About a week ago I put up a post from Hutch, one of our Mountain Patrollers, describing the class that he and Belle were heading to up in Fernie. They're back and here's a follow up note from Hutch (and Belle):

What pleasant welcome home for Belle and I: a beautiful bluebird day-and-a-half with lower Pinecone open. It's dark in British Columbia. The daylight gained moving south a few degrees of latitude us just another reason to love Park City.

While the daylight was short, the education was substantial. We worked from 7am to 9pm. All day in the field setting up training exercises for the 35 dog teams from around Canada and the US, and evenings in the classroom looking at advances in search and rescue techniques, equipment and philosophy.

Belle Starr and I worked harder and harder drills each day until Friday when we had the opportunity to attempt a validation under the rigorous Canadian standard. You know how it comes out, of course!  Belle and I are the only team from "the States" to validate for 2008. So home again, knowing that our program is one of the best in North America and loaded with ideas from our northern friends on how to make it even better.

Best of luck to our next dog teams to start their courses and tests in a few weeks,  but I know they won't need it....

Hutch

Welcome back to both of you, enjoy all the new snow!

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