INTERNATIONAL SUMMER CAMP
KONGSBERG, NORWAY
26 - 30 July 2004

This week long Camp was organized by Turid Rugaas and Anne Lill Kvam in the idyllic surroundings of Kongsberg to the West of Oslo. The venue was wonderfully well equipped and was a purpose built Dog Club situated just outside the town and provided excellent areas of forest, clearings and a lake to let the dogs work in and explore to their hearts content.

The 26 delegates - from Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden - and dogs had a thoroughly invigorating time with the five tutors and had two 1 hour lectures each day in between the two sessions of practical work which each lasted two hours. However, neither dogs nor humans were over taxed as the lunch breaks were two hours long as well, and handlers were encouraged to only do as much as their dog could obviously cope with. The whole ethos of the week was "Watch your dog and make sure neither of you get tired or stressed" and it was wonderful to see the handlers being so calm and caring of their charges throughout the week.

Turid Rugaas (who is one of the most famous International speakers in the world on dog related matters) lectured and gave practical sessions on how to enrich a dog's environment to stimulate its mind (thus empowering the dog to cope with the rigors of life), the importance of walking a dog on a loose lead and how this can be done, and gave all of us so many insights in to how a dog's mind and body works.

Anne Lill Kvam (who travels around the world giving lectures on all aspects of Scent Work for dogs) taught the dogs and handlers how to lay tracks and teach the dog to discriminate between scents - eg. Searching for Chanterelle mushrooms!

Meanwhile Annika Petren, from Sweden, introduced the delegates to the rather messy delights of Blood Tracking! Dogs that are trained to track animal blood and tracks are used to find injured animals (either caused from road traffic accidents or from hunting incidents where the animal has been wounded) that would otherwise be left to suffer in agonising pain. Once found these poor animals can either be taken to the nearest vet for treatment or humanely put to sleep.

Minna Vadsager, originally from Denmark but now living in Sweden, took dogs and handlers to all sorts of interesting and unusual places as she taught them how to use a GPS unit and go Geocaching. These clever little units are used to locate your exact position wherever you are in the world using signals from Global Positioning System satellites and can also be used to find Caches (or little treasure boxes) that are hidden in all sorts of out of the way places in both the countryside and urban areas all over the world. The delegates left their own cache for other walkers to find and also included a Travel Bug which will be left in Cache boxes all over the world for other dog lovers to find. Minna explained how useful a dog's sense of smell was to locating the hidden caches where the "treasure" is hidden and how dogs love the new walks and nose work of Geocaching. Minna has since heard from quite a few of the delegates - "Fannie from Iceland bought a GPS of her own as soon as she returned to Iceland and has already found her first geocache! Way to go! Helga is planning to buy a GPS and in the meantime she is teaching her dog to find boxes. It is great fun to hear from them!"

Sally explained to the delegates how to recognise and avoid situations and training methods that can over stress a dog when training and competing in agility. She also introduced them to the Dog Games that she has invented that she uses to help recognise and reduce symptoms of long term stress and help the dog to relax in a managed training environment. All the dogs that attended the Camp achieved the Recall Starters and proudly wore their rosettes. Some decided to work towards the Recall Bronze stage rather than work on agility exercises as this was a more achievable goal in such stimulating and new surroundings for their dog.

Pictures of the dogs can be seen by clicking on their name or visiting the Roll of Honour and clicking on "Recall Starters".

Comments from the Delegates -

"Wanted to thank you so much for the wonderful time in Kongsberg. But I actually wrote to say how much I like your website, it´s even better than "before" Kongsberg. Best wishes" Fanney Baldursdottir, Iceland

"Thank you for the week we had together:) I feel like I learned alot:) " Olga Bjork Fridriksdottir, Iceland

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