Gundog training

Last night's training session was..err..eventful shall we say! In a good way mind, we just got through quite a few exercises and did a lot of new things so we were both pooped afterwards!

Jet was introduced to cold game for the first time (cold game = fancy term for pigeon that's been taken out of the freezer....how lovely). Jet was hilarious to watch - he was absolutely fascinated when he was shown the bird and was very excited about it, however, he was more than a little reluctant to hold it in his mouth! When it was cast out on the ground, I sent him out to retrieve it. He ran to get it and then did everything but pick it up! He danced around it, reared up at it and pulled faces at it (Rach (E), if you're reading this, I mean the sort of faces he used to pull at a piece of apple in our office..!). Long story short there was much bounding about, but all the while he made sure he didn't actually touch the bird! I am assured his first response is nothing to be concerned about; more often than not dogs have to be gradually introduced to feathers before they'll confidently pick up a bird, so we'll have to work on that one.

Later on in the session we worked on the dogs' steadiness to fur. One of the instructors had a dummy covered in rabbit skin on the end of a long line which she dragged around where the dogs were sitting (all sounds a bit gruesome really doesn't it. Sorry.). You should have seen their faces! All eyes were on stalks! To begin with Jet could barely contain himself and although he remained in a sit (very good), he was squeeking with excitement (the great Jessie!). As the exercise was repeted he became more relaxed and while he remained intrigued, he bore less resemblance to a coiled spring than he had done intially.

What else did we have to do...ah yes, we had to work on recalls from a fair distance across the field with the dogs positioned so that they were running past one another to return to their respective handlers. Again we completed this task without any problems. Another exercise was to leave the dogs in a sit, spaced out around the top end of the field. We then left the dogs and walked away to a different part of the field and were instruced, one by one, to recall our dogs (using the whistle) whilst the remaining dogs had to stay where they were. First time around Jet gave a text book performance, keeping his eyes on me and not repsonding to any of the other whisltes, just mine (isn't it amazing that they can differentiate between all those whistles?). On the second attempt, Jet looked to run to me when someone else blew their whistle to recall their labrador....so I used the stop whistle that we've been working on over the past few weeks and he responded immediately - (brilliant!), staying where he was until it was his turn to be recalled (but when I finally blew the whistle he hesitated first to make sure it really was his turn, bless him)!!

Th other dogs in our class are: Kougar the English Springer, Billy the working cocker spaniel, Maizie and Porsche - both yellow labs. The grey beastie is the youngest but our instructors have both said how well we're doing and that it's excellent to see a 10 month old weimaraner under such good control (lol!!!). Training is a full time job in itself, but it's definitely worth it. Once again he's done us proud ;-)