Thunder didn’t fare so well in his first Finished Test.  We entered him because he had been doing so well in his training and we thought it would be a good opportunity to get him in the hunt test frame of mind.  The test was far enough away that it required us to spend the night before in a hotel.  Storm is still with the trainer so we only took Thunder and Freighter.  I was a bit concerned how Freighter would do in the hotel, but he did great.  He really takes most things in stride.  He met a lot of new people hanging out at the test.  It was great socialization for him.

As for the test:  It was quite a bit different from how we have been training for Masters tests.  The morning of the test it threatened to storm and we could hear thunder in the distance, but it stayed far enough away that the test started on time.  The water series was up first.

It was a triple with a blind.  The test was in a smaller pond which was ringed with trees.  The marks were close and #2 and #3 were quite tight together.  One thing that was different here was that the “go” bird was a middle mark.  I’m not sure we have trained marks in this order, so we will definitely need to mix this in to our training.  The first bird (#1) was quite close.  That type of mark is often referred to as a breaking bird, meaning that if a dog is prone to break its sit, this bird would entice it to do so.  Thunder stayed nice and steady for all three marks, which was one of the good parts of the test for him.

A couple of things that made this water series difficult were the closeness of the marks, their tightness together, (especially #2 and #3), running a blind so close to mark #1, the blind being “hot” which means that it is in the field when the test starts rather than being placed after the marks are run, the pond itself being full of logs which can throw a dog off because they can draw the dog toward them.  The test was challenging but certainly not impossible.  A very nice little test.

In a Finished test there is no sound from the gunner stations as the birds are launched.  The dog is keyed into the bird when their handler fires a popper gun at the mark.  In Masters tests the sound comes from out in the field.  As I said, Thunder was steady; however, when he was sent to Mark #3 he scented Mark #2 as he passed and picked it up.  The bad.  Due to the way the wind was swirling around in the pond (which was down a hill and ringed with trees), many dogs did that.  OK not a DQ.  Next he picked up mark #1.  It was right there in front of him and visible.  Easy.  He seemed to want to mess with the birds.  Bad.  I saw a lot of dogs mess with birds or try to eat them.  These are high level dogs so I am not sure what was up with that.  Going forward, we will be working on Thunder’s “hold”.  Since Thunder messed up his pickup of mark #3, he had to be handled on mark #2.  He did acceptable on the blind.  Not stellar, but OK.  The judges told his handler that he would have to run clean for the land series.

The land series was “big dog” test.  I think it blew Thunder’s mind a bit.  It was down a steep hill, with the line being on the hill and the test taking place in the field below. I am not sure that this picture shows how far below the field was from the line, but it may give an idea.

The field had knee-high grass with cut outs or mowed areas.  The test was a triple, a “hot” blind, a diversion bird was thrown on the way back from the blind, and an honor.  Two of the tree marks were dumped in clumps of the tall grass and the blind was also in a stand of tall grass.

I took this picture to the side, so the perspective is a bit off, but it was the best I could do.  (Click to see it bigger.)  When I saw this test, I figured it would be difficult for Thunder.  We do not always have the opportunity to train in this kind of field with hills and high grass.  To make matters worse, it had been raining for a couple of hours so the field was quite wet which can tend to hold scent in.

Thunder was sent to pick up mark #3 (go bird) first.  He went straight to the area and hunted in the tall grass, but did not come up with the bird.  He tried to play the wind and unfortunately got too far right of that bird.  Once he did that he picked up the drag back scent (the path the dogs had been dragging the ducks back from the blind) and it was like a super highway that lead him right to that hot blind and he picked that bird up.  An automatic DQ.  It was ugly.  A couple of other dogs did the same thing.  The blind was kind of close, but not unreasonably so.

We now know what we have to train.  We need to reinforce to Thunder that he pick up the bird he is sent to fetch.  Self selecting is not going to be an option for him going forward.  We are also going to have to find some cover and make sure he understands that he may have to dig birds out of it and not give up and find an easier bird.

This test was earlier in the season than we normally enter our dogs, so we have a lot of time to work out these issues, except that we entered him in a Masters test this weekend.  Yikes!  We have a lot of clean up to do this week.  In Masters they may have more of the longer entries into the water and in and outs which they do not seem to test in Finished.  (We have been training these things quite a bit.)  We will adjust our training a bit going forward and see how it goes.  🙂

Thanks to the Club and the judges for putting on a nice test.  We had fun despite our frustration with Thunder’s performance.

I hope to have a post this week answering some questions from comments.  However, we are in mad training mode so hopefully I will find time to write it and a chance to catch up on my blog reading/commenting.