Nearly a Vet
Book Week in Australia is a huge event on the under 12s calendar! Each year children from around the country dress up as their favourite literary characters. This year Lillian dressed as 'Juliet Nearly a Vet' and Fleur was an obliging prop.
Whilst it was another show-free weekend, we found plenty to fill it. The humans of the house hit the ski slopes yesterday, but unfortunately the local ski fields are National Park, so no dogs allowed :-( It was International Dog Day though. Have a look who featured in the local newspaper (image 14).
Today was their day. We started with Week Four of Obedience training. Both Benni and Fleur shocked us with how well they did on 'stay' and 'come'. This was their first real off-lead test and they both did really well. They also got to have a starring moment...who do you call on when you need to demonstrate the "difficult" command of 'stand'? The show dogs of course. This is the one command they know really well!
From obedience training we drove to The Pines for a herding clinic. Fleur went first and was initially a bit distracted. So we gave her a break and gave Benni ago. This was Benni's first time on stock. He had a bit of fun 'chasing' some sheep, but he kept running back to me and wanting me to go chase them with him...I think he missed the point of having a dog! He did, however, succeed in firing Fleur up. Whatever Benni can do, Fleur can do better. She came back in much more focussed and did really well. The clinic trainers commented that she has a lot of potential in the herding arena. The icing on the cake was the snow falling heavily while we worked - an authentic experience for the lappies. Fingers crossed we will give the Herding Instinct Certificate a go next week. But for now we have two very tuckered pooches:
