A Useful Dog Trick

Irish has been losing a lot of front shoes this spring. The combination of wet, soggy ground and his being on his forehand (due to his issues) he's been pulling them off. My farrier has been quite cooperative about coming back to put them back on. After his last visit this week I decided that Irish will be wearing bell boots outside from now on. Yesterday when I came home from work I saw that he had them off. One was in the small paddock but I couldn't find the other.

I was walking the field looking for it when my Border Collie, d'Arcy, ran up to a spot on the ground and sniffed it. It was Irish's boot. This got me thinking about how useful it would be if he could be trained to find the boots. So I decided to do some training. I've no idea if it will work but it's keeping me and the dogs amused.

Belle was fairly cooperative but she thought that the game was to find the boot and then run off with it. When she found out that wasn't the idea, she lost interest.

Anyway, here's a video after about 10 minutes:

Such a smart dog!