Guest contribution by Ingeborg Müller & Diego
In the summer you can often find us doing stand-up paddling
Diego loves the SUP dearly. What is very important to me is that Diego enjoys what we do together, so I gave him the choice here too.
We first positively conditioned the SUP through station training. Diego always goes on the board voluntarily, which means there is no command and he is not lured onto it.
In the beginning we often just paddled back and forth on the shore.
So he always had the choice to be either with his mistress on the SUP or with his master on the shore. We then slowly increased the distance to the shore, but always returned to the shore so that he had the opportunity to leave the board.
Now he only needs to see a board and he's on it and ready for a longer tour. We love to be out and about on the Walensee.
Truffle hunting with the spitz
In autumn, when it's not that warm anymore, we roam through the woods looking for truffles.
The Spitz has an excellent nose.
In order to even find truffles, the dog must first be conditioned to the smell of truffles. In addition, there is a clean display behavior.
The real difficulty in truffle hunting is that there is no trail leading to the truffle.
Where there is no truffle to be scented today, there may be one tomorrow.
As a handler you need to know where truffles grow and you need to watch and read the dog very well while searching.
Diego reported our very first find of truffles in less than a second! I could hardly believe it. While we were roaming through the forest, he suddenly stopped, focused on one spot and looked at me, like under the motto, "do it, mother", and then he went on.
Guest contribution & photos: Ingeborg Müller