As many of you may recall we are fostering a puppy for the Australian Customs Dept whilst he trains to be sniffer dog. Tarquin our foster puppy is now 6 months old and to date he’d been doing really, really well at all his tests (top of his litter).
BUT I’ve just had a call from the breeding centre to say he did very badly at his test this week – he only scored 25 out of 30 
Tarquin the wonder dog failed his “slippery floor” test and what is even worse at the end of the test he chucked a major tantrum because he wasn’t ready for the games to end.
I’m a failure as a puppy parent Its back to the beginning for both of us with lots of “slippery floor” exercises coming up.
25 out of 30 is bad? Man, I’m glad I’m not a sniffer puppy. I couldn’t handle all that PRESSURE!!
I thought he’d done pretty well when they told me the score, but then they read his report card so sad. Is it any wonder he had a major tanty.
My dog is afraid of slippery floors, too. Pretty pitiful considering I put wood floors (well, technically laminate) down 3 years ago. Dogs can be goofy sometimes.
Poor Tarquin isn’t allowed to be goofy because he’s meant to be a super-puppy. Still after working through his metal stair issues this should be a piece of cake.
I say puppynap Tarquin and save him from a life full of stress and ulcers. I had no idea those kinda dogs went though so much. Sheesh
If he doesn’t turn out to be a super-puppy…[sub]could you keep him?[/sub]
I’d love to puppynap Tarquin just cause he’s so cute (especially when he’s asleep). But it wouldn’t say much for the Australian Customs Dept. if I was actually able to get away with it 
Still I could try and just say I was testing them!
We could but we’d have to buy him off customs as they usually sell their less than super puppies to other countries to be used for non-customs purposes (search and rescue etc). Usually if he can’t be trained for one job he can be trained for another, its only the really bad failures that get to live a normal life.
This just seems so…wrong! Not that I’m against working dogs, but I’m sitting here comparing my life to the dropouts from high school, and kind of concerned… 