Ready, Set, Go!

Despite his young age, Ekko has already tried many different kinds of hobbies. We started obedience training as soon as Ekko moved in, and we passed our puppy school with the working dog club of Oulu. These days we train obedience with the working dog club of Espoo (city close to Helsinki), and our ambitious goal is to participate in our first obedience trial by the summer of 2007.

With Ekko's need for speed, the field sports we train don't lack excitement. In summer 2006, we started training for the Finnish search trial, where the dog searches for "lost" people in the woods, and from the beginning we saw that Ekko is a natural talent! With Espoo working dog club, all the three of us also participate in the guided training for message delivering (or relay) where the dog runs between two owners "delivering messages". Ekko loves running so much he'd go on forever!

To balance all the focused training we relax and have fun playing with Ekko's frisbee, searching for hidden toys and hiking in the woods with other dogs. Ekko and Keijo also have their own 'guy thing', canicross running, for which they train at least once a week.