Puppy Ecko finally did a "big girl" swim for the first time. She's been enjoying bounding and splashing in her flashy orange preserver and has even swum a few strokes here and there. This weekend I finally got in the water with her with some treats and she came zipping in right after me like she had been doing it all her life. She did several 25 or so foot retrieves each day, swam to the marker and back with me and recalled from shore to the boat. She loves to train and is going to be a blast to work with.

Chili came along to see where she was at with all her water skills. We practiced a few exercises from each of the levels each day. We practiced the buoy ball drop every day, since that had fallen apart a bit last fall. Chili is such a joy to work with at the water - super motivated and biddable. On the final day we were there she did one of her "recreational swims" and spent about 20 minutes just cruising around in the lake enjoying the water as several of us watched from the dock. I think Chili may have spoiled me for all future PWDs when it comes to water work.

It was great to see how all the other dogs (Cha-Cha, Jazz, Kota, Sabrina and Tramper) had progressed since I saw them last summer and what a great rapport they all have with their handlers. Jim's new little spitfire Galley (the same Galley that went on our trip to the Montana dog shows) is going to be an excellent water dog and is already certified to enter a tracking test at under a year of age. Wow!