Our spring has been very late in coming this year.  It seems like every time we had a warm up, we got yet another cold snap.  Normally Storm would have already had a decent amount of water work in April, but between the cold weather and hubby concentrating on moving Freighter forward with his training, Storm has not had a chance to run any water blinds yet this spring.  That changed on Saturday.

Saturday was a beautiful day.  It was sunny and warm.  For the first time this spring, the breeze was warm.  The day was devoted to blind work, both land and water.  The second set-up featured a long water blind.  A blind is where the dog does not know where the bumper has been placed and must rely on its handler to direct it to the bumper using whistles and arm signals.  Oh boy Storm’s favorite.

Actually, Storm is not a fan of long water blinds.  It is one thing if she sees the bumper or bird fall, but swimming out to get a bumper placed somewhere on the side of the pond is not all that thrilling for her.  But it is part of training so eventually it was her turn.

This water blind required the dogs to swim parallel to the edge of the pond.  The wind was blowing across the dogs so they had to fight it pushing them toward the bank as they swam.   The blind was clear across the pond.  The return had a bit of a twist because once the dog hit about the half way point on the way back, the handler directed the dog to swim to the left for the length of the pond.

This diagram helps to explain the set-up:

This blind was working on teaching the dogs to stay in the water even though they were quite close to the edge of the pond and to fight the wind.

The dogs had to cross the road to get to the pond.  Whenever you have changes in terrain such as a road, grass to dirt, dirt to snow, dogs may be reluctant to cross them.  We try to incorporate these changes in training set-ups whenever possible because you are likely to see them at a test or while out hunting.

There were some dead trees in this pond.  These can be very tempting to a dog.  Wouldn’t you want to investigate?  However, the dogs should keep following there handler’s direction and not go over to check out trees, sticks, decoys, or even ducks in the pond.  Storm has done a lot of water blinds so she knows better than to investigate the dead trees and keeps on swimming.

It was a decent job by Storm.  She needed a few handles to get to the blind, but considering she has not done blinds since last September, it was a good effort on her part.