by bill10979 » Sun Aug 29, 2004 10:38 am
Got a nice email today from the gentleman I trained w/yesterday. He thanked me for introducing him to another breed of dog and said he was impressed with what he saw. This coming from a guy that has worked hundreds of Line bred Elhew EPs in his younger days, and now trains & trials about a dozen Labs full time-owns several that are HRCH Titled. Said yesterday how nasty he heard those drahthaars were, as Greta was licking all over his face! Offleash she is great, try to come in the house, and you might be missing an arm!
I think i can solve our problem. Basically I can Utility her 1st and then Title her retrieving, OR better yet occasionally drill by releasing a duck into the cattails and tell her "Get the Duck" as my search command and not have her over dependent. I have to spell D U C K around her as I do C A T or B U N N Y or she just goes ape sh*t. That word alone kicks her into drive. I will start increasing her lengths on marks to 100yds or so to extend her range, and incorporate blinds along w/that. The launcher and dummies w/streamers are nice training tools that I hadnt used prior to yesterday. Or even an Ecollar. She was about as obedient as the dogs we saw yesterday-he had to "nick" his a few times, I had to raise my voice a little.
Man it was hot yesterday got up to 94, she held up well w/water,rest and shade when not working in the AM, but that heat isnt her strong suit. We could be in better shape-I work about 60/hrs week its tough-will try more mountain biking off hours. He roads his dogs 8hrs/day on an ATV as a county surveyor and it shows. They looked to be in incredible shape-100% ripped, I can say that she held up as well if not better than his-she got the bulk of the work and came back for more. At best, I might work dogs 2x/wk and then do fetching drills 10 minutes or so every day, so we got some work to do to get in better shape. I might be hooked on this HRC stuff, and looking forward to testing here in a few weeks. Duck/Dove season starts Sept 1 here-hope yall enjoy your opener-we hope to see some ducks-but the standing corn might be a problem getting em to our blind. We'll see.