Popped down to Letchworth State Park this morning for a Team training.

Today's task was to bring some of the new members up to speed on their compass skills.  Letchworth State Park was created back in the 30's with the creation of the Mount Morris Dam.  This was a public works (WPA) program to control the Genesee River and keep the city of Rochester from its spring floods.

 Well, the dam was doing its damnedest to keep back the spring flood.  And quite a flood it is.  We've had quite a bit of rain here in Western NY over the last few days.  So far, no danger of breaching the dam but it's working overtime.

 We weren't training dogs today but I brought Elphie down with me to get some running time in and try to get her back in shape after the long winter.

 I took one of the new recruits off through the woods after spending an hour or so teaching her how to plot points and determine declination and distance from the map and compass.

As we were heading to our second point one of the other teams passed and advised me that there was a critter in our path and perhaps it would be prudent to leash Elphie for a bit.  So, given the description of this critter I decided to comply.  About 100 yards further on there it was just meandering through the woods checking out fallen logs in all of its striped glory.  As this animal didn't seem to be concerned about us we let it go on its merry way.  I was certainly glad that we didn't encounter this SKUNK with another scenario.  Whew.

 For those of you not quite so lucky..... A Bottle of peroxide mixed with a box of baking soda and a 1/4 cup of Dawn dish detergent will pretty effectively remove the scent of Skunk from your dog. That is when your nose has gotten sufficiently overloaded so that you can get close to the dog.

 Happy Easter Folks.