Whenever we are out and about, we are always looking for places to train the 2 brown dawgs.  Anyone who trains for hunt tests will tell you that finding places to train is one of the biggest challenges.  If you use a park, you have to be able to train off lead and stay out of the way of the kids playing soccer or baseball.  We try to stay out of everyone’s way, including random park dogs who are also off lead but just-can’t-resist running up to the 2 brown dawgs when training.  When we train our dogs off lead, they are always on an e-collar so that we have control over them even at a distance.

For training land marks and blinds, we look for a large open area.  Many times we train on a featureless field and cut grass, but we also like to find fields with cover.  When we train water, we look for clean ponds and/or small lakes.  Each spot we pick usually has good and bad points, so I thought I would do a series of posts and share some of our favorite spots.

The Gas Line Clearing is technically in the forest on state land near our cabin.  On either side is a jack pine forest and a protected Kirtland Warbler habitat.

We like this clearing because we can really stretch out marks and there is cover.  However, we cannot enter the forest during the time the Kirtland Warblers are nesting, (May to August, I think).  Also, in late summer the grasses grow and there are grass awns so we stay out because those are not safe for pets.  This clearing is long, but not really wide enough to spread out marks.  You can get in a double, but it is too narrow for triples.

This day it was really cold and windy.  There was that pesky snow and more flurries coming down.  We decided to take our winger to get a little extra loft and distance out of the mark.

A winger is like a gigantic slingshot.  The things on the pulleys are giant rubber bands, which have to be stretched into place each time you load it.  You can load it with bumpers, dokkens, or birds.  The lighter the load, the farther it will fly.  There is a spot where you can load primers which will give a nice crack when you launch it.  This simulates the “pop” the dogs will hear at the test.  When we are training in the city and use the winger, we don’t use primers.  We try to fly a bit more under the radar, but in the middle of the forest, no one will even hear them.  🙂  Many wingers can be launched remotely using electronics.  Our model is wired, but we don’t have the electronic part and lauch it with and old-fashioned rope and a firm tug.

We set up on one side of the clearing and then moved to the other side and then up and down either side to give a few different looks.  We threw mostly doubles, one from the winger and the other was hand thrown by the handler from the line.

Both dawgs did really well.  These marks were not easy because the wind was in their faces and between the snow and the cover, it was not easy to see the black and white bumpers, (I know I had a tough time finding them).

Since Storm was home for the weekend, we were anxious to see her progress.  The time with the trainer has been well spent.  Although he is mostly working on her handling, he is also working on her marking and memory.  She has always been a good marker, but often times she would get distracted and not focus where she should be looking for marks (head swinging).  That issue has been fixed and she was straight out and back on most marks.  If she had to hunt, it was right at the area of the fall.  Very nice work.

I took some video, but it is not my best.  I have been taking more video trying to get used to taking it with my camera (hopefully with enough practice I will be capable of taking it at the real hunt test).  This camera allows zooming while it is recording (something my pocket camera did not allow).  On this particular day, I hit one of the buttons (well my fingers were near frozen) and it messed up the focus.  Between loading that winger, trying to record, being behind pine trees and trying to figure out which button would fix the focus I only have snippets of the dawgs picking up their marks and Storm running a blurry double.  I edited all the snips together and added the blurry double because it was the only double where I got the whole thing and better than nothing.  😆  The first clip is actually the last mark with a fun bumper for Storm because she did so well.

More training spots to come with Thunder as the featured dawg.