Sunday, February 3, 2008

birds of different feathers

Just got back from another morning of skeet shooting. I'm finally beginning to get some consistency in my game, shooting my nice little 20ga SxS. And now we're just sitting around enjoying a beautiful sunny day and eagerly awaiting the Superbowl.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, this craziness is going on. Annie went to an eagle festival in Terelj National Park just outside Ulaan Baatar. You can read the details here, but her caption for this picture is "Even though he's hooded, he can still smell my fear." We got that close to eagles in western Mongolia last time we were there and, yes, I didn't didn't feel like the top of the food chain.

We head out for Mongolia in ten days. We have been acquiring down parkas, super-mitts, even thicker long underwear etc. We'll be in Ulaan Baatar for a few days, then out to Lake Khovsgol for roughly a week, and then back to Ulaan Baatar for a few days on the way back. Once I finish a few more books, I'll post something about what we're hoping to do up around Khovsgol.

Mike, whose website you can find in the blogroll of 'Vizslas we love (even though they can't type),' sent me an update on his younger dog, the fabulous Annian's Upland Double, a.k.a. Piqua, a.k.a. Pickles. He just put together a webpage for Piqua's breeder, Sue Cox, and her Annian Kennels. You can find out the details of Piqua's particular successes right here. (Incidentally, we figured out that Pickles and Jozsi have a common great-grandfather, the great Riverbend Deacon Dandy, a.k.a. Danny. Here's a pic of Danny.)

Mike also sent some recent pictures of his older dog, Onpoint's Wild Dare, a.k.a.Tecumseh, taking on ditch-chickens at a local preserve yesterday. You can see the pheasant about to take a flier in the bottom right corner. And that Tec is every bit the Onpoint vizsla.

Training update: as of Thursday, Momo was making retrieves of still-warm chukar tossed down Bob's driveway. Bob is going to work him up to pheasant and then start shooting birds over him. We're still very proud.

2 comments:

Delilah and Rocket said...

Good news about Momo we wish him much success at Bob's training place. Dress warm for Mongolia. I'd be packing the battery powered heater socks myself! As for Rocket's new electronic toy ..... we don't know if its a phase but he has been rather D-E-A-F when off-leash in the field and has taken off on a high speed chase after deer or simply just run away from us and will NOT COME BACK when called! His e-collar was purchased with great reservation/hesitation and only put on him after LENGTHY conversations with the Innotek support line (who by the way were incredibly patient/understanding with our most trivial questions).

Andrew Campbell said...

I'd say it's a phase -- although while chasing deer is a relatively easy thing to work on with an e-collar, I would suggest getting a long-line and actually work on 'stop,' and 'come' with that. And I would suggest seperating thoe two commands at first. And work up from a controlled environment, ie. your backyard, to a more open environment, like a baseball field, before going into open fields. The thing you absolutely want to avoid is the dog associating 'come' with the zapping thing.

Glad the folks at Innotek gave you the support you felt you needed.

A.