A little late since this was Thursdays news...

Today was a big day in Storms fairly new life.  Somewhere along the line Storm got broken, so I took him to the vet today to get fixed.  Yes this is a bit of a joke, courtesy of my father but I took Storm to the vet today to get neutered.  I dropped Storm off, not at my usual vet. as they were too expensive for me for this.  I dropped Storm at Pleasant Valley Animal Hospital after picking up a coupon at the Humane Society for a low cost Spay/Neuter form.  They are located in Quakertown, although about 5 miles out of town to the east.  It was a nice long country drive through the woods, but man it was out there.  I dropped Storm off and went to work. 

I picked up a co-worker on the way who told me a horror story about a friend of his who took a dog to that same animal hospital and it died!  I was really upset for him telling me this, but I had already left Storm there, and had no time to really do anything about it, and he needed to be neutered.  I was filled with dread all day worrying about my puppy.  About 4:30 I got a call that his surgery was done and that he did fine, I can't tell you what a relief it was to get that phone call. 

I left work at 7:15 and drove like crazy to go pick up Storm.  I arrived there about 8 and picked him up.  Storm cost me an extra $24 because he was one pound over the 40 pound limit, unbelievable!  Storm seemed fine and is back to his normal rambunctious self. 

Six days later Storm is definitely back to his old self with no apparent ill effects or consequences.  He is bounding around the house fine, and as controlled as I can keep him.  Storm drove with me to a Search on Sunday, he got out of the car to socialize a bit, but he wasn't able to do much else.

Hooray for training!

So we had training yesterday at Nockamixon State Park.  Storm initially did a runaway to try and get a recall going but he just wouldn't seem to leave his subject.  Brenda decided to try and frustrate Storm to try and get a bark from him but he just wouldn't do it.  We ran all the dogs present through problems and Storm was especially funny, we encountered some mud and he decided that he didn't want to go in it so he took a longer route and walked around.  He managed to find his subject faster than Brenda or I could keep up and we told Dan to try and get him to bark as well, still no dice. 

Brenda and I talked about getting Storm to bark and we decided that I would train Storm to bark on command using his ball when I got home.

Needless to say that it didn't take long.  Probably about a half an hour of intermittent teasing with the ball,Storm will now bark on command when teased with the ball.  It will take a little more work before he just does it without the ball, but the ball is supposed to be his motivator anyways.

Saturday. A cold, but fun day.

I volunteered to help out Ranger Bacon at the Lackawanna State Park Winter Fest today with Storm.  My job was basically to tear apart my search pack to show and discuss with any interested parties what we carry around with us on and why.  While we didn't have quite the turn out that was expected, we did get approximately 30 or so people to come see the dogs, and I got to discuss the pack contents a little bit.

Storm took this opportunity to show off for the kids with his 6 month old enthusiasm and just made the find look easy.  That dog will do just about anything for his ball.  Vikki Coup told me that she was really impressed with his progress and considering the source that is high praise!

After returning home I found that the information and pledge pages are up for the Highmark Walk for a Healthy Community is up and I registered ASAP!

Make a pledge for my Walk for a Healthy Community

A lot has been happenning...

Seems that I am always apologizing for not writing here on my blog, well this will not be an exception.  Life has been really busy lately as I have returned back to work after being off for 5 weeks.  In addition, last week I was sick and in bed for 3 days with something horrible that I wouldn't wish on anyone. 

Sadly the training has been cut back a lot due to returning to work and my work hours changing, however, there have been three trainings that a few of us have attended that I have not written about, most recently was yesterday. 

Storm is still having issues with his recall, and we are trying to work hard on that.  Basically a recall is when the dog finds someone, he needs to come back to the handler and notify them that he has found someone.  Storm gets a reward from the person he finds in training and is so excited about getting it that he doesn't want to leave them.  It is quite a bit of training, and something that will require a bit of practice.  Right now Storm is more than capable of finding lost people with very little difficulty. and he approved it again on Saturday.

The two previous trainings we were also focused on recall, with similar results, mediocre.  I just need to work harder with him and get him motivated in some way to come back.