I bathe and scrub and fluff and spray until AKC CH Sarah sparkles and shines. We head for the Best Of Breed ring in hopes of winning the almighty Purple and Gold ribbon that says she is the most beautiful Akita at the show that day.  She is Oohed and Ahed over by spectators.  They want to run their fingers through her gorgeous Black coat, but I tsk, tsk, them away until after my Champion Show dog has been in the ring.  Today we won Best of Breed over a Top Ranked Male special and we go on to win a Group fourth.  This is what I live for.

But, this AKC Champion Akita has a very different side to her.  She is known as just "Sarah" outside the showring and is the hunting companion to my favorite man, Steve Haugen.  This is what Sarah lives for.  I believe deep inside every Akita is the prey drive and instinct of a wild wolf.  Every Akita hunts.  It may be a mouse, a rabbit, or a laser beam, but they all hunt.  The way that an Akita decimates its squeaky toys until they have "gutted" them and stopped it from making noise by chewing up the squeaker inside is a testament to that drive.  This is an in-born instinct passed down from many generations.  So, just because you don't hunt with your Akita, doesn't mean that they don't hunt.  Sometimes they even hunt us (in play, of course).   

Oh, back to Sarah and Steve.  Steve started training Sarah when she was just a year old.  She showed a natural chase and kill instinct that most Akitas have.   Ever had a well-behaved Akita see a rabbit and all recall goes down the toilet?  Well, that explains how Sarah was as a youngster.  Full of Akita vigor!  Steve just had to figure out a way to contain it and make it work to his advantage.  With the advice of people at Deer Search International and using his own experience, he made it work.  After several tracks with Sarah, he was gaining confidence in her.  Here is one story in Steve's words:

"2^nd Deer - Brenda's: October 27^th, 2001.  A six-point (buck) came out, I drew too soon and had to hold my draw a long time, then finally he gave me a shot.  I hit the deer much higher than I wanted to, he might have jumped the string.  I saw the arrow enter high in the shoulder blade area.  There was no arrow sticking out, so I know the arrow went in deep.  I tried to watch where the deer had ran and thought I had a pretty good idea where he entered the woods...After a bit, I got down from my stand and looked for my arrow.  I couldn't find it anywhere and there was very little blood.  There was a tall grassy field that ran for 50 yards before it met the woods where the deer had ran.  I looked up and down the line where the field met woods but could find no signs.  I decided to go get Sarah and see if she could help.

Back at the truck, as I was changing out of my hunting clothes, Sarah started acting very excited, as she smelled my hunting clothes and boots.  She must have smelled the deer.  She started jumping and running around the truck like she knew that this was the real thing, not just another training session.

Once we were back to the spot where I hit the deer, I put Sarah's tracking harness and lead on and said, "Find the deer".  Right from the start, Sarah wanted to go through the tall grass in a different direction where I thought the deer had gone.  At the wood line, she again wanted to go through a different area.  I stopped her and took her back to the beginning, figuring she was off the track.  Once again, Sarah wanted to go in a different direction than I wanted her to go.  This time I decided I would see where she was going.   We went back across the field and Sarah entered the woods in the same location she wanted to originally.  She seemed like she knew where she was going, but I was lost and saw no blood.  After a few hundred yards we came to a very thick swampy area.  I thought Sarah must have been taking me for a wild goose chase because I still saw no blood anywhere.  So I decided to start over again.           

As Sarah and I walked back through the woods to the starting point, to my surprise, I saw some blood at the same point Sarah had entered the woods!  So, off we went again!  Sarah took the same track she had taken each time before.  This time Sarah wanted to run, like the deer was just ahead of us. At that pace I wasn't able to find any signs of the deer.  I tied Sarah to a tree and tried to track myself for awhile so I knew if we were going in the right direction or not.  I found the blood trail ended in the swampy area where Sarah wanted to go in the first place.  I went back and got Sarah and we started tracking again. 

Sarah flew down the 100 yards in 5 minutes which took me over 30 minutes to track myself.  Sarah headed into the Marsh; it was thick and hard to move.  It was like a maze.  There were 10-foot high pussy willow bushes every 3 feet!  It was hard to follow Sarah through this maze.  After about 20 minutes of Sarah dragging me through thickets and not seeing any signs of a deer, I was just about to stop again and go back to the truck.  Suddenly, Sarah came upon the deer!  The deer had gone about 500 yards zigzagging as he went.  In the past, when I would have shot a deer like I had shot this one, I would have never found it.  As a result the animal would have been wasted.  Sarah was very proud of herself as she stood over the deer, wagging her tail, making "happy yawns".

A whole week later I hunted in the same area and I saw no deer.  I ended the hunt and went to the truck to get Sarah.  To make a long story short, Sarah tracked that one-week old trail back to the same place we found the deer the week before.  I am proud of my Akita and I guess I will just have to trust her more in the future."