4:00 AM start heading to Omro, Wisconsin.
I drove to where her club was training and did some Protection training with her husband Chris Becher.
Here’s some pics of Tia doing protection that day at OG Bierstadt in Wisconsin:
Tia is a strong bitch…lol I couldn’t hold her during the protection. My friend Renee held her. She never once tried to bite the elbow of the sleeve with Chris as she does with Diamond. So after that, I drove to Minna’s kennel (she owns a grooming and kennel facility). It’s a very nice facility. We put Capone and Tia in two of the kennels and I feed them for the night. I picked them up early in the morning so they could do a training session with Chris.
Monday, I had a session with Chris in the morning where we thought maybe that Capone is not ready to do his breed survey (ZTP) because he’s a little afraid of the stick hits. He just has to get used to them. You can only try for the ZTP twice and then it looks bad if you fail it. I decided to pull him from doing it and not take the chance. He looked great during obedience. Off leash heeling was awesome. Chris said he should pass his BH. Tia was a little different, it was possible if she stayed with me on the off-leash heeling. So a pretty good training session.
Tuesday morning at 4:00 am, we embarked on our 30+ hour drive to Washington for the Nationals. It was two ladies, and 4 dogs in a minivan driving across the country. Sounds like a good premise for a sequel to Thelma and Louise, LOL.
We stopped and saw “the faces” aka Mount Rushmore:
We made it to right outside Battleground, Washington on Wednesday night. We woke up on Thursday morning and drove into Battleground and straight to practical training on the field. Both Tia and Capone did good on the field and I was pretty confident that we would get our BH’s. Friday there was training and then lunch after. After that, we drove up to the rainforest, which was nice. I chose not to hike the rainforest, just a gut feeling that I wouldn’t last so well. So I stayed at the entrance, walked my dogs and rested in the car. It was 4 hours away from Battleground, Washington. Then we traveled another hour to get to Forks, Washington. Yep, that’s right folks, the one the only Forks, Washington from the Twilight Saga.
Forks, WA 
South Dakota 
Nothingness In Montana
Washington Beach on the way to Rain Forest.
We finally got back to Battleground, Washington around midnight.
So on to Saturday, which was trial day.
Tia was doing good until she decided she had to poop you can see in the video I’m about to post when I start to lose her is when she is searching for a place to go. Totally my fault, I should’ve pottied her longer and made sure she peed and pooped before going on. Like I said in the beginning you definitely learn with each new trial experience and this was the lesson I learned. She decided to poop at the very end of the last exercise. But here is video that my friend Darlyne took of Tia during her BH.
Followed by some pictures:
Capone had a heavy fixation on the demo dog that checked in with him. From the picture you can see that I am completely positioned the wrong way and didn’t help matters at all. Again a learning experience. I excused myself from the ring at the end because I did not have Capone’s attention and he had just peed on the field. I just ended the humiliation. It was my fault again not making sure he was all peed out. Again a learning experience. Here’s the video.
And the picture I was talking about with my bad positioning.
Overall, I learned a lot from the trial.
Sunday I did a seminar with Tia…with the helper from the trial Thomas Benearnas, we did all three phases Tracking, Obedience and protection. Here are some pics from that.
Tia did great in tracking, learned a little in obedience and she got a good work out in protection. Super proud of her.
After the seminar we headed back to Wisconsin for a day then drove straight to Winnebago, Illinois for 2018 Boxer Sieger Show, EWWBK Club Show, and ZTP Test. That will be my next post. Happy Training!
Ellasha
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