Today we are joining Gizmo and Finn for Park Day.
We are also joining Heart Like A Dog and co-host Sand Spring Chesapeakes 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.
Park Day
We went to a local park the weekend Freighter was home to do some training. Our local parks are not that interesting, but they do offer open space, some ponds and puddles in the Spring.
When we finished with the training, we threw Freighter some fun bumpers. Of course he had to find the best way to splash his way to the bumper.
You may have noticed that Freighter squared up to the puddle and jumped in. That is pretty typical of a young dog. He will be learning to carry the line straight to the bumper.
Follow-up Friday 4-26-13
Breaking Birds
dogloverofmax@gmail.com asked:
Just curious as to why the breaker bird still, can you sorta give me a real life scenario where this would be used? Also what do you typically hunt and do with them?
I’m not sure I understand the question, but I will do my best to answer. 🙂
“Breaking” is the term we us for whenever a dog “breaks” its sit before it is released. As you can imagine, a hunting dog needs to learn that sit means sit for its own safety, among other reasons. You don’t want a dog to take off the minute it hears gunfire, sees a bird fall or a bird is flushed while upland hunting.
We constantly train our dogs to be steady (or to sit and stay). Sometimes we use what we call “breaking birds” to do this. These are bumpers or birds thrown in close proximity to a dog and/or from an unexpected direction. The surprise can sometimes catch the dog off guard and really test the dog’s “sit”. This is not unlike something that might happen during a day of hunting and birds may come from an unexpected direction or flush or fall close to the dog.
Sand Spring Chesapeakes wrote:
We had to do a live flyer breaking bird last week to get ready for the hunt test as Gambler decided he needed to leave early for the flyer in training. No sir you sit til your told to go!
Been there with Storm. It was a Master test and the first series. She broke and was out before she started. 🙂
finnhoward asked:
How many times do you tend to do the same thing in practice like this?
It depends. You want to get some training value out of what you do, you are not looking for perfection at that moment. We ran the breaking birds as back to back singles. For some dogs, it might be difficult for them not to break their sit for the first bird and for some it might be the second bird. For marks and blinds, if a dog does it perfectly, you probably would not run it again at that training session although you would probably run a similar set up on another day. Many times when we are running marks, we will run them and then move over slightly and run again and then run some blinds. Every time you run multiple marks and blinds in the same field, it can make it more difficult for the dog.
Thanks for the all of your questions and comments. I appreciate them. 🙂
This weekend we are supposed to finally have warmer weather. We plan to visit both Freighter and Storm. Its kind of like parents whose kids are away at school. We will spend the whole day driving and visiting. 🙂
Have a nice weekend!
Thanks to Gizmo and Finn for hosting Park Day.
Thanks to Heart Like A Dog and Sand Spring Chesapeakes for hosting the Follow-up Friday blog hop.
This is a blog hop!
Powered by Linky Tools
Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…
Give Storm and puppies lots of hugs and kisses. You must be excited to see them. Freighter will be excited with his visit to. We are to have warm weather also. I love the back feet up in the air pic. Happy park day.
Thanks for coming out to Park Day and for answering our question! Maybe you can lead the rest of us in some training now that we are all here, and then we can go grab some pizza!
I think Freighter and I would have some serious fun in those puddles getting all wet and dirty, looks like so much fun!
Your parks look like ours and that is no surprise since you are in Michigan too! Freighter sure looked like he was having a fantastic time! What a cutie!
Luckily we have woods in our park which makes it a bit more interesting. Happy Park Day to you. Have a fabulous Friday.
Best wishes Molly.
Bet you can’t wait to see Freighter and Storm and those cute little puppies! Have a great weekend!
Thanks for joining the hop! Please take lots and lots of puppy pictures!! I wish I could go with you. 🙁 And typical me, I forgot to add a park related photo, maybe I can go back and update it?
Have a great weekend!!
I think the park looks interesting. Ducks and puddles, equals fun fun fun. Why to splash Freighter.
Blessings,
Goose
Great pictures! So when you say Freighter squared up on the puddle do you mean he hesitated and assessed before he went in, instead of just going for it in one fluid motion? Just curious:)
Hope you have a great weekend with some decent weather!
Excellent question! If you look at the first picture when he is heading to the bumper, the direct line would have taken him on a sort of angle into the water, like this: ” / “. What he did was kind of go around so that when he entered the water he was in a perpendicular line to the edge. Like this ” | ” or a “T”. The top line being the edge of the water and the ” | ” line of the “T” being his entry line. We say he squared up to enter the water rather than taking the angle entry. He is young. He will learn. I hope this answers your question. 🙂 I may do a post on this in the future, but won’t make you wait…lol.
LOL! Those are some great “splash down” pics. Freighter looks like he’s having a blast!
Woof! Woof! An open space and puddles are enough to have FUN in the park. Happy PARK Day! Lots of Golden Woofs, Sugar
Yea, you answered my question perfectly – thank you! Your park looks nice! Would love to open my door and see that!! Freighter looks like he was having a great time! Ha ha ha! Lead gonna ask the same squaring up question so thanks for answering that too! I know you can’t wait to see Storm, Freighter and your grand baby pups!!! Have fun!!!!
Thanks for coming to Park Day! i love the way Freighter treats that puddle as if it was a lake…and has every bit as much fun with it…You can see from the way he enjoys his “fun bumpers” just how much he loves his “job”…He is one happy retrieving dog
I love Freighter’s puddle fun! Right now, puddles are my dogs enemies, unless it means they can drink out of it. I’m hoping I’ll have pictures of Yuki doing that at sometime. ^_^
Wow great FUF! Love all the photos. Will Thunder get to go along for the ride this weekend? I bet he is missing Storm and Freighter or maybe not…I know Cheyenne doesn’t lol
I love your photos. I also love that the duck was in the first photo, but never seen again. 🙂
I think Freighter makes that park look very interesting! I bet he and Storm are going be oh so happy to you this weekend 🙂
Great action shots
Urban hounds
Open space ponds and puddles sounds like a great place to visit!
Love your action photos! And know you’ll have fun this weekend visiting. Happy sigh… puppies 🙂
At first, I thought it was a real duck in the puddle 🙂 Great pictures!
Those are real ducks. They hang out in puddles around here in Spring. No idea why.
WoW! Pawsome park…with your own puddle & everything!
Wally & Sammy
Hi Y’all!
In case I don’t get by again before Tuesday…y’all ‘ill find my Tuesday post of interest to Storm..
Hope y’all had a fun weekend visiting!
Y’all come by now,
Hawk aka BrownDog