Fern is a young female Springer Spaniel born in early spring 2005. Fern lives with her owner Graeme White and the rest of their family. Graeme has been on the team since 1992 and has now taken Fern into his home to train her as a mountain rescue search dog.

Before Fern can start the training she must to go through an obedience test and a stock test. The obedience test involves walking to heel, a long stay of 10 minutes, a down on recall and speaking on command. The stock test involves working within a pen of sheep and Fern showing no interest at all as the sheep are moved around her. As might be imagined this is really hard for a young dog as all they want to do is play - but Fern is getting there and hopefully by summer 2006 Fern should have completed these two test and be able to start playing with the big dogs on the hill.
Fern has lots of things that she likes doing but most of all she loves going for walks and learning new things from Graeme. Fern's favorite toy is a blue star like shape and this really gets Fern going when Graeme and her go out to play. Fern's favorite food is well anything really that she can eat or not - these include doors, shoes and her favorite - t-towels - which make loads of mess and presumably taste really nice.

Here Fern is just waiting to go out training for her test. She is really looking forward to completing this and starting on her basic search training.

Please do visit again soon we will keep you updated on how Fern and Graeme are getting on with the tests and hopefully the basic search training.