Storm and Freighter have a test coming up this weekend so we have been using our frozen ducks for training all week.

Both of them lose their minds when a duck is involved so we thought we would try to take some of the excitement out of the picture.  Of course a frozen duck isn’t the same thing as a fresh duck, but it is the best we can do.

Since we were using ducks for our training, we went out to a back field in the park.  It is a great field because it has some small hills.  It is also pretty narrow so we set up a double with a hot blind running right through the middle.  A hot blind means that the bumpers are already out in the field while the dogs run the marks.  We used ducks for the marks and orange bumpers for the blind.

We figured the dogs would be so excited to have marks with ducks that they would not pay attention to the pile of bumpers that were out for the blind.  We also figured that the challenge would be to get them off the old fall of the marks to run the blind because the whole set up was pretty tight.

Thunder ran first.  He is retired, but we still run him to keep him in shape and keep his training current.  We kind of use Thunder as a “test dog” to check our set-up before Storm and Freighter run it.

I took pictures with my iPhone 5s camera.  It does pretty good until you zoom it and then it is a bit grainy.  Still, it doesn’t do too bad.

You can see from the picture the narrowness of the field.

Thunder did great on this set-up.  He even did well on the blind and stayed away from the old falls.  Good job.

Next was Storm but she got a raw deal.  First, when I launched Mark #1, a big gust of wind caught the duck and it went into the tree line on the edge of the field.

She picked up Mark #2 and then some people decided to walk through the field so she had to wait until she went out to fetch Mark #1.  Mark #1 was the one in the trees.

She was sent, but then some more people started walking in the field so her handler had to stop her and tried to cast her away from the people.  At that point she was all confused and spotted the pile of bumpers and thought that is what she was sent to get so she picked one up and brought it back.

Storm 1, Handler 0.

She was then sent to fish the mark out of the trees, (which was really heavy cover).  Of course by then she forgot where that mark was and had to be handled.  She can dig anything out of thick cover so it turned into send her into the cover and let her hunt.

We ended up running her again on this set-up after Freighter ran and she did a good job.  We turned our winger so that the wind couldn’t mess up our throw again.

Freighter did a decent job on this.  He had no trouble with the marks.

He ran into a bit of trouble staying away from the old fall of Mark #2.

He was re-run on the set-up just to work on his handling and staying away from the old fall, which was his down fall at the last test.  That and breaking.

We are not sure how our dogs will do at the test this weekend.  We have been working hard on their steadiness.  We still are not sure about Freighter.  He is fine with bumpers, but becomes unglued when ducks are involved.  He is so much like Thunder was at this age.  Storm has not run a test since last summer so she is bound to be rusty.

Note:  I think I finally have everything back and working the way I want it after my move to being self-hosted.  I needed a basic theme for the move, but it did not have some features that I like which is unfortunate because I liked the way it looked.  I finally found a theme that does everything I want it to do so hopefully I will keep it for a bit.  I think I have everything working right, but if you notice something is not, please let me know.  I hope now I can start getting caught up in visiting other blogs.  🙂  

Have a great weekend!

We are joining the FitDog Friday blog hop hosted by SlimDoggy, Peggy’s Pet Place, To Dog with Love.