Monthly Archives: May 2011

Storm Is In Da’ House (and she brought ribbons!)

Posted in dog show, Hunt Test by

Storm is finally home for a bit.  Yesterday, we picked her up from her breeders who had her entered in three dog shows over this past weekend.  Storm has never been a fan of dog show, (a judge startled her in the ring during one of her first shows as a 6-9 month puppy).  Over the years we have entered her in shows here and there, just so that she was exposed to the dog show scene.  She would do what was asked of her, but we always had trouble getting expression out of her.  She seemed to tolerate outside shows better than those held inside and lucky for Storm, the shows this weekend were all outside.

Her breeder handled her and did a great job.  She was able to get expression out of Storm, and from what I hear, recovered when Storm decided to pace during one show! For those of you not familiar with dog shows, pacing is when the dog is not moving correctly around the ring.  When moving around the ring the dog should be trotting. If the dog is moving the front and back leg on the same side of his body together, that is not correct and is called pacing.  Storm tends to pace when she is tired and hot.

Despite her pacing, Storm brought home her first purple ribbon, going Winner’s Bitch for a 3 point major!  This show was supported so she also brought home some cool prizes: a hand painted sweatshirt and a Chessie frame!  For the other two shows, there was no pacing for Storm and took Reserve Winner’s Bitch.  Very nice placements for Storm!

Congratulations to Storm and her breeder/handler Dorene!  Great job girls!

We weren’t at any of the shows so I don’t have any pictures of her in the ring.  I tried to take a couple of pictures of her with her ribbons.  She is a little tired from her weekend so she was not very cooperative!

I don't feel like doing this!

Alright, I'll sit in front of these shrubs!

Here are the cool goodies that Storm brought home for her people.

Goodies

I also took some better pictures of Storm with the ribbon from her first Senior Hunter pass.

More pictures?

Storm 1st SH Pass

I am a bit behind, as usual, but wanted to give a couple of shout-outs:

A very special thank you to our friends at Just Ramblin’ for deeming us a Genuine Blogger.  We hope to share this with another Genuine Blogger soon.

Also another special thank you to Lexy over at Gone For A Walk for deeming us a Versatile Blogger.  We have been so busy that I haven’t been able to share this one, but hope to soon!

In the meantime, check out both of these blogs.  They are a great read!

Training Spots–Fishin’ Hole II

Posted in dog training, Hunt Test by

We were able to get out to train yesterday even though it was still raining!  At least there was no thunder or lightening so we trained land marks, and land and water blinds.  Of course I have no pictures of last night’s training and if it never stops raining, I may just run out of new pictures and have to recycle my snow pictures.  :lol:

We threw the marks in heavy cover (with all the rain the grass is almost waist-high now).  Thunder did well marking, but had a bit of trouble catching the scent of the bumpers.  He finally found them after a hunt, but we thought afterwards that we probably should have taken a duck or two out of the freezer for this training.  His blind work was fine.  I think he actually handled better on the water than on the land.  It seems like his water issues have resolved.  We just really need to work on getting his whistle sits quicker and his handles more solid when he is out in an open field.  It was a real help for us to work in the field at that Master level test this past weekend.  They did 2 land and 1 water blind and we were able to watch many different handlers attack these blinds.

But back to the subject of this post…

The city park with the nice lake also has a nice big field.

It is an open flat field where we can throw marks or run pattern blinds.  In the summer, we can usually find a shady area so that the dogs don’t have to run in full sunlight.  Plus the lake is right there and available for a little cooling swim.

I took some video of our training session in early April.  After doing some work in the water, we set up a pattern blind.  A pattern blind is where you set out piles of visible bumpers and then handle the dog to them.  You can send the dog straight to a pile, or start out sending him to one pile of bumpers and stop and send to another.  In a “cold” blind there is one bumper (or bird) out in the field or by a pond and the dog is handled to it.  Pattern blinds are what you work on before you send the dog on a cold blind.  You want the dog to be confident on these and fairly solid on the stopping and casting before you move on to cold blinds.

Thunder is not a big fan of pattern blinds.  I think he finds them boring.  In the video, you will see him looking at each pile of bumpers.  It took a bit of training to get him to go to the pile of bumpers that his handler wanted him to go to rather than the pile he wanted to go to.  As I said, this video was early April and his pattern blinds are even more solid now, but he didn’t do too badly on this day.  His handler is using verbal commands with hand signals and at times just hand signals without the verbal command.  He had a bit of confusion, but he was worked through that and in the end he got to the right pile.

This pattern was four piles.

On the video it looks like we are running Thunder close to traffic.  However, I can assure you that there is still quite a distance to the road, and that line of trees.  There is a gully, a sidewalk and grass between where the bumpers are placed and the road.  When I zoom my camera, it looses perspective and background things seem closer than they are.  Also remember that we train our dog with an e-collar and his recall is solid, so if you train in a park like this be careful how you set your training.  Although we run pattern blinds in this direction, we would not throw a mark out in the direction of that road, we would throw them so the dog is not running toward the road.  :)

We hope to get some training in this weekend, maybe some long singles and blind work.  Hope everyone else has a nice weekend!

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Training Spots–Fishin’ Hole

Posted in dog training, Hunt Test by

Thunder’s weekly training session with the golden retrievers was cancelled this week due to severe weather.  We had buckets and buckets of rain and thunderstorms on and off all day long.  Not safe to train in that kind of weather.

Since I don’t have many new training pictures, I thought I would get back to sharing some of our favorite training spots.  When the weather cooperates, there is a nice little park with a lake close to the house.

There is a lake over that hill.

It is a nice big lake.

This was our favorite park to use while we were training for Thunder and Storm’s JH tests.  It is the one city park where Animal Control has told us that dogs may be trained off lead.  The lake stays clean all summer long (some weeds, but no worry over blue-green algae).   The one problem is that residents like to fish the lake.  We never see anyone really catch anything other than small fish (it is overstocked), but they like to go through the motions.  As a result, we can’t always get to the areas where we like to set up marks because others are there before us and we try not to get too close to disturb their fishing.

On this particular April day, we could not get to the corner of the pond so we set up a simple double from the shore.  We were fine with only being able to set a simple water double since it was one of the first days this season for water work.  We used the winger to get  a bit more distance on one mark. Here is a crude drawing of what we set.

Another  big drawback of this park is that since dogs are allowed off lead, you never know what random park dog is going to show up and try to be part of your training session.  People don’t always have a good recall on their dogs and when the dogs see bumpers, well I guess they just can’t resist.  In the video, you will see one such dog arrive just at the end of Thunder’s second retrieve.  Luckily Thunder’s handler saw the dog coming and Thunder was focused on his work so there was no scuffle.  You can also see that there were other distractions in the water, but again Thunder was nice and focused on his work.  :)   The sun was directly across the lake, and unfortunately it shows on the video, but it isn’t too bad.

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Next post I will show the area where we train land marks and pattern blinds in this park.

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