Our 2 furry children

These are our 2 lovely labs. Tucker is our chocolate and Sydney is our yellow lab. Tucker is 6 years old and Sydney is 8 years old. We adopted Sydney from my brother Steve, when they had their first child. We had taken care of Sydney when they would go away on a trip. Tucker really liked having her around. We have had Sydney for 3 years. I never really heard Sydney bark until a few weeks after we got her. She loves to chase Tucker. Tucker loves it too. They are both great dogs and they are fun to take hiking, which is one of their favorite activities.

Tucker is an amazing dog. When he was about 6 months old, we took him to Camp Atterbury for evaluation for consideration into their search and rescue program. It was interesting watching how they test dogs for this. I remember meeting with them and they said that most of the dogs they see do not meet the standards. I guess he was letting us know that there was little chance Tucker would make it. I remember him walking up to us a period of time after running him through a series of tests and told us that it had been a long time since they have observed a dog with so much drive and they wanted to train him. We put quite a bit of time an effort into it. There was one weekend that it was just me that had to go and it was night navigation training, which was fun to learn. We were basically inserted into the middle of the woods at night with no flashlights. We had to navigate to several different points. Also learned different search techniques. I still remember the moonlight and the image of these intermittent spider webs and some were occupied by the crawly critters.

We found ourselves unable to totally commit to the search and rescue program because of the time element. Tucker is still amazing. It is fun to watch him work and he thrives on doing this. It is almost like he knows it is his job. For example, we live on a wooded lot and our home sits atop a hill. At night, I can take a small piece of rubber from a tennis ball, no larger than 1 inch and throw it into the trees and underbrush at night. I release him with the command, "go find" and to my amazement, he drops it off at my feet as if to say, "is that all you got?" It simple but fun entertainment for me. Now Sydney on the other hand. She would rather wait until Tucker finds what he needs to find and then take it away when he drops it.

These photos I took on Thanksgiving day. They love the tall grass. Tucker was running through the grass and occasionally he would hop like a deer running. He has chased a few deers, so maybe he was just seeing what it was like.


John