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Five Golden Rings © 2003 Ed Presnall 
She was only nine weeks old, yet both precious and precocious. Her name was Beacon and she was her owner’s shining light. I was teaching a variable surface tracking workshop when I noticed she had climbed into my training bag. I smiled and commented to her owner that when she grew up I just might steal her to track with. We spent a few minutes working with the gangly puppy and soon had her confidently tracking across gravel and cement. It was a start.She was almost eight months old the next time I saw her. Compared to my sedate Springers and Clumbers, she was a wild child. Bouncing, spronging… an endless bundle of energy seemingly without focus. We started a basic training program. She was a handful. Pushing the envelope between training and in-your-face independence, what I now understand is a normal Water Spaniel puppy. As she matured, she trained in agility and obedience and you could see that she would someday be a real performer. Tracking on the other hand was a long year of frustration, highs and lows and fun. One day her owner threw up her hands and asked me to work with her. I thought back to that fateful day I first saw her playing in my training bag and remembered that no good deed goes unpunished! I am not special, nor am I the best, but I do have a way with forming a team bond with dogs I track with and accelerating the training schedule by asking the dogs to work beyond their perceived abilities. A few short weeks later she was certified and in November she sproinged and sniffed her way to her Tracking Dog title at the Irish Water Spaniel test in Rockford, Il. Fast forward through a bitterly cold and icy winter with minimal training time and we awoke to see that the entry deadline was approaching for the first Irish Water Spaniel Club of America VST Test. I was torn. She was a very nice working dog, when her puppy-like brain cells collided and she focused for a moment or two. But, VST is a working partnership between the dog and handler. An hour or more of intense dance, give and take, help or not and to lead or follow. It is to me the final description of patience. We entered her to assure the club that there would be at least one IWS entry. She and I worked intently for three weeks. A few days before the test I was disappointed with her performance. I proposed pulling her from the event to allow a better-trained team to try for the title. I knew deep down that she had the ability and training to make a good showing at the test, but to pass would require a supreme effort on both our parts. We laid one last track with a blustery storm front moving in. In sheeting rain she footstep tracked the course and earned in my mind a chance to make the attempt in the test. We awoke early on Easter morning to a fast moving storm. Clouds, rain, cold temperatures had been predicted and sadly, the weatherman was right this time. Loading the Jeep I told her that today was her day. No pressure, just get out there and do her thing. We arrived at the test site, the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater and greeted our friends and other exhibitors. For years I have defined my attempts and successes in VST as Climbing The Mountain. I look at the test as the pinnacle of the tracking world. A team effort is required to make the climb successful. Five years and several dogs ago I wrote of an unsuccessful climb, At the base of the mountain a handwritten note scrawled on yellowing paper told us that only the second path would take us to the top. As a puppy, she was the pink girl in the litter. Moments later we selected the bright pink Easter egg from a basket and found that this time we too would take the second path. We marched to the start flag and Beacon downed at the article. Stretching her supple body into an elongated question mark she wagged her tail as if to say, ready to start the adventure? I looked down to her as the heavens opened up and the rain began to fall. I told her to track and she started off down a long grassy slope. At the bottom of the slope was an intersection of two large sidewalks separated by a wide esplanade. Confidently, she crossed the intersections and proceeded across a bridge and after a quick 107 yards turned down a flight of stairs. She wandered into a brushy flowerbed, tangled her line around a bush and came back up the stairs covered in burrs. I pulled out the burrs and sent her back to work. She worked intently checking out every possible way the track could go and finally again went down the stairs. I followed her around the corner of a building and down a long sidewalk. After sixty yards she stopped to glance at a potential metal article. Not giving me her almost trademark down, I pocked the article and sent her back to work. Seventy yards later, her rattail swinging almost in rhythm to the rain, she plodded up a hillock or berm and circled, her indication of a corner. I stopped and waited while she carefully chose the correct direction. Sixty yards later she downed at a soggy knotted sock. Restarting in the gusting wind, she paralleled the track and following the drifting scent into a large bowl or grassy drainage retention area. We worked the area and soon she almost dragged me back to the track and to a wet cloth glove. She gave no indication that it might be her article, but I quickly pocketed it too. She searched the edge of a large asphalt parking lot before venturing out into the lot. After twenty or so yards she turned left and headed across the parking lot. Crossing a driveway and a small island of grass, she continued intently into another parking lot. About twenty yards in front of her I could see a white object against the wet black asphalt. I silently prayed that it was her article and not a damp piece of paper. Reaching the object she downed in the standing water. With rain dripping off her nose she smiled and almost proclaimed let’s go we’re not done yet! She worked across the parking lot to a small strip of grass. Intently she searched both directions before deciding to follow the scent downhill to the left. In front of us was about 30 yards of asphalt and then another huge grassy bowl. This one the size of a football field and dropping from the close edge about 25 feet to the bottom before rising 40 or so feet to a sidewalk and a series of buildings on the other side. I have worked this grassy bowl numerous times with other dogs, none have successfully worked through this scent trap. We had now far exceeded my expectations for the day; she was tiring and becoming somewhat frustrated with the drifting scent and the blustery winds. I urged her to continue on in search of that last article. She worked the grass bowl for fifteen minutes following the drifting faint threads of the track in the blowing wind. I could see her interest in this game was beginning to wane. Six weeks ago her house and soul mate Tige, CH. Mole End Hold That Tiger VCD1, JH, AX, OAJ succumbed to cancer. As we searched for that final article I softly asked her to find it for Tige. Her nose hit the ground and she resumed searching, leading me strongly up out of the bowl and thirty-seven yards down a sidewalk to a mulch-filled flowerbed. She downed at the metal article with that almost magical #4 attached to it and then quickly bounced up, springing into the air knowing she had done what no other Water Spaniel had ever done. It is my pleasure to co-own Beacon with Lisa Schaitberger and Elizabeth Weaver. She is my fifth VST titled dog and now will be known as Beaufield Shining Light TD, VST. Her march into breed history is only beginning!  BEAUFIELD SHINING LIGHT TD, VST Irish Water Spaniel Club of America 1st National VST Test University of Wisconsin at Whitewater April 20, 2003 Judges: Ev & Anne Campbell Tracklayer: Terri Middleton |
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