Hello Carol and Joan and all the rest!
I thought I could write a little summary about Nancy's life here. Nancy lives in a household with me, Anne, as boss (at least in my opinion) and my housband Pekka. I work as a small animal practioning vet part-time and with food hygiene the rest of the time. I have had goldens since 1983. We have three children, Emma 13 yrs, Kalle 11 yrs and Lasse 8 yrs. Emma likes to learn the dogs tricks and Lasse playes with the dogs, Kalle lives for soccer, so he uses Nancy more like a Jogging tour-partner. We have now 5 dogs at home. Essi, a "retiered" Chesapeake bay retriever, who has earned almost everything in the show ring and something on working side too. She is 7 yrs and the absolute boss of the dogs. Polka, my older golden, is 6 yrs and competing in hunting tests. She's a real hunter but she hunts more to please herself than me. Next in order is Tirri, 3 yrs, my daugher Emma's jack russel terrier. She's the absolutely pet, likes to lie on the sofa when she's not barking on a fox. Emma competes in agility with her. Then it's Nancy, and the youngest one is Klara, a 8 week old chesapeake, my new show dog and hopefully my housbands hunting dog. As more, we have an icelandic horse, Salka, who helps me to take the dogs out for a good run.
When I try to think what word describes Nancy most, I think of "fast". She is a very fast runner, likes to do everything with a speed lots higher than my other dogs, and she is a very fast learner. The thing I am most fascinated about is that despite the speed, she is good at consetrating and recognising different situations. She has a very good nose and she can trap done the speed so she really can use the nose. Her ability to adjust her former experiences to different situations is amazing. Some stories of happenings in the real life tells more: Last summer we were the whole family on a retriever training camp. Just for fun, Pekka took Nancy there to try on blood tracks, she picked the track and followed it as she had done it every day. With older tracks and some corners, her speed was still too fast, but that shouldn't be a problem as she is easy to slow done. After one small training track in autumn we had snow here, and I forgot about tracking. In December one of my friends called me, he was trying to track a moose, which had been hit by a car, and he thought it could be a good place to test and train a tracking dog, as we could se the footprints in the snow. Nancy was in the middle of her season, but I said we could try. We drove to the place, found tracks of two mooses, and after a little questioning, Nancy took a track and followed it for about 1 km. At that point we found the place were the mooses had took a rest and very soon after that we noticed that the animals were running healthy in front of us. I was amaced of the attitude of Nancy, she seemed to think: Oh, this kind of work this morning, fine, I'll fix it! Another day we had made a ride out in the forest and as we came home, I noticed a shoe was missing from the horse. Next day I left the horse at home at thougt I could walk the same way and se if I could find our tracks and the horseshoe (ironshoe with rubber to prevent the snow to stick in the hoofs). I didn't say anything to the dogs, but Nancy must have recognised my way of walking, slower than normal and looking around, as seeking, and suddenly she started digging under a root and trying to get something in her mouth. I went and took a look, I could not see anything and thouht it was some harefeces she tried to eat and said to her to leave it. I walked on, Nancy came with me, but then she looked at me as trying to say something, and ran back to the root. I believed her and got a better look, and there it was, the horseshoe trapped under the root! We have only trained seeking with dummies and birds, so I have no idea how she was so sure I was seeking the horseshoe.
As Emma has trained agility, Nancy has been with me and tried something a few times. At the retriever camp, I started her on an unofficial camp-class in agility, and got third. Now Emma wants to start training with her more agility, I promised she can do it in summer.
Same week we also started at an obedience trial, Nancy was not precies enough with her work so the official result was not so good, but we got a challenge cup for the "happiest obediant retriever"! I think that tells a lot of her way to work, always happy and fast. As more, we have worked with normal retriever work. In the autumn we went duck and pheasant hunting a couple of times and then we have been training for hunting tests too. Nancy is doing very well, but every now and then I notice how young she is, I don't want to hurry too much. The plans for next summer is to get away with the beginners class in hunting (cold birds) and obedience, maybe a tracking trial in the autumn, and to begin with the agility. I think that should be enogh for a young dog. If all goes well, we move on to next class, but that goal is fore next year.
Last weekend I took Nancy to the show ring, she got "good" and as she's not at all that type we see here in the ring, I'm very pleased and I think that her show career is done with that. We have plans on breeding her, and as I like her temper so much, I thought of the possibility to bring some sperm from USA here to use on her and maybe on one of my co-owned goldens too, Riemu. For that I would need your help, if you know any stud dogs with the same kind of temper as Nancy, please tell me! We have very narrow lines here with working goldens, so new blood would be welcomed!
Actually, I met Vilma, unfortunately without Älli, one day, but I suppose the Finnish Adirondacs will meet quite soon.
You can see pictures of us at this adress, unfortunately the text is in finnish: http://personal.fimnet.fi/harrastus/anne.woivalin/
Now I'll go out and do some work with the crow, Nancy doesn't like it much enogh, but we use them a lot on trials..
Take care!
Anne & Nancy
