Viva heads to the Columbia River Gorge - Chanticleer Point

 

At the end of April I headed down to the Columbia River Gorge area to volunteer at three nose work trials.  I brought Viva along and we had an amazing time together outside of the nose work trials.    

 

Here's a wonderful video that my sister created for me and I'll be doing a number of posts talking about each area we visited!

 

 

 

 

After a 4 hour drive we stopped off at Chanticleer Point. A good place to stretch our legs and take in the views.

 

 

 

 

 

A cool marker and driving along the historical Columbia river highway is beautiful!

 

 

I always love the information boards!

 

 

 

The amazing gorge area - Washington on the left an Oregon on the right of the Columbia River.

 





 

 

The Sam Hill Memorial Rock at the entrance from the Historic Columbia River Highway, honoring one of the main promoters of the road.

 

 

Lewis and Clark arrive on the Columbia River

 

 

  

Viva hops up to take in the view

 

 

 

Lets see what else we can find!

 

 

 

One more picture of the amazing view

 

 

 

Sweet Viva ready for our next stop

 

 

Stay tuned as we have some great sights coming up!

 



D'light says "Lure on!"

 D'light and I headed south for a lure event and oh what fun!

We stopped off at Spanaway Park and had a warm up of squirrel chasing.

We were at the park pretty early on a Saturday so, we had the place to ourselves!

A scan of the environment and them time to go to the lure field!

We arrive and D'light hoping that this is not a dream...

"Mom, do you see what I see!"

D'light could to get over to the lure machine fast enough

"Make it work!"

Watching the lure operator setting the course.  You cannot hear D'light but, he's getting excited and making a low whine.

Oh sweet D'light... you barking at it does not make it work.

Time to warm up those legs and we stop and watch a dog learning how to chase the bag that attaches to the lure.   

D'light says "I can show you how it's done!"

We do a lot of warming up and warming down.    Not D'light's favorite thing as he'd rather watch the other dogs chase the lure and bark at the lure.  But, he's getting older and getting his muscles warmed up and down is a priority.

"Enough warming up! Lets go watch the lure"

Almost our turn and time to get his lure behavior going!  

Lots of whining, barking, screaming and lunging to get at the moving lure.

"Oh mom I want to get it so bad!"

"I want my turn now!"

Finally time to lure!

So much fun! It's a joy to watch D'light's 50 seconds of pure bliss!

"When is the next lure event!"

A cute photo before we head home.

When we were driving to the lure sight something caught my eye on one of the trees on the right.

So on the way out, I stopped to go check it out. See those white dots on the black burnt tree?

It's fungi!

I was fascinated by the small discs...

The I looked up!

Lots and lots of fungi growing only on the burnt part of the tree. Pretty cool to look at and well worth the stop.

Here was D'light later that day

And after day two of luring. Sung as a bug in his blankets!

A good weekend for sure!

Catty says "Guess what!"

  

"It's my gotcha month!"

 

 

  

We adopted Catty from New Rattitude 6 years ago.  Amazing how time flies and how much this funny, spunky, ubber smart and loveable girl has taught us.  If you would have asked me what I'd be doing with Catty six years ago I would have never have guessed how far we've come.  So much learning for all of us about animal behavior, force free training, loads of adventures and of course nose work.  We adore our little Catty girl!

 

 

 

 

We have a busy gotcha month - more outside adventures, three nose work trials, nose work camp and a big fun trip.  That's just for the month of June, we have lots more fun throughout coming months.  So much to do and no doubt we will be having a blast!

 

 

 

"So stay tuned to see what I'm up too!"