So below are the pictures I was just talking about. These dogs were amazing. There was a fly ball contest, where the owners launched a tennis ball and the dogs would run and leap off the dock and the contest was to see how far the dog would jump and then land in the water. The pics of those came out amazingly great! The winner landed 21 feet out! Wow! I missed that one, which was right in the beginning but my brother saw it and said it was pretty neat.
We also at the end of the festival, before we left, got to watch a rescue dog demo, put on by the Alpine dog team that works out of the whole Tahoe and Donner areas, in search and rescue all year round. But they are the ones you'll see with dogs on snow mobiles and out running next to their partners who are on skiis. So they eldest rescue dog, the greyish cattle dog that is in my picture, is a female and has been working as a rescue dog since she was a puppy. She is now 15 and still does it. It's based on a reward/game system. The dogs really enjoy finding a person or object and they know that once they go to work, the faster that they find what they are looking for, the quicker they'll get to play afterwards with their favorite toy. Many of the dogs like the game of tug, so that is their reward. I was told that in the united states we use the toy reward and in Canada, they use a treat system. So everyone is different and different techniques work well for many reasons. But it was so fun watching this dog get into 'work' mode and run off and watch as the trainer gave her commands and how intelligent she really was. We all knew where the person was hiding but it was neat to see how accurate she was and what signals she gives her handler when she knows that she's in proximity to the person needing to be saved. They work a lot with avalanche victims and other situations like that. Enjoy the pictures!
