These pictures are from Freighter’s Senior Hunt Test back in July.  In order to earn a AKC Senior Hunter title, a dog must pass four senior tests if they have their Junior Hunter title, or five tests if they do not have their JH (each test is called a “leg”). .

Leading up to this test Freighter had passed three legs so if he passed this test, he would earn his Senior Hunter title.

It was a very warm and humid day and the marks were set in close.  (A mark is where a dog watches the birds fall in the field or pond.)  A lot of times when it is hot out, the judges will pull the land marks in closer.

You may think that closer marks make it easier, but sometimes this can provide a challenge.  It can be hard for a dog prone to breaking to sit still while close up marks go off.    It is also a challenge for the honor dog to watch marks that close.  In Freighter’s test many dogs ran over top of the memory bird and once they got past it, they hooked over to where they had picked up the flyer.  If a dog goes to the area of an old fall, they are out.  Some handlers tried to handle their dogs back to the memory bird but once they were past a certain point, they had a very hard time.  Several dogs failed because they never retrieved the memory bird.

The land blind was pretty straight forward.  There was some suction from where the flyer landed, but most dogs did a nice job on the land blind.

Freighter did a very nice job on this land series.  He pinned both marks and needed just a couple of handles to the land blind.  The “Go” bird was a shot flyer.  It required the dogs to break some heavy cover to get to it.  There was a time when Freighter was hesitant to break that kinds of heavy cover, but with repetition, he got over that.  He had no hesitation taking on heavy cover all weekend.

The honor required the handler to sit on a bucket next to the dog.  We have not practiced many honors where the handler is seated rather than standing next to the dog.  Normally in AKC, the handler is given the option to sit or stand, but this test required the handler to sit.  It was tough, but Freighter was steady.

Shortly after Freighter ran, a storm blew in so there was about an hour break in the test.  By the time we got to the water portion, the sun was shining directly at us which made getting pictures difficult.

For the water series, the dogs first ran the water blind and of they did and acceptable job, they were invited to run the water marks right after the blind.

The water blind was an angle entry and then across the pond.  The dogs that had problems with this blind got up on land too early and were sucked into the dead bird station that was being used for the marks.  Hubby noticed Freighter’s nose go up as he passed the dead bird station, but he stopped him any time he tried to turn away from the blind and toward that station.  I think Freighter needed three or four handles to the blind which is fine provided the dog takes the cast which Freighter did.

After the water blind Freighter ran the water marks which were very straight forward and no issue for him.  One bird fell right in front of his face but he was steady until released to retrieve and earned his Senior Hunter title.

We had him entered on Sunday so rather than pull him, we elected to run him anyway just for the experience.  I will have those photos tomorrow.