It’s Follow-up Friday.  The blog hop that:

Let’s you wrap up your week and leads you right into the weekend.

Thank you to Jodi from Heart Like A Dog and co-host JoAnn from Sand Spring Chesapeakes for hosting the hop!

Lot’s going on this week!

Wordless Wednesday–Storm’s Luau Birthday Party

and

Storm And Frosty’s Really Cool Birthday Giveaway

Thank you all for the birthday wishes for Storm.

Did you figure out that Storm’s birthday treat was a peanut butter flavored Frosty Paws?  I just found some birthday decorations and voila!

Frosty Paws are some of her favorite treats.  I am not just saying that because I am having the Frosty Paws themed travel pack giveaway.  Remember you can enter through tomorrow.

Thank you to all who commented on that post. I enjoyed reading about all of your summer plans, even those that are just on your travel wish list.

This ‘N That Thursday

FleaByte asked:  So I know you probably get this question all the time, but do you use the dogs to actually hunt?

Yes.  They are first and foremost hunting dogs.  They were bred to be hunting dogs.  The training that we do is for fun and will ultimately help them when they are out hunting.

For pictures of some of their hunting adventures, I refer you to our Hunting Page.

Hawk aka BrownDog wanted to know:  What was in the yellow box, is what I want to know!

A closer look.  I am not sure what is in there.

Molly The Wally asked:  We were wondering do they ever get distracted with something to chase or are they always concentrating on the job in hand?

Sometimes they will show interest in birds flying around, but usually they are pretty focused on the task.  They have spent a long time fetching bumpers so know to get them.  Freighter can still get a bit distracted.  He is still a youngster.

Jodi asked:  Do you ever water train in the park? Do you worry about fish hooks?

Yes we train in the water all of the time.  We try to look around to see if we can spot anything on the ground and of course we worry about them, but when you have a hunting dog, I supposed there is as much a chance of them being injured by a fish hook as anything else.  I worry more about broken glass or sharp metal.

Jodi also asked:  Was there something of interest in the other direction or was she simply being Storm?

To answer Jodi’s question and as a follow-up, I wanted to explain:

What Can Make A Blind Difficult?

In the video that I posted yesterday, many of you noticed that Storm was a bit distracted and looking to places other than where she was supposed to go.  What can make the dog do this when they are running a blind?

In this case, we ran a triple before we set out and ran the blinds.  Our entire set-up looked like this:

Storm had already picked up bumpers near where we set the blinds so in her mind, she thought that is where she would find another bumper.  When you run a blind through marks, or along side of a pond where the dog has already picked up a mark, (the land blind), that makes them more difficult.  We try to run blinds next to marks or multiple blinds to up the difficulty.

When Storm was running the water blind, she kept trying to head back to Mark #3.  When she was running the land blind, she was trying to go back to Mark #1.  So much of blind work is changing the dog’s mind which is why we try to give them challenging scenarios.

When we train in the local parks, we are very limited with how we can set things up.  We never have the space to set up more difficult training scenarios.  Our training membership has really come in handy because it allows us lots of space to set something up to challenge the dogs.  I think Freighter will benefit the most from this because he is getting more complex set-ups at a much younger age than either Thunder or Storm did.

Freighter ran the set-up as a double using Marks #2 and #3.   He ran Mark #1 as a single.  He also ran a simpler water blind (we changed the position of the blind and the line), and he ran the land blind (again we changed the position of the line to move him up but left the blind in the same spot where it was placed for the older dogs).

Freighter’s handling is coming along.  He needs more work but is making progress.  Next week I will have some video of him training some land blinds.

That wraps this week.

We are supposed to have a cooler weekend.  Hooray!  Have a good one!

Thanks again to Jodi from Heart Like A Dog and co-host JoAnn from Sand Spring Chesapeakes for hosting the hop!

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…