The last training session with the golden retrievers was a marathon.  They have their WC/WCX test this weekend so they wanted to make the most of this training session.  Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate.  The temperatures were warm and the wind was fierce and swirling.  The people throwing the marks couldn’t hear directions from the line and the dogs were having trouble hearing the poppers and seeing the marks.  Also, the dogs had trouble finding the pigeons in the field.  They worked and hunted, but they had trouble coming up with those birds.

Here is a diagram of the triple.  The numbers represent the order the marks went down.

Mark 1 was the dead duck.  Mark 2 and 3 were pigeons.  Most handlers would normally pick up mark #3 first; however, it seemed that none of the four WCX dogs saw that third mark.  Also, many of the dogs had trouble finding mark #2 in the field.  It may have been that they couldn’t fully mark it with the trees in the background, or the island of trees put them off, or the pigeons were still frozen and they couldn’t catch the scent in the swirling wind.  For whatever reason, they just had trouble coming up with it.  Mark 1 (dead duck), was picked up cleanly by all of the dogs.

Thunder had trouble finding both pigeons.  He must have walked over the middle mark (Mark # 2) four times and never scented the bird.  Finally he found and picked it up.  He hunted a lot and finally found the other pigeon (Mark #3).  He had no trouble with the dead duck (Mark #1).

Since Storm is home from the trainers for the month, she got to come along.  We haven’t been able to work her since she got home, so we were anxious to see how she would handle this triple.  We figured it would be a challenge because we don’t think she has ever picked up a pigeon and she probably has not had many triples lately.  She had quite a bit of difficulty with this triple.  She saw the first two marks, but as we suspected never thought to look for that third mark, so she never saw it fall.  She had trouble finding the middle pigeon but finally picked it up (Mark #2), then the dead duck (Mark #1), but just couldn’t get that other pigeon (Mark #3).  That’s OK we have lots of time to work on triples.

Then we moved to water.  It was a double (using dead ducks) with one mark to the back of the pond straight ahead, and another in the other pond off to the left.

The 2 brown dawgs did much better on the water double and both picked up these marks cleanly.

And with that, the Wednesday training sessions with the golden retrievers have come to an end.  Best of luck to all of the dogs who will be running the WC/WCX tests this weekend!  We know you will smoke it!

Related articles

• Showing Off For Goldens? (2browndawgs.com)