Congrats....but I have a question. What the heck is a barn hunt title?
Thanks! Barn Hunt is sport that was developed to test the ability of dogs who were originally bred to rid barns/property of vermin. Like the terriers. Since there isn't a ton of real world application for breeders to test that their dogs are actually capable of doing the job they were bred to do, they developed the sport. But it's taken off with lots of different breeds and their owners because it's SO MUCH FUN! I love it because it's a sport where the dog is being a dog, hunting down rats in a bunch of hay, basically.
Rats are put in dog safe tubes and hidden in hay bales. The dogs have to find them and indicate to their handler where the rat is. There is also at least one empty tube and one tube with used rat bedding.
The course is set up and the number of tubes hidden based on the level the dog is at. So for the instinct test, the 3 tubes are in plain sight and the dog just indicates which tube has the rat in it. It's "instinct" because it basically just tells you that yes, your dog instinctively wants to get the rat or it doesn't. Then from there, the next level is Novice. There is a course set up with all three tubes hidden, a tunnel made of hay bales and hay bales stacked up. The dog has to go through the tunnel, climb the bale with all 4 feet on the bale and find the rat all within 2 minutes. The dog has to successfully do this 3 times in 3 different runs to earn the novice title. Yogi did it in 2 days, and he was first place twice in his size group and first place twice among all the dogs running at the novice level with a time of 38 seconds and a a time of 45 seconds. This was the 2nd time he's ever tried it, he was really fun to watch!
Once you have your novice title, you can continue to compete at the higher levels; there are more difficult tunnels, higher hay bales to climb, more rats to find, etc. at each level.
I did not take a single picture... I, know crazy! But there was a professional photographer there, I'm hoping she got some good shots of us and I'll post them when they are available. Also, here's the link to the Barn Hunt Association if anyone's interested
Barn Hunt Association
