a short video of training last night, things didnt start well as the first field we went to the cattle had been in and lexi was more interested in eating cow poo than quartering the land , so we shifted fields and cast her out, now theres no game here it was just for training and the next she went on point?? i walked to her poiting a mouse :doh: still she hounered the flush and sat as the mouse scurried away right in front of her nose
the next half and hour was spent trying to stop her from returning to hunt her mouse :brickwall:
when i fianly managed this i got a clip of her dropping on the whistle and a retreive, which was thrown over her whilst on the drop, we finished on this note as we very nearly fell out last night
i hadnt been happy with her drop so had been reading up on des o,neils blog about teaching a dog to drop, this is her second night practicing it and i think she has got the idea
a little update on Lexi, i feel i have hunted her a little much and this has been to the detrement of her retrieves, as she switched off a little and this combined with my over zealous snatching of the dummy on her return led to her dropping her retrieves at my feet .
so the last few months have seen no hunting, i know she will hunt and hold a point so i concentratred on her retrieves, thats all i have done is retrieves and more retrieves .
with some advice from Bill and another member off tbhis forum, i did this with the aid of the click and treat method to get her to hold onto her retrieve, i was initially very sceptical of this, i had heard about it but just didnt fancy trying it , but i was desparate, anyway to cut a long story short she is now im glad to say back to her good self and retrieving well to hand, not every time but 19 out of 20 times and the times she does miss its due to me or her not getting our timing quite right, she is by no way perfect but with some more work i fell we will get there!!
i was pretty peed off by this and its not been easy by any means, but fingers crossed she will contiue to improve and we can carry on as normal then
a few snaps from today.....
with no hunting Lexi has become point desparate, she will point anything with feathers on now
she has a lovely point imo, she is not the only one who has missed it
a few retrieves with the dummy
and then some with the dummy with pheasant wings etc attached to try and get her used to feathers etc in her mouth, she did this no problem which pleased me
I had a fantastic day today, it was shoot day on our little stand and walk shoot, and as i let the dogs out of there runs at 8 am there was a hard frost covering the ground, i went back in the house to pack my guns and gear and then decided i would take Lexi, i wanst sure if she was ready yet and was i doing the right thing but loaded her up to , even driving out i was questioning what i was doing.
the first drive i was a flank gun and i left lexi in the truck, i was lucky enough to drop a hen bird from this drive and as i was near the truck i decided to get lexi and try her on a retrieve once the drive was over as all the other guns and dogs were some way away, i sent her out in the area of cover where it fell and she was soon on a line, she made straight in and with a little encouragemant pciked and brought back a very much alive hen pheasant to hand superb, as i was having some issues with cold game! i was delighted, i dispatched the pheasant and we made back to the truck.
it was then our turn to beat so i stuck to the outsides of the beats away from the other dogs and tried to find some birds for some of the guns on the outskirts, we found a few and she pointed nicely and flushed on command, a few were shot by the waiting guns from her points and she sat to flush and remained steady to the falling birds, i didnt let her retrieve any of these birds, she reamained very steady and obeadiant despite the numerous shots and birds about .
i took her then and we stood behind the guns and wathced for any shot birds, again she remained steady and didnt break from heel to some birds falling in her view, although none were suitable for a retrieve and the guns had dogs and were closer to the fallen birds, despite no retrieves it was a valuable experiance for her.
the last drive i was shooting and the last drive of the day i decdied to take her to the peg with me, again i was an outside gun, as i made my way to the peg the beaters were some way away so i decided to take in a strip of cover in the hope of a point for her, almost straight away she locked onto a bird, i walked up behind her and asked her to flush the bird as i was next to her, she did so and a cock pheasant exploded from the rashes, i brought my gun up and fired, i missed excitemant got the better of me i fired with the second and the bird tumbled down, i looked at my side to lexi and she was sitting but staring straight at the cock bird flapping about 50 yards in front, i made her wait for about 30-40 seconds before sending her th fetch it, she straightlined to it and scooped it up with no fuss and came straight back and deliverd it perfectly to hand again alive, i was by this point elated i think a few more birds came over me that last drive, i didnt hit any and i didnt care, i had shot my first bird over my pups point and she had retrieved it to hand superbly, i had been waiting for this day for 10 months now and it was worth the wait, to top the day off we had a bag of 65 birds a record for our little shoot, made up of about 20 members where we do all the work ourselves, a superb day out! :dance:
Lexi with her first pointed and retrieved pheasnt shot by myself
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, so we shifted fields and cast her out, now theres no game here it was just for training and the next she went on point?? i walked to her poiting a mouse :doh: still she hounered the flush and sat as the mouse scurried away right in front of her nose 
.
excitemant got the better of me 
