Mercy Training in Nosework
11-16-25

All the previous nosework training photos have been taken when my friend, Denise, and I trained together.  Denise went to visit her siblings in mid-July, only to have her sister become seriously ill.  Denise is still in Minnesota caring for her sister.  I continued training a day a week, though it’s sure not much fun by myself.

One of our teenaged club members, Sera, told me at our October trial that she continued to train her dog but was intimidated by the thought of competing.  I invited her to come train with me, and I’d help her practice how she would handle her dog in competition and develop a routine that would give her confidence to enter next year’s trials.  I took photos of her and her dog working with my Canon camera.  She takes photos of my dogs with her cell phone.

We set two separate search areas.  All the dogs do search 1, then we move to search 2.  You can usually tell the end of one search if you see some ball retrieving.  The start of the young dogs’ second turn is indicated by practicing an indication on a box as a “warm up,” putting on the harness and/or going through the two plastic cones that in a trial are used to start timing the search.  My competition dogs – like Mercy – don’t need the warm-up, so often you’ll see a retrieve photo separating their sessions – or me putting their harness on by the start cones for the 2nd search.

See a fuller explanation of this year’s training and links to all the dogs’ training photos
See photos of the Craftco Metalworks storage yard where we train
See An Illustrated Explanation of Nosework for Those Unfamiliar with It
to Mercy’s page