This weekend we tried something new! Jenny’s Mom was going to be in town with her Border Terrier, Mungo, to attend an Earthdog test in Northern Colorado. Earthdog is like the terrier version of the hunting tests we do…basically tests for instinct. In Earthdog, your terrier has to enter into a tunnel, do some turns and find a box protecting a rat. Then they have to alert once they find the rat. It was pretty fun watching the terriers do their thing!
They were also offering a new-ish game for all breeds called Barn Hunt. In Barn Hunt, the course is all above ground, and the rats are hidden in these little houses in a pen filled with straw and hay bales. The dog has to go in and find the rat in the allotted time. To make it trickier, there are some houses that are empty and some that are filled with rat litter. This means your dog can’t just find the house, they also need to indicate to you the correct house with the live rat.
We’ve heard about this game, but never had an opportunity to check it out until now. Since the girls are still training towards their MH (Karma & Halo) & SH (Halo) titles, we didn’t think we should encourage any rat hunting behaviors. Indy, however, is retired so we thought we’d enter both he and Schmav and see if either took a liking to it.
The first thing we tried was instinct. In this game there are 3 houses out in the open, you can run this to see how your dog reacts to each house (empty, litter, and rat) and learn what their tell is. Schmav was up first. As soon as Jenny released him from the starting area, he went to lift his leg on a corner of the hay bale! Luckily, Jenny caught him before and damage took place, but sheesh! Schmav just doesn’t want a job! Indy, however, was a totally different story. He LOVED it. While you wait your turn, they keep you in a blind so that you can’t see where the rats are being hidden. Indy was SCREAMING in the blind. Then on the walk from the blind to the pen, he was air scenting like crazy.
Jenny released him from the start line and he made a bee line for the middle tube. Jenny stood there for several second to see if he wanted to check out the other two tubes, but he was locked on, so Jenny called, “Rat!” And the judge said, “Congratulations!” Indy had just earned his RATI and did it with the fastest time for all heights: 9.33 seconds, with the next closest dog at 21.24!
For the Novice class, we scratched Schmav, but let Indy go again. This time the houses are hidden in the hay bales. In Novice there is one rat hidden somewhere on course. Your dog is also required to do a tunnel, and climb on top of a hay bale, and all before the time runs out! Jenny thought Indy would NEVER do the tunnel, but he did it with no hesitation! The climb was also easy to get out of the way. And our little Master Hunter found that rat and gave Jenny a super clear indication that it was the rat tube…he lightly flags his tail and gets this really serious look about him. Interestingly enough, it’s totally different than the point he does in the bird field! Indy’s time was good enough for 3rd place too! 1 leg down and 2 more to go! Hopefully, another trial will pop up soon, it was SO NICE to see Indy so excited about having a fun job to do 🙂
Indy in instinct locked on to the middle tube, and then coming around the corner to do the tunnel!