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What a blast!
Because it was at Dan's, and Dan was in charge, it was very well controlled and there was never any chaos nor any danger to the dogs, so that was a huge relief. I had been told some of them can get pretty wild.
There were 15 shooters, and they seemed to be really nice guys. Everyone courteous, cautious, and good to be around.
I was partnered with Dan, which basically meant I tagged around after him.
There were 7 gun stations (pegs) and we stood behind one set of shooters. The pegs were about 90 yards from the tower, in a circle. After a certain number of birds, Dan would blow the horn for shooting to stop, and the shooters would rotate one peg to the right, while the retrievers would rotate one peg to the left. That way you got different shooters and different areas of the field.
I worked on steadiness with Tito more than anything else, and the boy really did me proud. Even with all the guns going (and wow, they made a lot of noise and there was a lot of simultaneous shooting!) and birds falling, he was quite steady. A couple of times Dan signaled for another handler to have their dog pick up a bird that fell quite close to where we were, rather than send Tito for it. He said he never sends his dog on the short retrieves as it encourages breaking, he lets a dog that is farther away pick it up.
We didn't do any handling, the cover was chest high to ME, so way over the dogs' heads. All we could do was point them in the general direction of where the bird went down, and let them hunt it up.
Tito had a great time. There were 120 birds shot, only 70 retrieved, each dog only picked up about 10 birds. Tito picked up fewer because we were very selective about what he got sent for.
But he did me proud. He was rock steady, went like a shot when sent, found the birds, chased down the cripples, and brought the birds back to me. I would say he is now truly a hunting dog, he would be a pleasure to take hunting.
A pair of shooters asked if they could have a photo taken with "the beautiful dog"
. They had Tito hold a big rooster pheasant, they knelt down next to him, stacked a bunch of dead birds in front of him, and had me take several photos. I was a bit tickled by it!
It was a good time, and I would love to do it again!
Because it was at Dan's, and Dan was in charge, it was very well controlled and there was never any chaos nor any danger to the dogs, so that was a huge relief. I had been told some of them can get pretty wild.
There were 15 shooters, and they seemed to be really nice guys. Everyone courteous, cautious, and good to be around.
I was partnered with Dan, which basically meant I tagged around after him.
There were 7 gun stations (pegs) and we stood behind one set of shooters. The pegs were about 90 yards from the tower, in a circle. After a certain number of birds, Dan would blow the horn for shooting to stop, and the shooters would rotate one peg to the right, while the retrievers would rotate one peg to the left. That way you got different shooters and different areas of the field.
I worked on steadiness with Tito more than anything else, and the boy really did me proud. Even with all the guns going (and wow, they made a lot of noise and there was a lot of simultaneous shooting!) and birds falling, he was quite steady. A couple of times Dan signaled for another handler to have their dog pick up a bird that fell quite close to where we were, rather than send Tito for it. He said he never sends his dog on the short retrieves as it encourages breaking, he lets a dog that is farther away pick it up.
We didn't do any handling, the cover was chest high to ME, so way over the dogs' heads. All we could do was point them in the general direction of where the bird went down, and let them hunt it up.
Tito had a great time. There were 120 birds shot, only 70 retrieved, each dog only picked up about 10 birds. Tito picked up fewer because we were very selective about what he got sent for.
But he did me proud. He was rock steady, went like a shot when sent, found the birds, chased down the cripples, and brought the birds back to me. I would say he is now truly a hunting dog, he would be a pleasure to take hunting.
A pair of shooters asked if they could have a photo taken with "the beautiful dog"
. They had Tito hold a big rooster pheasant, they knelt down next to him, stacked a bunch of dead birds in front of him, and had me take several photos. I was a bit tickled by it!It was a good time, and I would love to do it again!
