Nebraska 2009

Well, my first trip to Nebraska was great, a lot of fun, we didn't bring home truck loads of birds like I envisioned, but it was a successful trip anyway. It's just great to spend time in the field with family and friends watching your dog cover the terrain. There was a lot of "fruitless trudges" but that's hunting!

We hunted for 4 1/2 days and for the last 3 days we dealt with temps in the high 50's, higher temps than I would of liked to have seen. I was hoping for low 30's with some snow but maybe next year. The bird's had their track shoes on and out smarted Riley many times. They took him to school and hopefully he learned a few things.

Riley hunted well, he had a lot of false points but he made progress and I could tell he was starting to figure out old scent from fresh scent. I never did get the point and flush like I would have liked but the birds were not holding at all. He did get a taste of wild pheasant though.

Catching up.

Riley has been coming along nicely. Since the last time I posted I have worked with Riley using the bird launcher and all went as planned, eventually, he has had a very strong pointing instinct from the time I got him. He also has a very strong prey drive so getting to the point where he would let me flush the bird took some time, patience and alot of birds.

The next thing I worked on with Riley, was hold training. Hold training is basically getting your dog to hold whatever object it is told to hold until you give a release command. My release command was "give". You also want your dog to hold the object while doing the basic obedience commands. The reason for hold training is so your dog don't drop a wounded bird that could possibly run or fly off. I done all of the hold training on the ground instead of a bench. I didn't have a bench or I would have probably used one. If you don't have a bench you will need your dog to be able to sit and not move. If you don't have the foundation of obedience it will make all other training more difficult than it should be. I was thankful we spent our time on obedience. I duck hunt alot so I wanted to get this in before our first season and before Riley might get some bad habits.

Bird Launcher Training

Well, the last 4 weeks Riley and I have been doing a lot of yard work and I can say that it has payed off greatly. Riley is heeling without the leash. He will Whoa, Sit and Come now 100% of the time, I can whoa him at a dead run. I now feel like it is time to put Riley back on birds. Yard work isn't the most exciting thing to post about it's just a lot of repetition so that's why I haven't posted in so long.

I bought a bird launcher and I will be picking up some quail on Wednesday. A bird launcher is basically a catapult that throws the bird up in the air. This allows you to control the flush. There are manual and remote launchers, I have a manual launcher that you have to pull a cord to pull the lock arm out of the way, this releases the swing arms which will spring back straightening the mesh pocket and throwing the bird 6-8 feet in the air. Starting Thursday night we will be working on steady to flush. My plan is to set the launcher up with a quail that has a piece of hose tied to it's feet so that it will fly away but eventually get tired and I can catch it. Hopefully I can reuse the quail a couple of times. I will give this a try to see how this works before I bring Riley into the equation. Once I have the launcher set I will bring Riley in cross wind on a check cord. As soon as he smells the bird I will launch it. This should help to keep him from bumping birds by pointing as soon as he smells them. Once he gets to pointing the birds at a good distance I will wait until he will try to creep in on them, as soon as he moves I will launch the bird. This will teach him to hold point and that as soon as he moves the bird will flush. After he can hold steady to flush I will add gun fire. I plan on doing this 3 times a week and the other days working on doing some retrieving with a frozen quail. Starting out on a check cord with very very short retrieves and then eventually working up to long retrieves with gun shot and with out the check cord. After Riley is comfortable with both aspects I'm hoping we can have we can have a point, flush, shot and retrieve which is the ultimate goal.

So that's the plan, should keep us busy. Riley is very quick to learn so it will be interesting to see how this all goes. Fun stuff.

Teething

Riley is teething now and has lost his canine teeth and a couple of premolars over the weekend. I routinely check his teeth to get him used to someone prying around his mouth and last Friday when I checked it out I noticed some resistance from him and some blood. This means retrieving is out for awhile, so I have been doing more yard work and just letting him run.

Saturday I took him on a run I had him on leash at heel and I saw a rabbit in a cut grass lot about 50yds away. We tried to slip up on the rabbit but once we were within 20yds the rabbit took off. I ran Riley down to where the rabbit was setting and he locked up on point! I then gave him the track command pointing to the ground and he took off after a couple yards when I could tell he was on track I let him off the leash. He lost the scent a couple times but circled back around to pick it up again. He was on scent for around 20 to 30 yds. He was working very hard and you could see a lot of desire. I was very excited to see everything come together like this and just by coincidence.

Tracking Command

I started working with Riley on the tracking command when he was about 3 months old. Twice a week, sometimes more, I would take some treats and start shuffling my feet on the ground every so often dropping a treat on the ground behind in the "shuffle track" I laid. It didn't take long for him to figure out when I said "track" and pointed to the ground it meant nose to the ground. He would follow the "shuffle track" I laid to each of the treats.

I wasn't able to get Riley on any birds last Friday so hopefully we can achieve that this Saturday.

James

6/17/09 Water work

Well, Riley really likes the water and yesterday we worked on some retrieves, mostly just fun bumpers to build a love for the water. I did have him sit until released with the "fetch" command a couple times and he does this very well. He will stretch his neck out while sitting and you can see the intensity building. I just started doing this in the last week and he has excepted this with no fight. I will do some more water work this coming Sunday. I have been throwing short land doubles and Riley retrieves these with ease, I think I will try some water doubles on Sunday.

I am off work tomorrow so I'm thinking about putting him on some birds if all works out.


Later

James

Where to begin?

Late season duck hunting in mid December. I broke ice in the morning on a small pond that I haven't hunted in over a year. I had always hunted here with a West wind and a field behind me. Well, this day I happened to have a South wind and a massive amount of cattails behind me. It was very foggy and I could hear the ducks flying out of a private lake to the North West as shooting time approached. I could coax them in close by calling but I couldn't get them to put their landing gear down. The 3 or 4 shots I had that morning would have put a dead bird(if I made the shot) in chest high cattails and out of site in the fog. I never fired once, cussed a lot though. I needed a dog! I had been thinking about getting a gun dog and I had even made some phone calls, but this incident sealed the deal.

So I began my search for a dog. I talked to many retriever kennels and then I talked to Todd Seiler, did a weeks worth of investigation on the "interweb" and I remember thinking that Deutsch Drahthaars are the ultimate dog and never looked back. The breed tests are what locked me in. In order to breed a DD you must first pass the "breed tests", that would include Verbands-Jugend Prufung (VJP) which ruffly translates into "Association Youngster Test" and the Herbstzucht-Prufung(HZP) which ruffly translates to" Association Fall Breed Test". I hope to go more in depth about the tests next spring and fall when Riley will take them.

Riley was whelped on January 23rd 2009 and I picked him up on March 19th. He's 5 months old now and doing great, crate training is long gone, and we started doing yard work within the last month. He knows "Here" and "Sit" very well, 100% on the check cord and Whoa is getting there. If he is at heel and I give him the command "whoa" no problem, he stops where he is, not moving until I release him. If he is on the check cord out in front and I give the command "whoa"....... nothing. I have tried giving a sharp tug but I think he is associating that with "Here" and will come to me. I'm thinking of trying a whoa post in a couple days and have stopped trying to use "whoa" when he is not at heel. I'm getting a bird launcher this weekend so the plan is not to use the "whoa" command around birds until he is steady to flush. Any thoughts you have on this I would appreciate. I have had him on birds and no problems there, he definitely has great bird instinct.

I didn't mention a lot of things that are important like socializing and I might post about that at a later date but I 'm going to try and write about current training and experiences.

I took Riley to a local pond to do water work today and I will try to post some pictures tomorrow.

Later,

James