My Wirehair is useful!

[Steve007]

My good dog Cooper is a fine fellow. He finds birds and we have fun together, but he hasn’t exactly saved me from A Terrible Fate (except once, when he thought he did).

But yesterday, I lost my keys -- house, car, office, etc. --- SOMEWHERE on my front lawn. You wouldn’t think they would be hard to find, as I just went from car to mailbox to house, but it was dusk, it’s a big front lawn and there are quite a few leaves down from the trees. I looked all over as it got darker, and kept thinking I was just covering them up with more leaves. I tried a flashlight, looking for reflections. No good. Things were desperate.

Finally, hopefully, it semi-occurred to me that Cooper is a competition obedience Utility Dog (well, two legs, anyway). Finding and retrieving a metal article with my scent on it out of many other articles on the ground is one of his best exercises, and a trained retriever should in theory retrieve anything. Of course, it isn’t quite the same thing – no leaves in the ring, but no dog show distractions on the lawn--, but I’d run out of ideas.

So I brought him out, faced him away from the lawn just like a Utility exercise and gave him a “Find it!” command. I had a directed retrieve glove in my pocket to throw down in case he couldn’t find anything. But he went out to the range of UD articles and when there was nothing there, kept on making wider and wider circles. Must have been out for four or five minutes, but he was definitely working . And then he came back. At first, I thought he’d given up, but then I noticed he was fronting. A little crooked. Half point off. I didn’t really expect anything, but I gave a release command and..there they were! I couldn’t believe it!

I would have given him a treat if I’d had any, but I told him how great he was and threw his glove for him to retrieve, which he likes even better.

Losing keys is strongly worrisome, and you feel pretty dumb, which makes it worse. But I had a useful wirehair to help me out.

[isonychia]

Reminds me of when my Brittany helped me find my keys! Somehow they got buried under a brush pile while I was working outside. He just kept going back to it and digging at the pile. I trained him to be able to find anything I just give him a little sniff of whatever it is, keep him in the bathroom out of sight, hide it, come back let him out of the bathroom and tell him to fetch. Dogs are pretty great.

[fishvik]

The best I could do was have my Weim/Chessie, I had right out of college. retrieve beers.

[DonF]

I found a good way to keep from losing key's. Bought a 2004 Ford Explorer this year and it only had one key with it. Has those buttons on the driver door to open it though. Stopped at the Ford dealer nd checked on getting it working, $50! Wow, figured I'd go to the Western Auto and get a couple new keys made. They couldn't do it. Said I had to go to the Ford dealer. So back to the dealer. For one new key they wanted $145! Something about a chip in the key. Shoot, all I wanted was to be able to unlock the door. Now I never take the key out of the car!