22nd March 2009

Over the past couple of Sundays I have been attending a one-to-one training class with Molly organised by Pat Brennan. It has been excellent with Pat giving great advice and help. I have been working on my own handling skills and stretching Molly every week. Today Pat set up an Open Test course for us and we ran as if in a working test. At the start of the course Molly was down on pace for some reason. However she was marking very well on the shot. There was a fence to jump as part of the course and I had a lot of difficulty getting her to jump the fence. She would never have seen a fence like this before so I guess it was new to her. She jumped the fence eventually and went back for the blind retrieve. When she picked up the dummy the first time it hit the marking peg and fell out of her mouth. This seemed to unsettle her and she left it and went to return to me. I stopped her and sent her back and she picked the dummy and dropped it again. I told her to fetch it again and this time she picked it and brought it back. I then sent her for the first marked dummy over the fence and she went over the fence and picked it no problem. At this point we hunted on and he pace had picked up. She was doing a nice tight pattern. The final retrieve was a blind back over the fence the way we came. I lined her up and she went straight out over the fence and picked the dummy nicely.

I am entering a Working Test this Sunday so hopefully the work I have been doing and the help from Pat will stand to us.

P.S. I am collecting a new bitch pup on Sunday at the Working Test also. It is coming down from Northern Ireland and I will be taking her home with me. I'm really looking forward to working with her over the coming months and will post here on our progress. She is out of FTCh Butlerstow Buddy and Flowbog Tag of Clonduff lines.  

1st March 2009

Since the end of the shooting season I have given the dogs and myself a bit of a break to recover from the scratches and bumps of the season. They have been getting daily exercise in the fields behind my house and walks along the bog road but thats about it. They are starting to show a bit of condition on them now which is want I want for this time of the year.

Today (Sunday) I decided it was time to start a bit of work with Molly again as the Working Tests will be coming up in the next couple of months and I want her to be in good order for those and improve on what we did last year. She is 2 and a half now and should be a bit more experienced.

So to get things kicked off yesterday I took the dummy launcher and a couple of dummies and hit the fields. I started by giving her a short hunt in the long grass and kept her patteren nice and tight using gave her a couple of drops. I then sat her and while standing in front of her fired a dummy with the launcher for a nice easy marked retrieve which she did with no problems. As she on the way out the mark I threw a dummy to the side to use as short blind. I lined her up and she went out nice and straight and caught scent of the dummy from a good way off. She has a very good nose that hopefully I can take advantage of by getting to the right side of the wind on her retrieves.

After another short hunt up I launched a dummy while she was quartering and she dropped to the shot and while she looked at me first she did turn to the front to mark the dummy as it hit the ground. She retrieved this well. I hunted her on again and fired another dummy. She turned to look at me but immediately turned to the front again to mark the dummy but was looking in the wrong direction and didn;t mark the fall. This was going to be a long blind so I lined her up and sent her back. She went back a good way and flushed a Snipe. I was able to drop her on the whistle and kept her down for a minute to steady her before sending her on for the dummy. She went back again and after couple of back and right casts she caught scent of the dummy and homed in on it. I was very happy with her performance.

The one thing that I am going to have to be careful of is that by holding the launcher in my hand she was looking back at me a lot anticipating the dummy being fired. I will have to either keep the launcher in my hand without firing it a lot or maybe get a friend to walk with me concealing the launcher behind his back.

Not a bad start to the year though and gives me a few things to work on.