I love the name of this club.  It fits the club.  It is in Indiana farm country and a bit of a drive for us.  Unfortunately that meant a hotel stay.  Of course we did not spend much time in the room because there were a lot of dogs entered and the tests took forever to run.

The Saturday morning series was fairly straight forward, but with a few factors.  It had a long walk up.  The field was grassy and hilly.  The marks fell on the higher part of the field.  The blind was fairly long and on a downhill.  There were trees on one side of where the blind was placed and the way the wind was swirling, there was a cut-out in the corner between the trees that tended to suck dogs over to it.  The other side leading out to the blind was a hill and that sucked some dogs onto it.  If the dog got in the trees or on that hill, it was hard to get them back to the blind.  The blind was a “hot” blind meaning that it was placed in the field before the test started.  Also, there was a diversion shot on the return from one of the marks.  (I hope I have the placement and order of the marks correct.  I am still a bit foggy.  :lol:)

Usually the club running the test provides the “test dog”.  The test dog runs the test to give the handlers an idea of how the test is going to run and it is a chance to test the mechanics.  If something looks like it isn’t going to work, the judges have a chance to alter it.  When the judges were ready to run test dog, there was no one from the club with a dog so Storm was pulled out of the truck and got to run.  🙂  The test set up allowed for some nice pictures of the dogs with their birds.

Storm smashed the test.  She even got a round of applause.  🙂

Thunder didn’t do too badly either.  Since his handler had run the land blind with Storm, he did an even better job handling Thunder to the blind.  A few pictures of Thunder with the marks…

In Seasoned Tests, they actually throw a bird with the diversion shot.  The dog is required to pick up that bird too.  In all of the Senior tests we ran, although they fired a shot, they never threw a bird (they can, but they never did).  Each time Thunder heard the diversion shot, he turned to look for the bird and seeing none, continued on his way.

On to water.  The water was in the dreaded stick pond….

Although some people do not like to run their dogs in stick ponds (aka flooded timber), this pond has been lucky for us.  Storm earned her Junior title out of this pond and now Thunder earned his third Senior pass.  The problem with these types of ponds is that you have to be careful where marks are placed because you don’t want a hard charging dog to land on a submerged stick and end up with an injury.  Also, the stumps and floating logs can mess with a dog’s view of where the marks fall and can look a lot like a floating duck.  They are usually mucky and muddy (as this one was, the yellow labs came out looking black and you can just imagine how the goldens looked after being in the pond.  :))

This was the test.

It was a double, a water blind and an honor.  There were bushes and weeds all along the edge of the pond which made it close quarters at the line and also made pictures of the dog impossible.  I could see parts of the dog’s work, but they were mostly obstructed by the weeds.  The challenges of this test were that the marks were very close and there was an honor dog in very close proximity.  Tough on the working dog and the honor dog because one or the other might want to get the jump on getting the bird.  🙂  Also, as I mentioned before, the stumps and logs look a lot like a floating duck.  The Memory bird was being hand thrown into a bunch a dead branches.  As the day wore on that area was getting all softened up due to many dogs stepping all over the area and the birds were wet so they were tough to spot.  Also, the blind was a challenge because there were a lot of floating logs in the way and most dogs won’t go straight over a log so the handlers had to direct them around the obstacles.  The judges made clear that running around the bank to the blind would not be a qualifying performance.

Thunder got the Go bird easily; however, he had a hard time coming up with the Memory bird.  It had mostly sunk.  He may have been able to dig it out (provided he looked between the branches where it fell) but his handler elected to play it safe and handle him to the bird.  Thunder did really well on the blind.  There was a large long floating log between him and the bird.  His handler pointed it toward it and Thunder went right over!  The birds were being thrown just on the edge of the pond.  Since the dogs were going to the same general area all day, by the time Thunder ran (in the last 5 dogs to run) it was really soft.  The birds were falling in and almost sinking in the muck which also made them difficult to smell.  But Thunder’s handler kept him in the area and finally he found it and had to give it a hard pull to get it out.  🙂

The last thing Thunder needed to do for his ribbon was his honor.  They had a bucket for the handler to sit on which was good because the handler could speak directly in the dog’s ear to steady them (remember the marks are going off very close).  The marks went off and Thunder was steady and then….they called a “no bird”!  A “no bird” happens when something goes wrong with the mechanics of the test and the bird doesn’t land anywhere near where it was supposed to land or it doesn’t go off at all.  The test rules require that the honor dog watch two marks fall and the other dog being sent to retrieve, so Thunder had to do the honor all over again.  The judges took a short break, partly to reset the bird station and by the time the test resumed, Thunder was ready to GO!  However, his handler spoke softly to him and reminded him that he already had his turn, so while he sort of jumped when the second mark went down, he did not move.  A pass!  Whew!