The Countertop Chronicles

I made three visits down to the trainer this week, Last Saturday’s was not very productive, thanks VDOT, but I was determined to work with the dog. I found time to do that on Tuesday, and left the office early to make the drive down. We spent about 2 hours with him.

Rex is coming along nicely. He’s turning into not only an incredibly intelligent lab but a picture perfect lab - with the height and dimensions of an American field dog and the gorgeous blocky lines of an English show dog. Jack Jagoda and the folks at Deep Run really know how to bring out the best in a litter of pups. My trainer, who has a gorgeous black lab puppy 1 week older than Rex has consistently called Rex smarter and better looking than his dog: a perfect lab.

We’ll see if I can turn this terrific foundation into a field champion and hunting master.

Anyway, on Tuesday we took out 3 dogs - Rex, the trainers black lab pup Dylan, and his 3 year old German wirehaired retriever who’s name I forget (Sandy??) and worked on double inbound retrieves.

We would switch each dog off to work the retrieve, with the other two staked out to the left and right. This worked to train the dogs both to be obedient until it was their turn as well as to get the dogs generally excited but able to maintain discipline.

Trainer went out about 30 yards and blew the duck call, then threw dummies to the right and left. On my command (and we worked on both my command and my signalling) we would send dogs out IN A STRAIGHT LINE to retrieve dummy and immediatly return it to hand and then come to a heel/sit position for direction for the next retrieve. Dogs had this down cold, but it took some work with me to get my motions and direction down. We discussed pack theory some, and how dogs learn/respond and take command in wild (and his experience training wolves compared to training coyotes) and how that relates to my role as team leader. We also worked on the form of my hand signals and my presentation to the dog, as well as little things like clearly demarking for him the difference between work and play (attention/at ease).

Yesterday, I woke up at 4:00 am, packed the car (was heading down to the Georgia coast for vacation) and was on the road by 4:30 to meet the trainer. Hit traffic, at 5:00 am, on I95 in Stafford (VDOT’s 511 traffic info called it “congestion from volume,” they had closed 3 lanes and an exit down for construction/re-paving”), and made it to the trainers just before 7:00 am.

Had another client there (with an english pointer) and Doug anounced that he saw the quail moving and wanted to get the dogs on em quick. We immeditly let the dogs out - Rex, Dylan, the german wirehair, the english pointer, and a springer spaniel. Had them quarter the field, crossed a stream, and drove the quail into a thick brush. Dogs then rouded up the birds, got real birdy, and started to flush them directly at us one at a time on Dougs command.

Nothing as pretty as a covey of quail launching. Really, all the upland game birds are gorgeous on take off.

Afterward, we went back up to the kennel, put a bunch of pigeons out in traps in the brush, and then worked the dogs on them, releasing and shooting them, and sending dogs out one at a time to retrieve.

Very good day, worked the pups hard, and was back on the road by 9:30 am (finally made it down to Georgia at 5:30 pm).