We spent the weekend at the River Rat Barn Hunt braving the deluge in St Helens, OR, and it was worth it! With four trials in two days we had tons of fun and came away with lots of ribbons, as you can see. 🙂 On Sat both Wally and Fiona earned their RATN titles (Wally also got RATI); in Trial 1 Wally placed 2nd for speed and in Trial 2 Fiona got the fastest time in their class — woop woop! On Sun we moved up to Open and Wally earned his first Open Q along with 1st in class.

Sunday was definitely a learning experience as the three non-Q trials were missed due to handler error (aka me). Over the weekend their indication behaviors began evolving plus we were all tired on Sunday. Between those two things I miss-called “rat” twice because I didn’t wait long enough for them to move on, and didn’t call a correct rat once because I didn’t do a detailed check of the area when Fiona said there was something there. Lesson learned: pay attention to my dogs and be patient, they KNOW when there’s a rat and they’ll tell me!