Checking the Bilberry Sprigs

You just won't believe what I did today! I was a schooldog! But it wasn't me and mum who were the students. We helped teaching!

So we headed out to the dog club on a Saturday afternoon, which isn't the usual time for a class. We were early, so we went walkies in the forest. I was pleased to see that the bilberry sprigs are coming along nicely. My favourite summer snack, so it's important.

Then we went to class. A group of ten or so people, all apparently in training to be dog instructors, watched our every move, mine especially. It was a kind of obstacle course, where I had to do all sorts of things. And they took notes and awarded points I think.

It was things like a dog meet, walking into a group of strangers and deciding if I wanted to say hello, following mum in complicated patterns, following a stranger, picking a favourite toy from a selection, trying to get sausage pieces out of closed boxes, canvassing a square for sausage pieces while a person tried all she could to distract me. And an "environment" course with uneven, slippery and moving surfaces. That one was super easy for me, being a parkour poodle. And lastly, guess what they had done? They had pushed sausage pieces into the bark of an old oak tree to see if I could find them all! The answer was Yes!!

Mum got lots of feedback afterwards. She told me she was super proud of me, and I got another piece of my pig snout from England as a reward!