That’s your Lotte
Since our last report, Lotte has excelled herself, both in good and bad ways. The little beggar took a liking to Bess’s bed, which is sadly no more. How a tiny scrap of a thing can utterly destroy a large labrador’s bed beggars belief but she did it steadily over the course of a week. A new bed has arrived, which we have been told is indestructible, though that doesn’t seem likely with this little hooligan. She is on her first written warning.
On the working side, she seems to be proving that it is all in the genes. Her sire is a registered boar tracker and the dam a working tracking dog and that skill seems to be there in Lotte. In her determination and natural ability she reminds me very much of Alfie, but, like him, her innate ability needs a little tweaking.
On the last track she did, I couldn’t see her on the lead in front of me for most of it and I only knew she was there because the lead kept going. The bracken was so high that even I struggled to find my way through it. One thing is certain, she may be small but she is determined and nothing took her off the track that the deer had left and we steadily wove our way to it. The deer had dropped to the shot in thick bracken, so this wasn’t a blood trail she followed, she was working on foot scent and the path the deer had taken as it came onto the ground at the point where I shot it.
Apart from the bed, my shoelaces and the zip on my fleece, Lotte is doing well.