i thought this had been cancelled this year,glad to hear it went ahead and you enjoyed it. it seems like a great ifea for a comp to me but doznt attract the intrest it deserves.
I wonder if some of the "serious " trial folk doubt their own ability to shoot over their own dogs ? It certainly isn't easy keeping a hot retriever to heel while an equally hot spaniel chucks birds up to be fired at right in front of you !
The part that worried me from a steadiness point of view was that much of the hunting was done among some pretty heavy ferns , in places they were chest high. Keeping in touch with the hunting spaniel was difficult and handling the retriever if it needed it was difficult too in that stuff. Even the retrrievers weren't tall enough to see over the tops of the ferns.
I get no real game steadiness training for my spaniels at all so I am pretty certain they would have ran in under battle conditions. I will try to improve on that for next year. I think I might be able to "borrow" a lab pup from a friend and train it for this event , if it is good enough I will also consider trialing it.
One of the handlers yesterday had "borrowed" both the lab and the spaniel for the day . He shot a pheasant that the spaniel had flushed and both dogs took off like rockets . The spaniel , which in this event never gets to retrieve, decided that if the lab wanted a bird it could find its own ! The spaniel got there first and proudly strutted back with the bird and we all wanted to vote it as being the best retrieve of the day but were disallowed because of the labs only rule where retrieves were concerned.
Both of these dogs belonged to the man who dreamed up and organised this event . He is a pro dog trainer and he'd trained both of those dogs , he took a hell of a lot of leg pulling following that mass run in !
I spent a large part of the day talking about competing next year . I agreed I could loan out a wild and wooly spaniel for the day if someone would bring me an equally wild and wooly lab ! That's one way to scupper the opposition - give him your worst dog to run .......while he gives you his !
Bill T. _________________ Breed for the best - train for the rest.
I spent today picking up with Buck and 3 cockers. For two of those cockers it was there first day ever working on game and retrieving game. By days end they had both retrieved pheasants and ducks and Dax had swam out 50 yards into a loch and retrieved a very live pheasant that was trying to swim out to an island. He saw a bird fall near the edge of a wood about 80 yards away . I sent him and he came back with a live duck.
I now have enough picking up dogs to last me a while.
Bucks first retrieve today was on a mallard drake that landed a long way behind us.........over the horizon in fact. I have no way of knowing where it landed after it cleared the horizon. Buck went out after it and into some terrible cover. He came back with it about 4 -5 minutes later. I wish I could have seen Buck hunt that ground for that duck. It must have been quite a hunt.
By the end of the day, although I had experienced several hectic moments , I had had a very good time .
Roll on my next picking up day.
Bill T. _________________ Breed for the best - train for the rest.
I handed Penny the cocker back over to her owner today as a trained dog that still needs experience on game. She made a promising start yesterday at that shoot and I'm pretty sure she will just continue to get even better.
Her owner is pleased with her and offered me a choice of 3 other dogs to train for him. I went there intending to come home with a lab pup . The pup was just 4 months old and needed a bit more of a puppyhood before being trained. I was offered a 4 month old springer pup but the same applied to him . I was left with the 3rd choice ,an absolute hellhound of a cocker pup which at just 5 months old has enough self confidence to bog off up to 150 yards all on her own !
She is an Irish born and bred dog with a lot of fire in her. Retrieving might be a problem , she will grab at a moving object but drops it again pretty quickly after running off in the opposite direction from me with it !
I was asked what I would do about that and I replied that I might try C.T. type training . I ended up giving a quick demo using Buck of training for a C.T. 'd delivery. Buck was sniffing and peeing all over the place and not concentrating as hard as he usually does . He still did all that was asked of him however and both kennel maids agreed that it was a pretty good performance from him considering that two bitches in season belonging to the kennels had just been out peeing all over the place !
Poor Buck , no wonder he had difficulty concentrating ! I am amazed he behaved as well as he did !
Bill T. _________________ Breed for the best - train for the rest.
Words bloody well fail me ! I thought I'd heard just about all of the reasons for getting a dog but a chance meeting this morning proved me wrong.
I had taken the 3 cockers plus Buck for a walk and a bit of training up on U.F.O. Hill and was on my way back to the car through the woods when I saw a lady with a weimy. It was offlead and she had no control over him. I put the 5 month old cocker pup on the lead, sat the other two cockers and sat Buck and I moved well off the path to do it to allow the lady and her dog to pass without any trouble. I could see through the trees that her dog was still coming my way even though she was calling frantically on him.
I thought there might be trouble for Buck does not like weimies. Up it came hackles and tail up in the air .....but Buck wasn't bothered ??? It was a 9 month old puppy and Buck did not consider him to be a serious threat so I allowed Buck to get up from his sit to investigate it . In seconds the two of them were playing together very happily.
I spoke to the very pleasant lady owner of the weimy and in as friendly a manner as possible I tried to warn her that in just a few months time her dog would no longer be considered a puppy to be played with by other dogs and a very serious fight might happen if her dog ran up to others in that manner.
She wanted to know how I trained my dogs - who were all charging through the woods merrily by this time - to recall to whistle in the way that they did. I explained how to train a recall as far as I could . Then she wanted advice about retrieving, she said her dog did not retrieve but did have a squeaky toy he loved. I pulled a clicker and a tennis ball out of my pocket and showed her Buck getting the ball as a reward . Then told her that the squeaky toy could be her dogs reward and demo'd Buck doing first recalls while targeting the palm of my hand and then retrieves of a dummy with the tennis ball as the reward following the "click."
She then told me she already had a clicker but her trainer had never shown her how to use it . Out of curiousity I asked who her trainer was and was informed he was a "DOG WHISPERER" in Edinburgh . I rolled my eyes in disgust ! I am sick of these bloody dog whisperers that have spread like a nasty rash in the last few years !
The lady told me the usual things about her training and I told her that it very obviously did not work outside a hall . She agreed and asked to be trained by me instead. I was considering it when she blethered on that she had bought her weimy because his colour matched her new leather 3 piece suite !
That did it for me - I made excuses and left.
Bill T. _________________ Breed for the best - train for the rest.
That's one I've not heard before I had a neighbour whose hair matched her car, which matched her cats But, buying a dog to match a sofa certainly takes the biscuit
Quote:
I tried to warn her that in just a few months time her dog would no longer be considered a puppy to be played with by other dogs and a very serious fight might happen if her dog ran up to others in that manner.
I wish you would come down here, Bill, and tell some of the people around here that. Around here, everything is the fault of the dog, who is approached even if the one approaching is snarling and dodging cars on the main road before latching on to the on-lead dog, who is ignoring the approaching dog and, even when the approached dog continues to ignore the snarling/latched-on dog, it's still the approached dog's fault .. . It's very frustrating...
We really enjoyed those videos, Bill. It was great to see all the dogs 'in the fur'.
Thanks Sue , I will try to get my son to make another video of my mutts but getting him to commit to a definite time and date ain't easy !
I'm just off the phone . I've been asked to steward at a trial down where they all speak funny - England ! I'd have loved to have done it but that would be even worse than competing in a trial. I'm just not up to trialing any more .........it is bloody frustrating ! I am sitting here with a dog that can do all that is needed - and sometimes a bit more ! And I can't walk well enough for long enough to run him !
Buck just doesn't get birds shot from off his points anyway so there is a very good chance that he'd run in when that happened at a trial . I still greatly fancy chancing my luck though......... ? Buck could yet be the only dog of mine that has ever ran in at a trial - what a claim to fame !
Bill T. _________________ Breed for the best - train for the rest.
that she had bought her weimy because his colour matched her new leather 3 piece suite !
Bill T.
Unfortunately the Wei's colour has been it's downfall too often in the past. People like that just don't realise that they have a big strong intelligent dog, and unfortunately you get breeders who are just happy to take the money and run, rather than ask too many questions as to why someone wants a Wei. _________________ Liz
I am one of those odd man out folk who don't like the weimaraners colour. I just cant see what's so fascinating about grey as a colour. I like the weimies shape but not their colour.
When talking to that dogs owner I felt an amost overwhelming urge to ask her if she'd change her breed when she changed her rooms decor !
Strangely enough considering I had black labs for quite a few years , I don't like black G.S.P. 's much either. This may be because every black G.S.P. I've seen out working - which isn't many - hasn't been up to much . Probably the handlers fault but that's the sort of thing that sticks in your head and which can put you off an entire breed. I like every other colour or mix of colours I've ever seen in G.S.P. 's but not black.
My apologies to those of you who may own a damn good black G.S.P. but I've only seen wild , out of control ones and they all - for some reason - seemed to be lacking in retrieve instinct too.......... I dislike making judgements based on a dogs colour for it is probably the owners that are at fault.
I know of yet another black G.S.P. not too far from me and its owner tells me that it too is not easy to train. I know this man has had good dogs in the past but this one has him stumped !
Can the ability to work or the willingness to work with a handler be passed down along with a colour gene ? Can the reverse be true and a dog be more likely to be a difficult to train due to its colour ?
I don't know.
..............................................................................................
I had my dogs - 1 G.S.P. and 2 cockers out picking up today at a shoot I haven't been on before. My dogs were pretty bad today especially Charlie the cocker. He would not sit still . I could feel my temper bubbling furiously at times as he crept from his sit or - even worse - when he bogged off to do a bit of self hunting. All of my dogs were indulging in a bit of self hunting but Charlie was the worst ! He is a very "hot" little dog of the kind that a serious spaniel trialer would love to work. That same determination to get on and "do" something worked against him today and it worked against my other dogs too.
Buck likes to get about a bit too at shoots but today he went over the score - I watched him find an unshot pheasant over the far side of a river from me , flush it to my whistled command ........then chase the bird at least 40 yards when it flushed ! Buck hasn't done that for at least 2 years !
Dax is the softest and gentlest of my dogs yet even he went out of control a couple of times and was the last dog to return from end of drive sweeps several times.
The problems today were partly due to rotten training or at least to training done on dummies and not on game. I just do not have the game to train the dogs on.
Another cause of the bother today was the fact that the game supply was a bit on the scarce side, the leaves were still on the trees making flying birds very hard to see and the guns themselves were very rusty !
I scored my lowest total of birds retrieved ever on a picking up day . One bird ! The retrieve itself was an absolute cracker , the bird had fallen dead into the very steep sided river valley. The sides of the valley was a sea of rhodie bushes and some fir trees . A young , fit man could have ,maybe got through it but I couldn't . The bird had fallen about 50 -60 yards behind me and down into the depths of the valley where the river - just a big stream really - ran through.
I knew this bird was going to be very difficult to collect so I sent the dogs off into the rhodie jungle at staggered intervals because done in that way the dogs would all go their own ways and be more likely to find the bird.
They were gone for about 6 or 7 minutes then I heard noises deep in the cover . Back came the dogs , Charlie had the bird but Dax was disputing its ownership and was hanging on grimly to a leg !
Buck never had a bird in his mouth all day . I think the main thing wrong with my dogs today is that for dogs like them there just wasn't enough to do. One of the drives meant keeping my dogs sitting for a full hour ! .......... For nothing !
Next time I go I've been told it will be an "inside" day with lots more birds expected . I hope the trees have lost a lot more leaf by then too.
Bill T. _________________ Breed for the best - train for the rest.
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The spaniel got there first and proudly strutted back with the bird and we all wanted to vote it as being the best retrieve of the day but were disallowed because of the labs only rule where retrieves were concerned. 
even if the one approaching is snarling and dodging cars on the main road before latching on to the on-lead dog, who is ignoring the approaching dog and, even when the approached dog continues to ignore the snarling/latched-on dog, it's still the approached dog's fault .. . It's very frustrating...
