Worn Out... Day 22

Finals are over, and we are wasting no time starting our winter break! We got up bright and early to make it to the Open/Utility class this morning. Oh boy did Rugby work hard!

One of the things we worked on was doing scent articles with a couple delicious and smelly Zuke's Power bars as a distraction. You can see them in the first picture.

He kept waiting for me to tell him he didn't have to finish so he could avoid those treats completely. Better not to make a decision at all than to make the wrong one, I suppose. He sniffed half of them and then look at me like, "It's not here I already checked." Then he would go back to work checking the same half of them and look at me again. "It's NOT HERE.... I checked!" He did prevail after some time. What a good distraction those treats were! We need to practice that more!

After a nice long morning of training all the dogs went out to romp in the yard, including Rugby. What I didn't realize was that while we were training, it was warming up to a toasty 45* outside! The previously frozen ground was now much softer and what was left of the snow was melting quick!

Needless to say, when I called Rugby back in to take our red and green picture he was GROSS! Muddy feet and dirt spread all throughout his coat. He had not only been running with the unusually large number of Labs we had today but had found something good to roll in too. We borrowed Ellie's comb and tried to clean his face up a little. You can still see some dirt streaks in his beard though.

We borrowed Sugar, the lab for our photo today. We figured with his nice working retrieve and a whopping 84lbs to work with, he met the requirements for the pictures!

Thanks for carrying Rugby around, Sugar!