We are joining Heart Like A Dog and co-host The Talking Dog Blog for the Follow-up Friday blog hop.
It’s the the blog hop that lets you wrap up your week and leads you right into the weekend.
Monday Mischief–Splat!
It sounds like a lot of you had the same weather we had last weekend. Unfortunately, this weekend looks to be a copy of last weekend.
One on the main reasons we decided to train in fields rather than parks is because in parks they always keep the grass cut. Funny how that works. The grass hasn’t started growing here yet. When it does we hope to get Thunder, and Storm when she gets back to training, working in high grass. We found a bit of cover left over from last year and worked with that.
Thunder was good at digging the bird out.
Running A Blind
When Thunder was first leaning to run water blinds, he would avoid the water and try to run around it. It took time to teach him to go in a straight line even if it meant entering the water. Now that he has more experience, he tends to over think things and I think he thought the bird was in the water, because typically when you are running near water, it usually is. We were happy with his handling along side of the pond. Next time we will probably run a blind which requires him to stay in the water at the edge of the pond. That can be very difficult because dogs will sometimes want to get out too soon.
Sue at Talking Dogs asked if I could do some more technical posts about how hunt tests work.
Of course I can. I have done a few of those, mostly as part of Follow-up Fridays. It is a bit easier for me to answer questions since then I know what topics people are interested in, so please leave questions in the comments and I will try to answer them. I will also work on some posts about retriever hunt test basics.
For now here are some links to things I have previously posted:
From WD To WDQ: This is a little background on how we first started in hunt tests.
First Flyer: This is from last summer when Freighter was introduced to his first live duck.
Casting Drills: This is a link to a youtube video that shows the very basics of how to start training handling and the casts, (back and over).
Michigan Flyways 2011 Fall Hunt Test: This is a youtube video of our club’s Fall Hunt Test from 2011. It is fairly typical of what goes on at a test. The series shown are a Master Level Test. Our trainer is the first one running his dog in the video.
This ‘N That Thursday
I really do love my new camera. It is fast enough and fairly easy to use. I still need to work on being able to adjust all the different settings quickly. I can’t always control where the light is coming from so I would like to be able to make those adjustments depending on where I am standing.
dogdaz wanted to know what kind of lens I am using. I have a Canon EOS 60D camera and it came with a EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens. The camera is 18 mega pixels which means I can really crop if I need to. I am saving up for a more powerful zoom lens. 🙂
Updates
Here are updates on all of the dogs:
Thunder is doing well after his dental yesterday. He is snoozing on his bed. The main reason that we wanted his teeth done is because he had a little gum overgrowth on his canines. I wanted the vet to clean under there and get a good look at it and remove tissue of she though it was medically beneficial to him. One side was fine, but on the other side there was the beginning of infection so she removed the tissue, (they call it contouring). The tooth was not cracked so it was probably just an accumulation of tartar under the overgrown gum. Otherwise his teeth were in good shape. He has 10 days of antibiotics and no training for a few days.
Storm had a bad day last Sunday. She was vomiting so we called her breeder who contacted the repro vet. We gave her some Imodium and fed her yogurt for the rest of the day. She had already stopped vomiting by the time she got the Imodium, but it settled her GI track and she has been fine since. She is eating and hasn’t vomited since. We think it was either because we had switched her over to all puppy food that did not agree with her, or the pups were pushing on her stomach and upset it. We broke her food up into smaller, more frequent meals. Because she was sick on Sunday, she did not go to her breeder’s house until Monday. She is now on holding pattern waiting for pups.
Our trainer is at a hunt test in Indiana for the weekend so we are going to pick up Freighter this afternoon for a weekend visit. We hope to get out and do a bit of training with him.
Good luck to all the Farpointers in the hunt test this weekend. Bring home those orange ribbons. 🙂
Have a nice weekend!
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Great Follow-Up Friday. Poor Storm the end is always the hardest, I can’t wait it is getting so close to the little furballs coming out. Enjoy your time with Freighter! Have a great weekend. It is going to be cold and rainy here and we have a hunt test in one week ;(
This weather is not good for training water. I don’t think the dogs running the test this weekend had more than a day in the water. Good thing the ones I know are experienced Master dogs, but still…
Poor Storm!
Poor Storm? Poor me…I get stressy over things like this. lol I knew she was sick when she found me in the laundry room folding clothes and puked at my feet.
Great follow-up, thank you for joining the FUF blog hop! I love, love, love learning how you are training your dogs and think your pictures are spot on!
Glad Storm is feeling better, maybe puppies this weekend?
Freighter, no I could not resist that face.
I do hope you get some decent weather although the forecast looks dismal in most of the country.
And thank you for that link to the GPS collar! You are right, it is pricey but it actually has every single feature I would want in a GPS collar! You can imagine what I’m saving for. 😉
Have a great weekend!
Poor Storm, just a few days and the pups will be there…how fast that time goes! Glad is was nothing bad with Thunder’s teeth, sounds painful, though…good he is resting.
Great follow-up! Thanks so much for the links you posted. I need to read them before I can even formulate questions. I know only what I’ve read here on your blog, though we’ve caught a few televised competitions and marveled… and wondered exactly what was going on. lol
Fingers and paws crossed for Storm and her puppies! And that face?! Adorable!
Glad Thunder’s dental went okay and that Storm is feeling a bit better. Bet you can’t wait for those pups. 🙂
Very cool, thanks for sharing more info about the hunt tests.
Another great follow-up…though I’m no longer in the hunt test world I so enjoy reading about your training sessions…Hope Storm feels better and has an easy delivery
Lordy we are late over. Thanks for a great week of posts and we loved those action shots of Thunder this week. Hope all is well with Storm. Have a fabulous Friday.
Best wishes Molly
It’s good to know that Thunder’s dental went well! Maybe I missed this somewhere, but what was getting done on the teeth? Just a regular? 🙂 Also, great to know Storm is feeling a little better, poor baby!
Glad that Thunder’s dental went well and he is doing good! Sorry to hear that Storm wasn’t feeling well 🙁 but glad she is better!! Can’t wait to see those pups!
Love that picture of Freighter! I know I wouldn’t be able to resist that face!
Glad Storm and Thunder are okay! Can’t wait til there are puppies!!!!
Oh boy, hope storm is okay now, I hope the rest of her pregnancy goes smoothly. And oh, a canon,what a nice camera, you will definitely be getting some nice shots with that, like usual 🙂
So sorry storm, having pups can be hard work. We hope your stomach settles and stops giving you such a hard time. Well Freighter sounds like you are going to get all the fun so go for all you can have! Have a great weekend:-)
Great follow-up! Poor Storm, glad she is feeling better. Freighter looks great! Hope Thunder heals quickly.
Poor Storm, I’ll bet she’s starting to count the days.
I try to train in brush and tall grass once the guys learn the basics.
Is all your casting and handling done with the whistle, and do you run into problems when you hunt them as a brace? I started whistle training the Spins a couple of years ago but in Mia’s Senior Hunt tests last month, found that the whistle really messed her up. When I was braced with people who used the whistle, Mia would run back to me or stop and look for directions when they whistled.
We only use the whistle for sit and recall. All casting is done with arm signals and/or voice. We have to use the whistle because they may be 150+ yards out (we actually train longer), with their backs to us and it is the only way they would hear it. In retriever hunt tests they do not run multiple dogs so they are only hearing one whistle. However, so many whistles have different tones and sometimes the dog is used to one tone and focuses on that. That can be a problem if you use a different whistle. 🙂
Our problem around here is finding brush to train in. It is just not available. It is pretty good that we got Thunder through Senior just using parks, but it has proved difficult to get the right training for Masters. Now that they have lengthened the acceptable distance for marks to 150 yards, it makes it even more difficult to use parks.
not long to to now Storm, hope you stay comfy until then!
Slobbers
Hope Storm is feeling better! We have on queezy girl here but not sure if it is a falsie or for real…. Love the pictures and wow is Freighter ever looking great!!!!
the collies and chuck 🙂
Hope little Storm is feeling better – she’s in our thoughts and prayers for everything to go well and no more getting sick. Thanks for the posts of how to learn more about what you do! Hey, on a separate note, it’s probably just me doing something wrong, but I was never getting any notification of your new posts so I tried subscribing again…hope I get them now! I don’t wanna miss out on anything! Especially baby news 🙂
Thanks for re-subscribing. 🙂 I don’t know why you weren’t getting notifications of new posts. I did not change anything. This has happened to me a couple of times with blogs I subscribe to and I have no idea why. One time I did notice that post notifications from one blog kept going to my spam mail folder. No idea why that happened either. I hope it works for you this time.