Solms/AZP

I spent an enjoyable and exhausting weekend helping (gunner, bird boy, gofer) at the Northeast NADKC Solms/AZP test. Solms is a test for young dogs (done in the fall after a spring Derby); the Alterszuchprüng is for older dogs. The same test is run – AZP dogs are judged to a higher standard. It was a good learning experience for me – reading the rules gives you a sense of what’s going on, but working the test really drives home just how important retrieving is.

Saturday was overcast for most of the day as Hanna came up the coast towards us. A good thing – even though it wasn’t really hot (high 70’s, maybe low 80’s) the humidity was so high that your body couldn’t dump any heat. One dog doing the rabbit track found the rabbit, lay down next to it to pant and recover for 5 minutes, then picked the bunny up and returned to the handler. I don’t know whether she got dinged for it, but if she were my dog, I would not have begrudged her the lie-down.

Sunday saw all the ponds full to overflowing in the wake of Hanna’s 3+ inches of rain overnight. Cool, dry and delightful – half as many dogs to test – a walk in the park.

Rather than my usual slide show, I’m just going to post a few (mostly off-topic) favorites; the whole set is here.

Heron rookery where we did the duck search. A funny contrast – we were a mile or so from a drag strip and every few minutes you could hear the cars staging and then running. Not as loud as our occasional gunfire, but plenty startling if you were woolgathering.