Cheeky sniffs out South Dakota

There just aren’t enough local trials to satisfy our Scent Work itch, so Jenny started expanding the search radius. Under 8 hour drive? Fair game. So this weekend had us road-tripping to South Dakota!

The drive was gorgeous. We hit a pretty big storm but not before driving through the Pawnee National Grasslands. Wowsa! Stunningly beautiful. We’ve never taken that route to Rapid City before, and don’t think it will be the last time either.

The trial was at a mall! It was kinda nice to be able to go shopping between runs and hit the food court for meals. Plus it made for cool search areas; we were actually mostly through old military recruiting offices.

Yesterday, Cheeky picked up her last Interior Excellent Leg and her first Container Excellent leg. Interior Excellent is pretty hard because you have two different rooms with either 1 or 2 hides. If you have 1 hide in the first room, then you have 2 in the second, and vice versa. Getting that title out of the way feels awesome 🙂

After the trial we found a great off-leash place to run called Robbinsdale Park. Cheeky burned off some zoomies and then we grabbed some dinner to go. Back at the hotel we split a steak and a sweet potato, watched a movie, and turned in early for the morning.

There were so many dandelions at the park! It was so cute that they stuck to her nose 🙂
Cheeky stopping to learn about water conservation on our run.

Today was even better! Cheeky kicked off the day with another Interior Excellent leg (no Master level classes today) and then we headed outside where Cheeky got her first Master qualify in Exterior!!! In this class there are 1-4 hides and you have to call finish when you think you’ve found them all. Cheeks did awesome — she even found one in a sidewalk crack! What a rush! Then we topped it off with another Excellent Interior leg!

Right after we picked up our ribbons the skies opened up and there was a tornado watch East of us! With that adrenaline behind us we headed West. Jenny is working in Gillette, WY tomorrow, so that’s where we stopped for the night. What a fab weekend!