LUSI GOOSEY BURIES THE GLOVE!

YES, THE GLOVE IS VERY SPECIAL! This was clearly what Lusi was thinking when we were out a few minutes ago on our walk.


I had borrowed a pair of soft gloves from my husband just as I was leaving the house so as to avoid having to take my boots off again in search of my own. After we had been walking for about half an hour during which time I had made only a few rather undemanding requests of Lusi, she returned to me in a rather spectacular recall! I was so delighted that I immediately played tug with her with one of the gloves as a reward. This action was shortly followed by her taking off with the glove.


As Lusi headed for an area of undergrowth and brush at the edge of the woods, I thought that I had been silly to use the glove in a non tracking related situation and wondered what consequences this might have for our training. Well, what was done was done I thought, (it's all too easy with animals to undo the training that you have put in.) And so I followed Lusi to retrieve the glove from the thicket only to find her busily burying it. I was so amused at this point to see the care that she was taking to cover it first in pine needles and then in larger pieces of twigs and brush that I hung back to watch the proceedings.


Only when Lusi had finished and was actually turning towards me did I step forward to the spot where she had been burying the glove. What astonished me now was had I not seen precisely where she had buried the item, I would not have known where to look, such was the cleverness of her disguise in the cover.  And so, throwing off the remaining glove from the other hand I carefully removed the layers rather like the BBC Time Team in an archeological dig and finally came up trumps with the glove undamaged save for a little blackening from the soil.


Lusi eyed me, I thought a little suspiciously, or perhaps it was only with some curiosity; that I should undo her work so immediately after her accomplishment seemed even to me rather unfair now. Perhaps I should have just left the glove buried since it was clearly "very special", signalling that our recent tracking training and Lusi's "article indication" has certainly conveyed some level of significance to the clothing. The only other items I have seen Lusi attempt to bury are her favourite bones and just once a toy that she was hiding from the Chihuahuas


Of course, as in all the most amusing incidents, one is never carrying a camera! Note to self...never, never, leave home without the camera!