Our recent July trip to the Gobi had us checking up on the pups we placed there 3 weeks earlier. We set out in our dependable Russian Furgon, appropriately named "Ivan the Terrible", for we could always depend on it to breakdown. Nonetheless Doug, Greg, our translator and myself confidently headed to the GPS locations marking there Ger locations...

Alas when we showed up to an empty mountain valley, we quickly remembered the Nomads and their tendency to move... After several stops at neighboring gers to ask directions, we eventually found our old friend Sugar!

Sugar is the community leader for his district and showed a lot of promise as a host for our project dog. He had previously owned dogs that would follow the herd and has won many awards for his husbandry practices.

So visiting him again was exciting, we looked forward to seeing his progress with the pup who was close to 7 months old at this point.

 As we rolled up to his ger, we immediately spotted the pup hanging among the sheep. And after saying our hello's and sain baina uu's, we watched sugar herd his livestock to the pasture with our pup walking in and around the sheep.

It has been really difficult to work with the herders here. They do not take advice from young foreign strangers often, especially if they think they know more then you. This has been one of the most difficult hurdles to overcome. Seeing Sugar using his new pup in an effective working manor was incredible and we are hoping we can rely on his influence and wisdom to pass our message along to other herders in the area and maybe all over Mongolia.