Barn Hunt Trial

Lync in yesterdays Trial

Lync and I were in a Barn Hunt Trial yesterday.  This was his first attempt at the Open level. There are 5 tubes, 2 with rats, 2 with litter and one empty.  Lync needed to find the 2 rats, do a climb and a tunnel.

In Trial 1 I was the reason for our NQ.  Lync alerted on a tube and I knew it wasn't a rat as the previous blind had a rat in the same spot.  Lync wouldn't leave it alone and I didn't know that I could say leave it and try to call him off so I called it.  I was really bummed to find out I could have called him off of it.  I do not have the luxury of training classes here so I learn as I go.

In Trial 2 it was Lync's fault we NQ'd.  I could not get him off of a tube that again I knew did not have a rat in it.  He kept pawing it and the tube was about to fall off of the hay bale so I had to grab it which caused us to fail.  The judge said I had no choice as the safety of the rat is number 1 and even though I knew there was no rat I still had to treat it as if there was one
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I decided to pull from todays trial.  I don't want Lync alerting on every tube he finds and I feel that he is doing just that.  I am disappointed.  I really hoped to get at least 1 Q this weekend.  It is hard to pay entries and be done in a minute!

This summer a few of us are getting together, buying some hay and tubes and are going to do training, this way I can correct him for a wrong tube and get him really thinking before he alerts .
There is a trial coming up in Red Deer that I might go to if Brad has the weekend off so he can watch Kort and Ash.

I have decided I am going to try Ash at it.  I will need to teach him how to tunnel as he has never seen one, we don't do anything like agility so he has no clue. I think he will make a good ratter and it will be fun to have both dogs to trial.  I hopefully wont have to worry about him lifting his leg now that he is neutered , at least I hope not!