Blooming Leaders

Topa, now 17 months old, only having begun her leader training, is a natural "gee over" dog. This means that her natural tendency is to pull to the right side of the trail. One less training challenge! Oken, although an excellent leader with a lot of open country experience, tends to pull to the left. Today, we placed Topa on his left side, knowing her right pull tendencies, hoping that she would then be able to push Oken to the right. Use one dog to help train another has always been a good training tool for us. And it worked!

Topa has an extremely quick "fix" response to verbal corrections and consistently holds the line very tight.

White Feather (AKA Woof, Woofer, Woofie), now also 17 months old, is proving to be an intense and driven leader. This photos captures her intense glare down the trail. She, too, is a natural "gee over" dog and keeps her line tight. During this run, not one correction was needed.

Ilo and Sweet Pea are content at wheel position. Although Sweet Pea takes commands from any position and does lead during our women's adventures, she would rather not. It seems to be too stressful a place for her in front of a bigger team. Ilo will continue to get little moments in lead for his first year with us but we would prefer he settled into our routine before we ask too much more of him. Rebecca, in the background, experiences cart running in the snow.

Trees beautifully framing our trail.