‘The Hard Is What Makes It Great’

In the movie “A League of Their Own” there’s a scene where the manager of the baseball team says the following to his best player who is thinking of quitting due to how hard it is to play at the professional level.

“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.”

Like many first-time nose work handlers, it took me two tries with Logan to get our Nose Work 1 title. At Nose Work 2, we persevered through four trials to get that title. But as anyone who has reached the Nose Work 3 level will tell you, this is a completely, and more challenging ballgame.

With NW3 titles being rather elusive, most of us handlers go into a trial with mini goals. Those always include making sure you don’t call a false alert throughout the day. Others might be to at least pass a particularly troublesome search element, usually containers.

As Logan and I were waiting for our number to come up in Mashpee, Mass., Holly turned to me and asked, “What are your goals today?” I simply responded, “To title.”

Now I’m sure my wife thought that was one of my patented smart ass responses, and usually that would be a pretty sure bet, but it wasn’t. For whatever reason I felt Logan and I were in solid groove and that this would be our day. In the previous two trials we can oh so close. And in recent training exercises I felt he was working hard and I was reading him well.

We started with the vehicle search, followed immediately with the container search. On the vehicles, Logan usually does a pretty good job detailing each car, but does tend to get distracted by the environment around us. He started going toward the front end of one car when something else grabbed his attention. I got him refocused and kept him moving. He found one hide and as we made our way back to were we started, he gave a clear alert on the spot he was first interested in.

In containers he search well and quickly found what needed up being the one and only hide. The next stop was interiors

The search areas were three separate cabins on this summer camp. In the first one Logan went right to work and again quickly found the one and only hide. The other highlight here was how he hip-checked the judge so he could search the area where she was standing. For my environmentally sensitive Greyhound, this was a confidence and swagger I’d not seen before. It was pretty cool.

In the second cabin Logan found two hides, and I was about to call finish, when I saw the head snap and soon he was on a third hide. In the third cabin he again went straight to the first hide, then we covered the rest of the cabin, which was the largest of the three, and found nothing else.

There was a long break between the interior and exterior search elements. Greyhounds are not known for their stamina. They’re sprinters. Short bursts of energy, and then back to bed. So it’s always a challenge to keep Logan energized near the end of a long trial day. But as we stood with the gate steward waiting to be called for our last search of the day, I got gift from mother nature.

There were woods surrounding us, and all of a sudden there was some rustling in the leaves nearby. My guess either a squirrel or chipmunk. Whatever it was, it triggered Logan’s hunting drive and he started pulling with full force, pounding his front paws on the ground and growling and barking. Aside form hanging on to his leash, I did little to discourage this reaction. I wanted to take advantage of that shot of adrenaline.

As we entered the search area, Logan didn’t look like he was searching, e.g. nose on the ground sniffing. He went to the outer boundary of the search area, turned around and went straight to what was the one and only hide.

When Logan’s name was called as one of the only three dogs to earn a title that day, I felt myself getting choked up. This was our sixth NW3 trial, and there were many peaks and valleys along the way. That League of Their Own character was right, “The hard… is what makes it great.”