Forward March (written 3/25/25)

Just a quick doggy update. The month of March, always a time of transition, did indeed come in like the proverbial lion for me. It’s first roar resounded with a sickening blow when Valor, my three-year-old livestock guardian dog, had to be euthanized. I may fill in some further details in another post, but the short version is that she had begun to be very aggressive, both with familiar humans, and with the goats she was supposed to be guarding. Not a good situation. Unacceptable and scary behavior, and the safest course of action was to put her down.

March also came in like a lion weatherwise. Within the first several days of the month, we were walloped with a mini blizzard. Only about an inch of snow actually fell, but thanks to winds gusting up to at least sixty miles per hour, we experienced whiteout conditions and six to eight inch snowdrifts across my driveway.

Hopefully that storm ended what was honestly the hardest and nastiest winter I have ever encountered in Kansas. It has not been fun times.

However, now that the worst of the weather is behind us, I’ve been trying extra hard to get the dogs out an training again. Tassie is back to working in barn hunt, and is now competing at the senior level of the sport. It’s an advanced class, a real step up from the open class where she bottomed out for the last year or so, and I’m patting us both on the back for the progress. It has been a very long time since I’ve had a dog in an advanced class of any kind, in any sport.

I also made the commitment, as part of my goals for 2025, to get Tassie out and tracking again this year. Starting in late February, she and I, and my mom, who is our faithful track layer, have been out in the fields every week, letting Tassie exercise both that incredible nose and that incredible brain of hers. It’s been fun. It’s been good.

Maybe the most decisive step forward I’ve made, though, has been in the obedience ring. As much as I enjoy all my other doggy endeavors – barn hunt, tracking, tricks, walking the roads, and working with dogs to protect my livestock – my first and lasting love in the world of canine training has always been precision obedience. With all the traumas and tragedies of last year, it has been at least twelve months since my dogs and I have set foot in an obedience ring, even to just practice. It’s been even longer than that since we have entered the practice obedience trials hosted by the Kansas City dog club. We used to be there every month.

So, this past Wednesday marked a bit of a milestone for me. Or, to be more accurate, for me and for Scotch and Cinder. For the first time in a whole year, a year darkened by death and disease and loss and heartbreak, we went back to the ring at the local dog training facility, and we started training in obedience again.

Both dogs did a fabulous job, despite the fact that neither one of them had worked in this building before. It felt so good, so right, to get our feet back on those rubber mats, and to have our minds in the same zone, and to have our hearts beat as a single unit.

We have a long way to go. Obedience, tracking, barn hunt, and now, the added challenge of finding reliable, proven guardian dogs to place out with the goats. But we are moving in the right direction. We’re moving forward.

Reyna working with Tassie on tracking