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Field December 2012

5K views 50 replies 11 participants last post by  hollyk 
#1 ·
Happy Holidays!
What is everyone up to?
 
#30 ·
Maybe Reilly is smart enough to know that bumpers can be BORING, whereas birds, ahhh, now that's Heaven! ;)
 
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#31 ·
We went out to Dan's today instead of tomorrow, as our weather is supposed to turn really ugly tomorrow.
Another great time!
First we spent a lot of time working hard on getting the monster boy steady to flush. He does great, until it's a big rooster pheasant.....but of course he had a grand time flushing the birds today. (there were several drills that came first).
Then we finished off with some singles and doubles, he put up some nice hunts including one that we NEVER would have dreamed he would have come up with the bird since he originally over ran it by about 50 yards. But he did finally check up, and quarter back, so we had a lot of high-5's about that!
A fun day. I hate the bad weather on the way. We've been very lucky so far!
 
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#32 ·
Faelan has been stretched to 125-150 yard double T work and is working cold blinds well. He has also been stretched to 20 retrieves working on his perserverance - it is an area where he has shown some weakness and so he is being stretched beyond what he will ever encounter in tests.

Brady is retrieving perhaps 30 yards successfully, flat easy puppy retrieves. He is actually following the rise and fall of the bumpers/birds from the launchers.

Grins
 
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#33 ·
Faelan has been stretched to 125-150 yard double T work and is working cold blinds well.

Grins
During the same period? If I understand your post, your dog is still working his way through T work, but is also running cold blinds?

EvanG
 
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#35 ·
Last Saturday I started adding the diversion bird with our doubles. Jige tends to be a shopper but so far he has only ran after the diversion bird once he did pick up it but then dropped it grabbed his bumper and came in. I gave him a harty NO and we did it again with better results. The terrain has changed with the snow cover so we have been working on better marks in the snow too. I really need to get brighter bumpers as the black and whites are hard to see even for me not sure how Jiges marks them so well, but Jan I am going to find some money to buy us orange ones. I only have 4 orange bumpers.

Also we are tring something new here at home. My son goes out about 100yrd in the field with his dog and I stand at the start point with Jige and we take turns running marks for our dogs while ours has to honor the other dogs run. That has been fun and really good for the dogs. Jige is getting much better if I have to walk out to help ATEM with a hey hey.
 
#37 ·
Yesterday my son threw up a black and white one and against the hazing sky and bare trees I lost it and so did Jige. He was in the general area but about 10ft off I let him hunt for a couple of minutes then I had my son hey hey him back and over a bit. We did that mark again with an orange bumper and he was spot on.

We do alot of honors here Jige is very steady with them. I was standing in the wrong spot for the honor during our first upland training and the bird landed a few feet in front of Jige but he was rock solid. I got a lot of praise from my fellow training partners for that honor.
 
#39 ·
Saturday morning we are planning on having the puppy retriever class indoors for a change. In the afternoon we are meeting up with AKGOLD (John) and his dogs. John is super into field trials. So he is going to work his dogs for us along with our trainer Gwen's dog. Gwen is wanting a pup out of John's boy, so it should be fun for us all to see the dogs. Gwen, my trainer, runs the field trials in the summer. I'm bringing my husband along to see how the dogs are run. He's only hunted mutts on the farm as a kid, so he's never seen how field trials are run. Forecast is zero to 10 above and sunny. Another beautiful winter day in Anchorage. I'll try to remember to get some photos and post here. The birds have all long flown south, so we won't have any distractions with real ones. We are meeting Potters Marsh at 1:30 if anyone is interested. PM me if you are thinking of coming and I'll let you know which parking lot.
 
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#40 ·
Darn, it was -16F at the house when we went to meet AKGOLD (John)and Gwen. I shouldn't complain it was a beautiful day. Forgot to bring a camera and my phone was frozen, so no photos. John's dogs are amazing. They are normally trained down in Oregon and Washington, so their coats were a bit thin for Anchorage weather. We only threw the ducks few times before putting the dogs in the warm truck. Topbrass does a great job breeding pups! Makes me excited for an early spring. I'm planning on continuing with winter training. My dogs do just fine in the cold.
 
#50 ·
Stacey,

The two that ran were both Firemark (Gauge / Darbie) goldens, although I think you would have enjoyed watching Piper (Topbrass) run as well.
I would have enjoyed running her but, she was busy having pups Christmas morning in Oregon.

Thank You for meeting up, hopefully we can meet up another time and actually get a full session in.


John
 
#41 ·
Alaska, you are a much more dedicated trainer than I am! When it gets below 30 degrees, I cancel....
 
#42 ·
FINALLY got out and trained today. It's been like a whole month, seriously. I have got to get my shhhhtuff together for our tests coming up (February).
Yesterday I went out to one of our local fields to just do some tune-up kinda land blinds with Slater since I haven't worked him in a while (I've been obedience training almost every day, hard to stay focused on fieldwork after watching the NOI!). Set up two long but very simple blinds, and he was a Very Bad Dog. Attitude and speed were great but he blew through about 4 whistles, and casting was Not Good. Sorta just freewheelin it out there, wow.
So today we went to Lazy J, set up a long backpile, ran it several times and stopped & cast at various distances, well he must have got the kinks out, he did just fine. We set up a pile near the water to do angle entry/cheating lines drill, and several longer water blinds. Finished up with three long land marks with birds, through a patch of longer cover we happened upon, they turned out to be really great marks and the dogs loved them :)
Sophie is pregnant, she and Fisher should be parents in about 3 weeks :)
At this point she's not that big, noticeable but not huge, so she ran the marks with us.
 
#43 ·
Mark/blind/mark/blind/mark today - quick - in the Forbidden Field. Slater was first up and the first mark was through a gully full of cover. Slater took the first leap in and landed on TOP of a big bramble bush, all 4 feet suspended! Took some clammoring to get out, had to pick his way though it, then tried to come back the same way with the bumper, finally bailed the hauled azz back to me! LOL I thought he was goofing around out there, very unlike him, but Kristin (gunner) told me he was really trying, it was just in a tough spot! He came back covered with burrs and several small thorns on his face, yuck. Everything else went smoothly :) We didn't put the other dogs through that mark!
One of our blinds was pretty tricky, about 125 yds down then up a valley, with a cluster of three large oaks and a hay bale directly in line with the blind. It was impossible for the dog to line it. What was interesting was, it turned into not so much what line the dog took through the obstacles, but where you stopped & handled him to get him to the right spot. Wait too long or blow to early and he was behind a tree or way off line. All the dogs did pretty well, though.
Sophie has 3 weeks to go, she looks like the 4H prize heifer!
 
#44 ·
Mark/blind/mark/blind/mark today - quick - in the Forbidden Field. Slater was first up and the first mark was through a gully full of cover. Slater took the first leap in and landed on TOP of a big bramble bush, all 4 feet suspended! Took some clammoring to get out, had to pick his way though it, then tried to come back the same way with the bumper, finally bailed the hauled azz back to me! LOL I thought he was goofing around out there, very unlike him, but Kristin (gunner) told me he was really trying, it was just in a tough spot! He came back covered with burrs and several small thorns on his face, yuck. Everything else went smoothly :) We didn't put the other dogs through that mark!
One of our blinds was pretty tricky, about 125 yds down then up a valley, with a cluster of three large oaks and a hay bale directly in line with the blind. It was impossible for the dog to line it. What was interesting was, it turned into not so much what line the dog took through the obstacles, but where you stopped & handled him to get him to the right spot. Wait too long or blow to early and he was behind a tree or way off line. All the dogs did pretty well, though.
Sophie has 3 weeks to go, she looks like the 4H prize heifer!
 
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#45 ·
A mixed day at training today.
We headed for Dan's, since it was reasonably mild (31 degrees, right above my cut-off point, LOL) and there was no wind.
Started off with marks in the "clump field". This is a horrible, horrible field but great for training. We had used it once before, so I knew it was going to present problems for the monster boy.
The field is basically mowed, but it has been "sort of" tilled and there are till lines and about every 5 feet there is a big clump of dirt/grass that is lying on the field. There are literally thousands and thousands of these clumps in the field. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your focus) they look like birds lying on the ground, so it's very tough for the dogs.
We ran a fairly simple double first, and Tito did fine with it. The go-bird landed outside of the clump field, and the memory bird was only a short plop about 40 yards away.
Next came a big single in between the 2 previous marks (which were spread pretty far apart), about 125 yards thru the clumps. Of course, Tito ran to a big clump that he thought was the bird, which took him well off the line, then he ran from clump to clump for a few seconds, and then...STOPPED AND POPPED. Just stood there. He was about 20 yards from the bird.
We waited a few seconds to see if he would recover, which he did not. Dan yelled at him to go find the bird, and Tito did.
So we re-ran the same mark, and the little brat popped again, in the same spot, over the same clump. This time Dan calmly walked out there, grabbed Tito by the ear, and "encouraged" him in the direction of the bird. Which Tito ran right over and picked up and came back with it.
The theory was, if he is going to stop and look for help, he is NOT going to enjoy the help he gets.
Then we turned the winger 180 degrees and ran another big single, and this time although Tito got distracted by the clumps he put up a great hunt and stayed with it until he found the bird. So hopefully <fingers crossed> he realized that stopping and asking for help was going to be a lot more unpleasant than just hunting until he found the bird.
The next mark was about 100 yards but fell outside of the clump field. This one went across the 4 wheeler road, into some fairly low (about 6 inch) cover on the other side of the track. About 10 yards to the left of where the mark fell was some dense cover, about back high for Tito.
The point was to be sure Tito did NOT run the 4 wheeler road. Duh, of course he didn't. Tito doesn't do that. No, he headed toward the mark, crossed the road on a nice angle like he was supposed to, and then headed toward the cover. Which is what Tito ALWAYS does.
Dan said that in all his years of training, and all of the dogs he has trained, he has never seen a dog consistently head for cover the way Tito does (it was NOT a compliment). He said most dogs take the easy way out, and most would have run the road because of the angle. No, not my dog. He takes the hardest route possible, into very dense cover.
He hunted around in the cover briefly, then came out closer to the mark, seemed unsure, headed back into the cover, then came back out and found the bird. A very, very nice hunt with no popping. We were very pleased with him, even though he headed for the cover because he was able to recover on his own and was successful.
So on that note, we ended marks and did some upland stuff. We used homing pigeons and quail.
The monster boy is getting pretty good on being steady to flush now. Very good progress on that considering we've only done 2 short sessions. He sometimes will sort of "squat" rather than fully sit, but he's getting the idea very nicely.
And Dan told me that Tito really, really needs to do more than 8 or 10 marks per week (the ones we do at Dan's) if I expect to see meaningful progress in a decent time frame. Sigh.
 
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#46 ·
Went to a new place to train today. It was sorta a big waste of time today but it will pay off. Local club members who winter in FL and summer in like, South Dakota or some where crazy like that. Anyways they live about 1 1/2 hrs east of Gainesville on 120 acres, and have about 15 ponds, all little ponds in varying shapes surrounded by cover, built up roads, little mounds, the works, it is amazing!!!
So Kristin and I met there, she has trained there before, we met up with the land owner, who says well since it's cold (50º) lets do some land first to warm them up (as we stare lovingly at the ponds...)
That took all afternoon. Three marks in a flat field and two blinds. Hmmm. Then it got dark and we went home.
I'm like, OK I could have done that 10 minutes from my house, but hey it's a foot in the door to go use their water.
 
#47 ·
Anney, are you out there huntin' down those poor birds during Christmas? You big meanie :p:
 
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#48 ·
Yes, those ruthless evil birds, they deserve it!!!
 
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#49 · (Edited)
Got out yesterday to train. Lining drill, marks with blinds practicing under the arc and backsiding the wingers, then a easy triple.
I trained last week with the Pro, part of the set up was a splashing water blind. It was maybe 40 yards of land , 30 yards of splashing water, then 10 yards of land to the blind. A series of singles had been thrown first. The last two had one thrown in the water to the right of the line to the blind and one thrown on land to the left. Winter had a nice initial line for about 20 yards, but then started sliding to the left and a late whistle let her get way too left, she was at the waters edge. Right angle back caused her to run the waters edge right but not drive back. Whistled her in from the waters edge and gave her a big verbal back and she drove straight back into the water. She faded to the right about halfway through the water, toward the old fall, a left angle back, she scalloped, whistle, left angled back put her on the blind. Reran it and she lined it. Here is the lecture I heard. "Define the line to the blind before you send her. When she started slicing left you should have put a whistle on her, even if it was only 20 yards out. If you would have stopped her there and given that big verbal back then you would have avoided all that mess at the waters edge. Set your line and stop wishing and hoping."
 
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