On Saturday, we all crossed the bridge and the dogs had a go at the Danish den. For Liina, this was her first encounter with the fox. It seems that all the dogs took to the fox a lot better than the Swedish badger! Liina did so well for her first time and had no issues moving through the tunnels and was a natural “barker”. The trainer said he was very impressed and if this would have been a test, he would have graded her a high second prize. Good job little one! Baxter is more cautious and needs more training, but he also did decent work, moved well through the den, but needs a bit more drive on the fox.

Freddie was, as ever, the star. We had 2 foxes for training that day, a calm fox (which Liina and Baxter were trained on) and a tough fox. Well, the fox and Freddie were egging each other on and barking (Foxes don’t really bark, but well…) at each other and going quite mad. Denmark is one of the only countries where the normal test consists of an open den and Freddie got to try that. He came out of the den with some scratches and a small bite on the nose, but he did excellent work and was extremely angry that he couldn’t go back in and howled in the car for the remainder of the practice. Our trainer for the day thought he as excellent and was definitely 1st prize work and well within reach of champion points (in Denmark 67-75 points is Champion level). We will train one more time and see if he backs off a bit more and learned to respect the fox while still putting on a lot of pressure. If this goes well, we will try him in a test or two this autumn.

freddie italy 2012

 

For Information about the den set up, etc… http://dgk.dk/brugsprover (in Danish)