Honey Goodness

After a long break due to illness (hers) and busy schedules (mine), Reyna and I started back with SAR training this summer. Some of you may recall that we took a few AKC Tracking classes in the late spring, but that just didn’t work out for us. Reyna is too much of a SAR girl to be given a scent article and then follow a trail to a glove some 500 yards away when the guy who owns the glove is standing right beside her. One of the Tracking trainers told me that Reyna is a sight hound, because she doesn’t follow a track with her nose to the ground. Um, yeah, three things about that… 1 – She very often follows scents with her nose nearly to the ground. 2 – She can still smell something even if her nose is a foot and a half above it. 3 – She’s freaking spectacular at wind scenting. Not to say she doesn’t have frighteningly intense focus if she sees something that really catches her attention. I think he just didn’t appreciate the fact that, on the rare occasions she did decide to bother going for the glove, she’d take the shortest distance instead of following a precise path. So, anyway, back to SAR we went.

We volunteered for the early session, starting at 7:00am. Initially, this was just because it was very slightly cooler at 7:00 than at 8:00, but then it just became nice to get the training done and be back home in time for a mid-morning nap. Of course, a 7:00 session generally means we have to be out the door no later than 6:15. Depending on the location, we may have to leave by 6:00 to get there right on time. Our first training day, I made the mistake of trying to get up early enough to eat breakfast before we left. I don’t like getting up at 5:00 if I don’t absolutely have to. So then I started looking for breakfast options that travelled well. It took me a couple of weeks, but I finally settled on graham crackers. I initially thought I’d eat about half a pack on the way to SAR and save the other half for the next class. Unfortunately, even a Ziploc bag doesn’t keep graham crackers all that fresh for an entire week. So then I was a bit disgruntled about wasting crackers, but didn’t find anything else to take their place. Then one morning on the way to SAR, Reyna solved my problem. I wasn’t paying attention to Reyna (actually watching the road, for some silly reason), and she stole the cracker out of my hand. Turns out Reyna loves her some honey graham crackers. From then on, we’d eat an entire pack each morning. I’d get a cracker, then she’d get a cracker. Then she would drool on my arm while I ate a cracker. Then she’d lunge and bark at a sign/tree/barrel/parked car, and then she’d come back and eat a cracker. This worked really well for us until the last two sessions. Surprisingly enough, Reyna does not like sharing her crackers with Duncan. I know, I was shocked by that, too. This coming Sunday will be our last SAR session – hopefully Reyna’s hips will let her get back to it next fall – and its just me and Reyna. I have one pack of graham crackers left, and we’re going to savor every last one of them.