Nikon updates

This morning Nikon passed his birch ORT in Battle Creek. It was kind of a crazy morning. I had to be at the airport in GR at 5:30 to ship out a puppy I’ve been raising and sold for patrol and detection to a handler near Miami. We got back home and it was still dark (and frigid!) to find we were locked out. By the time we removed a window and I somersaulted into the kitchen, it was time to leave for Battle Creek. It was even colder in BC! I don’t think more than 20 degrees, windy, and snowing and we had to wait outside for almost two hours before our turn. I did the practice boxes before my turn and Nikon indicated the correct box. He’s trained quite far beyond the ORT, my main concern is whether he would go into Nosework mode in a building that is used for dog-daycare and where he did a ton of protection training. Once we were called in Nikon went directly to the boxes and began searching. I’m probably more pleased about this than the actual pass. In the mock ORT he sniffed around the edge of the room before he really started searching. Nikon paused on the hot box his first time going around the boxes and I felt confident it was the box, but wanted a better indication before rewarding him so I let him keep checking and then when he went back and gave his usual indication, I called the alert. Almost 2 hours of waiting in sub-freezing windchill for 46 official seconds of work! No pics or video, I brought a camera and was going to ask a volunteer to help me but they said you cannot share pics or video publicly. There were LOTS of GSDs there, most I didn’t know but Laura was there. I’m assuming she did fine since she’s Laura 😉

Last weekend we went to Wilmington, Ohio for a flyball national qualifier. We have a pretty small team so based on recent progress Nikon got to run on the actual qualifying team. We not only qualified but we won our division at the tournament and Nikon got another title, TF-III. The venue for this event was a large hotel connected to a conference center and they were also having an antique clock show, so we were constantly stopped by older gentlemen who wanted to meet Nikon and talk GSDs. I noticed a few people came back to watch him specifically.

A few weeks back I bred Nikon for the first time with a working line female (DDR). My friend and I are really excited about this litter. The top picks were already spoken for before the breeding took place (pick male is mine). The show/working cross can be somewhat controversial but we thought long and hard about this and believe the dogs to be very complementary. I’ve met the bitch before and her owner has seen Nikon multiple times. It’s not a matter of one dog making up for something the other dog lacks (this is NOT a show = conformation; working = drive combination, we’re actually using Nikon to maintain and enhance the drive!), but we believe the cross will help express what we already like about *both* dogs, without the genetic bottleneck of severe line-breeding. The bitch also has the additional health tests I like to see. The resulting progeny will have pedigrees that can go back to more typey show lines or working line. I intend to keep a male so that I can observe for myself how Nikon produces and hope he will be my next competition dog. If the pregnancy takes, I should have my puppy at the end of July. I get to name all the puppies and be listed as co-breeder, so we can enter Bred By classes at the UKC shows.

Some recent pics….

Nikon warming up in the parking lot at flyball

Nikon and I after winning our division in flyball

Cold, dreary, “spring” Schutzhund training resumes

Recent head shot

Me and my shadow

Putting up with Aslan