No, it was big and black, but much friendlier than a bear.

This guy was hanging around the hunt test headquarters last weekend.  He was super sweet, but Storm was not convinced.  She growled at him every time he came anywhere near the truck.  Poor Jack, he just wanted to hang out and get pets.  Plus it was his house, he should have been growling at that little brown dawg.  😉

And now some follow-up…

Thanks for all of the congratulations on Thunder’s title.  It sure has been a whirlwind summer.  Thunder came back after his surgery stronger than we ever thought he would.  Storm has been making such good progress with her training that her trainer wants to try her in a Master Test in October.  We don’t think that is going to work out though because we are fairly sure she is just about to come into season, (of course you never know about these things :lol:).

Our Wordless Wednesday Post showing a dog that earned his Senior Hunter title the same day as Thunder sparked quite a response. Jodi Stone, lauren @ life with desmond, raisingdaisy and Jen  all commented that they didn’t know Standard Poodles could hunt or do hunt tests. Misty Shores Chesapeakes  reminded us that poodles were originally water dogs/retrievers.  Our pal snoopy@snoopysdogblog  wanted to know “Who’s that cute little Poodle?!”

Well let us tell you…  His name is Jake.  Misty Shores Chesapeakes is right, although Standard Poodles were originally used as hunting dogs, very few are used that way today and very few run hunt tests, especially the higher level tests.  Jake is one of the few Standard Poodles to earn his Senior Hunter Title.  Should he earn his Master Hunter title, he will be in rare company indeed.  Jake is very good at the hunt test game.  He heels like a dream.  Is absolutely rock steady.  Is an excellent marker and is quite the team player when it comes to handling.  When he goes out to fetch a bird, his handler just has to stand and wait.  When Jake picks up the bird he turns around and brings it back to his handler, no whistle needed.  I think AdventureJess,  who said her Aunt had a Standard Poodle, summed it up quite well: “Cool dogs.”  Jake has quite the fan club with people coming just to see him run.

On our post, Going For Title, Jodi Stone wondered if Thunder’s dropping the birds was because he was tired.  Maybe sort of.  (How’s that for an answer? :lol:).  He ran a lot of tests in a row, and a lot of tests since the beginning of August.  When we started the summer, we had planned to spread out his tests.  Some in July, some in August and some in September.  However, his surgery changed that and the night of the surgery we were not sure if he would ever run another test.  After he was released to train and test again, we decided to try him in an HRC test.  He was so strong and did so well that we just kept entering him and we would see how far he got by the end of the season.  We think that by that last test, he was either having and off day or just loosing focus.  He was definitely not as sharp as the first several tests.  Or he was just being Thunder.  Bird dropping has been a problem from time to time with him.  It is a way he can mess around during a test.  He was good for the first several tests, but then the problem seemed to come back in the last couple of tests, especially with the yucky birds he had to pick up on water.  So we will work with him and his “hold” on yucky birds.  Winter project!  (Along with his heeling, always heeling with Thunder.  :))

Storm will be running a couple of HRC tests this weekend.  Hopefully will get some passes toward her Seasoned title.  Then it is off to our breed specialty show with her breeder.  The show is taking place near Gettysburg PA next week.  We were supposed to go to this, (and I was finally going to see Gettysburg), but sadly this is a casualty of having to pay for Thunder’s surgery.  It would have been fun to watch all the Chessies (it like a big Chessie party).  But we really wanted to run our dogs in the WDQ stake which takes place on Sunday.  It is a mini hunt test which requires:

a double on land, a land blind, a water blind and a combination triple with two birds in water and one on land. Dogs must be steady and deliver to hand

They are ready to run this.  It would have been fun.  Ah well…can’t complain too much, we have had a fun summer and collected a lot of bling!

Have a nice weekend!