Ah Tuesday....

As many of my other dog handling friends on the team will tell you, it never fails that when we want to train on a Tuesday night the weather is ALWAYS crappy, this past Tuesday was no exception.  The day started off with rain and freezing rain, and a lot of the roads had ice on them.  As the day wore on though it switched to mostly rain, and was supposed to stop by the evening.

Brenda and I had previously arranged on Sunday that we were going to meet Tuesday night for training, and I had pulled Mike Eck in on it as well.  Brenda got out of work late, but Mike and I still went out to train and met up at about 6pm. 

While it had stopped raining the fog had moved in with a vengeance.  After parking my car I moved up into the field to do some recall work with Storm only to turn around and not be able to see my car.  Visibility was about 10 feet, but the temperature was warm enough that I was only wearing a sweatshirt. 

We started off with Storm, Mike hid in the woods and I moved further out into the field.  When I told Storm to "Go Find Him", Storm immediately took off for the woods.  I was only barely able to see him moving from the little light that hangs from his collar.  When I reached the field, Storm was moving back and forth across the edge as if waiting for me to catch up.  I started on the North side moving about 5 feet from the northern edge.  Storm was ranging well into the woods and back out to me.  At some point he got Mikes scent and found him, I honestly couldn't tell through the fog.  Mike called me and told me that Storm had found him, I called Storm back to me, and he came, after he sat looking at me I told him to "Show Me", at which time he returned back to Mike.  I honestly still could not see Mike through the fog, so I recalled Storm again.  After his return and my command I was able to follow him into Mike and told Mike to give Storm his reward. 

We ran molly next with a similar problem, and Molly found me just fine.  Since the fog was so bad the next problem that we did for Storm was just to hide out in the field.  Mike went out and hid somewhere in the fog, while I waited with Storm til he was ready.  Upon release, Storm ranged very well to the left and right of me as we worked our way across the field.  Again, at some point Storm caught Mikes scent and was able to find him.  It took 3 times before Storm returned to me on his recall, but I was then able to recall him again in 1 shot the second time and I was able to follow him in.