March 2003: In January I joined a local Search and Rescue team, fulfilling a long-held goal. I was hopeful that Barney would be interested in being my canine partner, and he needed a job to do to keep him out of trouble! (The stories I could tell . . . he is the "dog with nine lives".)  So I spoke with him in detail about what the training and search work involved, and what he would need to do in order to be my partner.  Barney was quite excited about the prospect, and so we began. We started with basic manners training at PetsMart. He was very anxious and hyper, completely out of control for the first four classes. He had never been socialized outside of our home, so we had our work cut out for us.  Helping him learn and understand the rules was a big challenge for him, me, and the instructor!  He graduated a much better mannered boy, and even won the "most pushups" contest (how many "downs" and "ups" can he do in a minute). We then began attending SAR training, which triggered another round of anxiety and hyperness.  It took him several times out before he began to calm down and accept the routine.  He immediately took to the work he was being asked to do, and hasn't looked back.

June 2003: Barney amazes me with his natural ability to seek and find (Weims are natural hunters).  In speaking with him recently, he was very proud of how well he was doing, and very proud that I was proud of him as well.  (Awww . . .)  He goes in, gets the job done, and says "there, that's done, now what?". It's a joy to watch him work.

August 2003:  Barney passed his second basic manners course with a different instructor with flying colors, with marks of 4+ Excellent, and obtained his Canine Good Citizen designation the same evening. I'm so proud of him!

October 2003: Barney and I attended our first 3-day intensive training seminar conducted by The Alliance of Search Canines (www.taskcanine.com) and Barney did great on some very difficult search problems. This boy is good at what he does!

March 2004: We attended another week-long training seminar by the other team and Barney continues to excel on difficult problems. Among other scenarios, he learned to track someone by sniffing their scent on a car seat, then tracking the man to where he had climbed up in a tree. He also tracked someone who had been driven to their hideout, which means he was relying on scent which had blown out from the car window and settled on the ground, rather than scent left as a person walks through an area. This requires greater scenting ability and Barney did great, he found the man.

On March 20, 2004, Barney was bitten by a rattlesnake during a training exercise. He was out of commission for 8 weeks while the wound healed. For the full story please click on the "Next Page" button at the bottom of this page.

October 2004: We attended another TASK training seminar and learned so much -- thank you to all the TASK members and Chip Laymon who helped us step it up a notch and learn better ways of doing our trailing work. We have a ways to go, but I have no doubt we will one day be a good search team, and able to provide this service to the community.

March 2005: After much thinking and agonizing, I resigned Barney and I from our second search team. Barney had begun to slack off on the trails because he's a smart dog and he knows that our "trail layers" are not lost, so the fun of the search had gone out of it for him. Unfortunately an inconsistent dog is not appropriate for the serious work of search and rescue. We had a wonderful 2.5 years of training and I greatly enjoyed the experience, as I know Barney did. We haven't given up on the idea, but are taking a break indefinitely. I plan at some point to put him into independent training, for fun, to see if he recovers his consistent drive to work at this.