Quax covering ground
Today, we took our 100-acre certification out in Rochester, NY. Same specs as my first 100-acre test. This particular search area had several significant terrain features: a 20-acre rolling field with some clusters of trees in it, some glacial outcroppings, pine plantation area, mowed hiking trails, and a marsh. I was a bit insecure because I was so disciplined with my using my compass but the features were so substantial that I didn’t need to use it once for the entire search; which took 2 hours and 30 minutes. We found the first subject in 20 minutes…. boy, that makes you feel good early in the game. He was tucked on the side of a glacial outcropping and Quax picked up some lofting scent from about 200 feet away and it took us about 10 minutes to figure it out. The second subject the dog got wind of just as we cleared the field and were heading around the perimeter of the pine plantation but it was just a little head-lift. I didn’t follow up on it and I continued down the hiking trails, which were surrounded by heavy dense brush. We got to the far corner and Quax had another head-lift…. I followed him up and he chased down a hiker that was a bit startled to have a German Shepherd chasing him, so Quax got an additional reward. Rita and Kathryn were worried that Quax and I were going to pass the second subject because Quax found the hiker right in front of the heavy brush that the subject was in. I circled around where we were before he found the hiker and he came right back to the same spot, went into the brush and came out to indicated that here was number three for the day. Beautiful job! Team Quax is now operational and mission-ready!
