2nd October 2007

I have been neglecting my training blogg for a while now. I will try and post more regularly from now on.

On Sunday morning I took Molly to a field of rushes with the goal of working on her quartering pattern and introducing the concept of dropping to shot. She has previously been successfully introduced to gun fire. I also wanted to work on a few easy marked retreives.Facing into the wind and with Molly sitting in front of me I cast her to the right and when she had gone about 7 or 8 yards I blew the turn whistle and brought her across me and out to the left. I then started walking in a zig-zag pattern up the field blowing the turn whistle just as I turned and bringing Molly across with a hand signal with me moving in the desired direction. She was full of enthusiasm as there was some 'old' scent on the ground to keep it interesting for her. She burst through the rushes with drive and showed a good bit of pace too. She has a tendency to run behind my legs as she comes across some times but I am thinking that once game is introduced this will be ok as she will start to pull ahead a bit more. Her turning on the whistle was good and only twice did I have to get out to her for failing to respond. A quick tug on the ear and repeating the command had her back on track.
Towards the end of the field I decided to try a drop to shot exercise. As she was at the extreme right of a cast I fired a shot from the shot-gun and accompanied it with a long blast on the stop whistle. She dropped to the whistle and remained steady. I left her dropped for a minute and then went to her and praised her before sending her on again to the left to continue hunting. After about 2 yards I repeated the shot and whistle again and she was solid on the drop again. I decided to quit while I was ahead with this exercise.
Being almost back at the car I decided to give her one fairly easy marked retreive in to a bare patch in the rushes and after a short delay on the drop she ran to the area well and found the dummy easily and retreived well. She does a lap of honour with the dummy when she returns before sitting in front to present it nicely. I will have to do a lot of work with my back to a wall to try and prevent this habit.
All in all a good mornings work with Molly. She is progressing nicely and doing the simple things well. Still plenty to work on, such as the crossing behind my legs when quartering and circling me with the dummy on her return. A long way to go yet but I am happy so far with the progress.