Teen Counselors

Rachelle (TC) and Helen washing dishes.
 I told you that  our campers are awesome!

Our Teen Counselors(TC's) are awesome. They know this, but some of you may not. Actually all of our campers are awesome, but the TC’s are awesome with an extra bit of responsibility added in. The idea of our TC program is to not only to make our jobs easier and camp better, but also to give our kids an opportunity to develop their teaching and leadership skills in an environment where they will succeed. In some cases, the TC program also prepares campers to be actual counselors when they age out of 4-H.  This last responsibility may eventually become a problem:) TC’s are expected to set an example at camp, they are the ones that we expect to make sure new campers feel welcome, the tag system makes sense to everyone, dishes get done, and the cabins stay clean. They also help make sure that campers and dogs are ready and prepared for activities. Teen Counselors are also asked to prepare a lesson of their choice and teach this lesson.

All important things, but there is one important, and possibly unknown reason we keep them around. Pranks! If you haven’t figure it out, we love pranks at camp. We like the atmosphere they encourage, the mix of seriousness, competitiveness and fun. Pranks started out as red cabin vs blue cabin, the history of them is worthy of a separate post. But somehow they spread to camper vs counselor, which created a slight problem. We could have some input on cabin vs cabin pranks. But the whole idea of counselor vs camper pranks is that we have NO IDEA what the plan is. Enter the teen counselors. They are all returning campers, over the age of 15, and there are two per cabin. Some have been to camp for as many as five years. They have figure out what are acceptable pranks, and what are not, and have earned our trust.

I won’t ruin it for you, but when you read the (eventual) pranks blog post you will see why our teen counselors are awesome, and how they did a wonderful job planning and managing a prank that will be talked about for years, while still keeping everyone safe.  Our teen counselors are awesome and we keep them around for a reason! And no, it is not just because they can make excellent lemonade, although that might be what they’d tell you.

Teen Counselor Megan helping Cassady design a course

Photos and video courtesy of Liz Bailey

Blindfolded Cupcake decorating

What happens when you combine cupcakes, colored frosting, candy, more colored frosting and blindfolds? A mess. And a LOT of laughing. And more mess. Possibly with some accents and bonnets thrown in. Oh wait, and did I mention that there is a mess?

But beyond that mess is a purpose, and a history. The first time we did this activity was with pizza, three years ago. The campers worked in pairs or small groups. One was blindfolded, the other gave directions. We gave them very little instruction initially, just that the learner could not be touched or physically guided in anyway and that they must stay blindfolded. Blue cabin had four or five pizzas to make, but because of a cookie sheet shortage, two of these pizzas were going to be made in a pan with 1” sides.  Dough was spread out, a camper was blindfolded, a few more instructed and we sat back and watched. The first few went about as well as you could imagine, with a very interesting distribution of ingredients, but they were still edible. The problem came when blue cabin got to the pans with sides. Sauce was poured and then more sauce, until finally someone convinced the “learner” to stop. Apparently the lack of side on normal pan had been some sort of cue, and without it information of when to stop was missing.

At this point in time the campers realized that they needed to remove some sauce, and gave instructions to Abby on how to get sauce back into the bowl. Unfortunately for them, they were lacking in clarity, and although the scooping off occurred for a few minutes, it was all done with the wrong side of the spoon. Frustration occurred,  and they decided to just go on and add the cheese. Needless to say, the “pizza soup”, as we refer to it was not edible, but a good lesson was learned. Clear communication is important! If the learner is not understanding something it is not their fault. Change the way something is being taught or explained instead of getting angry or frustrated.

The purpose of blindfolded cupcake decorating is the same, but it allows for more creativity and an increased challenge. And the campers love it, to the point that we were going to decorate “fancy cupcakes” instead this year instead of blindfolded cupcakes like last year, but they refused. Watch the video below of Rachelle giving instructions to Helen. Notice the clear directions and the focus despite the distractions and accent.

Agility Scrabble

Every year at camp we try to come up with new, creative, yet still useful and fun activities. Some go over well, some fail miserably, but occasionally there is a new activity that becomes a much loved tradition. Dumbbell throwing contest, blindfolded cupcake decorating, blindfolded obstacle course, and making pizzas all fit into this category. Agility scrabble has yet to prove itself long term, but given the response of the campers this year it has potential to be added to this category. The game is obviously based off of scrabble, and is the result of a thrift store trip where Abigail and Karin were unable to turn down a $2 game of Jenga. While stuck inside due to a bad storm this winter, a fit of extreme boredom led us to defacing our game to create a parkour version of Jenga, which led to obedience Jenga, and finally after some brainstorming, agility Scrabble. 

We took a Scrabble Junior board (because it was $1.79), added the typical Scrabble words (triple word score, double word score, double letter score) and wrote the name of agility obstacles on back of the scrabble tiles. Each agility obstacle had a point value, with weaves being the highest value (10 points), and jumps being the lowest (1 point). 

Campers were divided into two teams of fairly equal experience. (In our case this was red cabin and blue cabin as we love to encourage cabin competition at camp!) Like in “normal” Scrabble, each team drew seven tiles from the box from which they would attempt to create a “word” or sequence of agility obstacles that connected with the tiles already played. Here is where the fun twist to this game comes into play. To be able to leave their tiles on the board (and thus collect the much desired points!) one dog/handler team had to perform the sequence on the obstacles how they were set up in the ring. If they were successful, they received the points and the tiles stayed on the board. If they made a mistake, no points were awarded and the tiles were removed. Every dog/handler pair on the team had to run a sequence once before anyone could go a second time. 

Like we generally do with new activities, we only scheduled a 30 minute time slot for agility Scrabble. We like to keep activities that could be epic failures (older campers will remember carting...) short in the event that it is going horribly. This makes it easy to end the activity before dogs, campers, and counselors become frustrated. NINETY MINUTES later, we realized that this was NOT the case with agility Scrabble as we had to on-the-fly come up with a new end to the game.  We feared that if we didn’t limit the campers to two runs apiece, they would play Scrabble until either they or their dogs were incapable of moving any longer.

What we realized is that this game did not just encourage the handler to have an honest assessment of their own dog’s capability and design an appropriate level course, it also encourages a never seen before level of intensity. The campers were analyzing the dog and handler, the fluency of their behaviors, how risky a course was, if it was worth the risk, and how they could get the most points with the obstacles they had. Dog camp tends to get intense, but the level of focus, discussion and analyzing was impressive even by our standards. As the game got closer to our designated 2 rounds finishing point, teams went for longer and longer sequences, but still within the limits of the dog/handler pair. At one point towards the end of the game Rachelle, with her dog C-ATCH Sander, completed a tricky, but high-point sequence and said “I think I was more nervous for that run than I was during my C-ATCH run.” All of the campers learned important lessons in how dog’s behaviors can change or even fall completely apart under pressure that is similar to what is felt when trialing. It came down to the final run, with red cabin catching up from behind and barely beating blue cabin by nine points. It is a game definitely worth playing again and hopefully we have stumbled upon a new favorite camp game for years to come!