Olive

Olive is another crowd favourite. She's the only yellow dog we have in our kennel and Hunter refers to her as such: "I like Yellow Dog" she'll say. Last winter, Olive was one of the dogs I was training with Risk for the lead dog position. This winter, she has been my main leader with Risk. Olive is doing really well in many areas of lead, but she really needs some work when it comes to holding the gangline out and when we run up hills. Olive is such a lovey kind of dog that she doesn't want to leave my side when I hook her up; she'll follow me to the next dog's house. And then the next. And the next. In fact, Olive sticks so close to people she would often trip Jenn when they were out on walks together even though she was off-leash and able to run the entire property.

I think that Olive's problem on hills is that we slow down. Olive will run all day in harness but when it comes to a hill, whether it is 40 yards into the run or 40 miles, the team slows down a bit and Olive 'yo-yo's' her way to the top. She lunges at the tug line and then lets it slack off and then lunges again. When I talked to Brian McDougall about this, he said her whole litter does this: "it's like they forgot how to pull" he says.

Olive was the other dog involved in the vet bill incident this past summer (see: Risk). She is okay now, and just like Risk you wouldn't even know that anything had happened at all. Luckily, both she and Risk have strong personalities and didn't let the incident affect them. Olive has a pretty good sense of humour: here she is enjoying a joke.