Sunday, May 17, 2009

Mantrailing and Bernie's bloodhound heritage

Hi everyone! We had some fun today--Mom and Dad did a mantrailing exercise with us. Well, in our case, it was a woman-trailing exercise since Mom was the quarry. Basically, Mom took off and we had to track her down and find her. It was lots of fun! After getting sidetracked due to the wind blowing her scent around, we found her. She decided to take off one more time and I bayed furiously for her to come back. She didn't so we had to find her, which we did five minutes later. Dad observed that Bernie and I have very different traits when trailing. I'm the nose (obviously!) while Bernie relies on his eyes and ears... The combination of the two of us is impressive indeed! We were pretty tired when we got home and had a nice snooze once we got home...

Speaking of noses and such, Bernie had a DNA test a while ago and it turns out that Bernie is part bloodhound, part Pyranees, and part Cocker Spaniel (!!?). The bloodhound part is definitely there--he has quite a nose of him and he even has a few wrinkles, as you can see on the photo.

4 comments:

Bentley said...

Oh, that sounds like fun. You two are a good team!

Wimsey said...

That does sound like fun! Hmmm, perhaps I should make one of my ladies try that.

Edie and Gus said...

Are you going to do more tracking soon? Edie always tries to get the girls to run and hide in the woods with a hot dog, but they flat refuse. Something about not wanting to get killed by a slobber monster. I did actually track and find a lost cat once. And no, I didn't eat it! I'm hoping my family will do more tracking with me soon.

That's really something about Bernie! I can see the bloodhound, but not the cocker. Did he have the same kind of test as Bentley?

Unknown said...

He had the canine heritage breed test. His eyes are sort of spaniel-esque but he's all hound... Tracking was fun, but I got really cold hiding for over half an hour...