Welcome to the This ‘N That Thursday blog hop!
It’s a little of this and a little of that and everything in between…
Poor Storm lost all of her coat. She looks more like a chocolate lab than a Chessie.
At least it is cool for her in the heat and humidity we have been having this week.
We continue to challenge Freighter with marks in cover. At last Thursday’s training there was a mark that messed with more than one dog. It was thrown behind a big bush. It was a downhill to the mark with lots of cover changes.
Thunder put on a big hunt for this mark. He eventually got it, but he had to really work. Storm ended up in the field and needed help to get back to the mark. Of course Thunder and Storm were doing this as a double, (meaning that they watched a mark fall before this one). But this mark was the last one they saw fall, (called the “Go” bird), so you would hope they wouldn’t need as much of a hunt as they did.
Freighter ran this as a single and pinned it. We were happy to see that he had no trouble with the cover changes and finding a mark that he did not see hit the ground.
We returned to the same area on Sunday to work a set of triples and some land and water blinds. Unfortunately, it started to drizzle so I had to keep putting my camera away and did not get as many pictures as I would have liked.
The water blind we ran was straight through the pond where we had run the marks. We were training with another person and she wanted a nice challenge for her dogs so we left our gunner stations up while the dogs ran the blinds. The advanced dogs ran from the top of the hill and had to go down the hill, enter and swim a smaller pond, exit the pond and get to the blind that was set just before another larger pond.
For Freighter, his handler took him down to the edge of the pond. He has not done many water blinds, but our training partner urged Freighter’s handler to try this one. I took pictures from the top of the hill in case I needed to put my camera away quickly should it start to rain again.
Freighter did a nice job on this blind. He needed several handles but he swam the pond got out and worked his way back to the pile of bumpers. A few pictures:
Thunder and Storm have been working on their handling a lot this week. Storm is coming along nicely. Thunder likes to do his own program from time to time so he needs some more work before the test next week.
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What beautiful dogs!! I hardly see any of this breed in California.
There are a few of us in California, but it is such a big state I am guessing it would be hard to meet up one of us. 🙂
Great post. Love that series of Freighter.
Great TNT, looks like you all had a good training session.
Looks like it went well. Have a tremendous Thursday.
Best wishes Molly
You are right, Storm does look like a chocolate lab with that coat. As in independent breed, I have to congratulate Thunder for doing his own thing…it is nice to know that even obedient labs sometimes have their own ideas 🙂
Storm really is looking more like a chocolate lab than a chesapeake. Oh well, no worries, Litchi approves as she is good friends with a beautiful chocolate lab here.
Great work once again. Storm is still a very pretty girl, but then I’m partial to chocolate labs 😉
Enjoy the cool down because I just saw this morning that this week we are going into the 90s 🙁
make that NEXT WEEK
Lovely, just in time for the hunt test. 🙂
Nice work! I really like the firm hand signals too!
HEY!! There’s nothing wrong with Chocolate Labs. We love them at my house. 😉
So, I know Thunder and Storm started hunt training later in life. My question is how do you think Freighter is coming on, as he started much younger than they did? (Or is my mushy mind playing tricks on me?) I guess what I’m getting at is how do you see Freighter when he is Thunder or Storm’s age?
We are getting rain. AGAIN. Then it will get hot and humid. AGAIN. Grrrrr I’m beginning to hate my weather man.
Freighter looks like he did a fabulous job on the water blind. He is coming along nicely. Nice to do different things and challenge the dogs in training. Poor Storm is having a identity crisis. She is still beautiful without her curls. Check out my blog today, you got SEVEN awards! http://sandspringchesapeakes.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/this-n-that-thursday-18/
Freighter did a good job with his fairly new water experience
We love watching such intelligent dogs train. http://www.dawsondogs.com/blog/2013/7/Is-It-a-UFO-Dog-Crop-Circle-
I am always amazed at how creative you are in creating challenges for the dogs…I’m sure they enjoyed the swim in this hot weather…Storm sure looks like a different dog this week…did you have brown tumbleweeds blowing through the house?
Great job all! Wow, Storm’s coat really does look like that of a chocolate Lab. Have the boys lost their winter coats yet?
When Freighter comes out of the water with the mark (I think that’s the right term), does he stop for a moment to shake (and if so, does he put the mark down), or does he come directly back to his human? I would think it would be hard to make a dog resist that out-of-the-water shake–or maybe it would just be hard to make me resist it. 🙂
Really enjoyed the post, I like watching Freighter progress.