Samira's Vida: Green Mountain Iron Dog Competition

Since Chris posted about our trip and her fantabulous second place running of the Iron Dog, I suppose I should add Max's story as well.

Max and I met up with our trainer, Chris, and her Malinois, Ronja, a couple weeks ago for the four hour drive to Colchester, Vermont. Each year the Vermont State Police sponsor the Iron Dog for law enforcement and civilian teams with proceeds going to great causes like Lacey's Fund, which provides funds to help defray medical costs for families who adopt retired police dogs. The competition was held on a YMCA Camp property right on Lake Champlain, so we were invited to stay overnight in the cabins with the dogs. Other than squeaky beds, panting and roaming dogs, and the constant (loud!) wind through the trees, we slept relatively well until the dogs started barking at someone walking around the cabin at 6:30 the next morning.

The weather held for us too, luckily. It was cool, windy and sunny this morning, then sunny and cool toward noon, then cooler and really windy, then just cool again. There was no rain, that was the important part!

The competition track was a mile and a half. From the starting point, we jogged downhill (whee!) to the lake and waded through shoe-sucking mud and water to the end of the pier to grab a pencil as proof we went all the way out.

(Photos are completely out of order because Blogger is being a snot about moving them around. This particular photo was taken by Chris Crawford.)

Fortunately, the water was only about calf deep, so no swimming was involved.

The trail then led through the woods and Max and I walked and jogged. He manages to injure me at every event we do, so I wasn't taking a chance on sprinting through the woods with him and breaking an ankle or smacking face first into a tree!

Through the woods and we ended up at the Evil Hill of Exhaustion (despair!) where I tried to convince Max to pull me up it. In his mind, that meant let me take two steps, then lunge forward and jerk me another two steps. By the time we got to the top, my very out of shape thighs were burning and he was just getting warmed up. About that time, we were passed by the team who had started after us. Since I wasn't worried about the competition aspect and we were just there for fun, I waved and smiled and caught my breath as they jogged by.

More trotting through the woods and we had to climb through a horse paddock fence, then walk

through a barn and memorize the license plate number of a "suspicious" vehicle parked near it. It turned out that if you didn't recite the plate number correctly at the end of the trial, you were disqualified. We were disqualified for many things, but certainly not a lack in my memory skillz!

Out of the barn and down another trail where we had to climb through a wire fence that simulated barbed wire. Then we entered the "smoke house," which was a YMCA cabin full of smoke (vegetable oil-based) with the smoke alarm going off. Max did great and seemed to neither notice the smoke nor care about the alarm. Out of the house and a quick sprint to a camo net tied low to the ground between two trees that we both had to crawl under. Max couldn't figure out why I insisted he crawl under it with me when it was obvious we could simply go around the tree and save effort and time. I often wonder just how crazy our dogs think we are.

Next we both clambered through a large culvert and I wished I had a longer leash.

He was in front of me and the leash is pretty short, so I ended up on all fours myself with my head against his furry butt. He quickly learned that he could take two steps, then I had to take two steps for him to get enough slack in the leash to take another two steps. There was a second culvert farther down the trail and by the time we got to it, he knew the pattern.

Out of the first culvert and we jogged to the shooting station, where he conveniently plopped into a down-stay without a word from me (it was shady and he was tired) while I shot two "bad guys" with a little pellet pistol.

We completely skipped the obstacle course because we haven't worked on anything like that. But it contained a tall A-frame, a ramp and walk across a board about 4 feet high, a jump through a window, and a jump over a wall. (We did go back to practice those later and finally got him to go over the wall with four slats in it [six was too high] and through the window.)

After the obstacle course, was another jaunt through muddy woods, the second culvert, and more mud. Mud was definitely a big part of our day!

Our next station was "tactical obedience," which we didn't do so well at. The goal was to down-stay your dog behind the "cover" of a barrel while you moved to the next covered position in the trees. Again, being tired, he down-stayed very well. We were supposed to move from tree to tree like that and stop at four of them. I called him to me at the first tree, and he sprinted right past me to the last tree. Since we had already skipped 7 obstacles and been overtaken by two other teams, I wasn't really worried about properly completing each station, as long as we made

it through the whole course unscathed, so we picked up our two items of evidence, a leash and a frisbee, and headed to the finish line. We went through one more short culvert and walked around another road barrier he was supposed to jump.

Then came the moment I'd been dreading for weeks. You had to carry your dog the last 30 feet or so from the wall to the finish line. I can carry Max, I cannot pick up Max. He's long, he weighs 95 pounds, and he flails maniacally because he doesn't want to be picked up, all of which combine to make lifting him off the ground an impossibility for me. If I have him up higher, like on a picnic bench or if I could have gotten him on top of the barrier, I can grab him and go from there. But directly from the ground...not so much. I tried one grasp and he wiggled out. I tried a second hold and got him up off the ground then managed to stumble about four steps before I conceded. We weren't getting a trophy, so there was no reason to traumatize him and slip fifteen disks in

my own back. He happily jogged over the finish line with a slow 24 minute time. But we finished!

We also did a 100 yard dash and he clocked in at 20 mph. He wasn't really motivated, and it

wasn't too long after the trail run, so I think he would have been a little faster had he been able to run it fresh.

(Photo by Chris Crawford)

Of course, he made a ton of new friends as everyone wanted to know about the shepherd that was so much bigger than the police dogs. He got a free massage from a licensed small animal massuese and I even relented and shared my hamburger with him for lunch.