THE REGAL VIZSLA

missing in action

2011-12-15T07:59:00.008-05:00

Apologies to the faithful followers of the Regal Vizsla for my absence. On the one hand, we've been busy and any time spent outside with birds and dogs is good time spent. Since I wrote last, we've been to a couple of trials, taken our annual trip to western Maine to chase rumpled grouse, and started to break Jake. All in all, a pretty busy schedule.

The first few days of November we went over to Flaherty to support the Mayflower GSP Club's first field trial in many years. Congratulations to all the folks there who contributed to making it a well-run, enjoyable event. Momo did his usual, not-quite enough horsepower performance and we both had fun; Jozsi ran in an uncharacteristically odd fashion, was honest but didn't look great on his birds, and took 3rd in ALGD; Jake suddenly decided he likes to run.

The transformation of this little pup from the excited little gun dog who ran at Conestoga to the horizon-seeking demon was remarkable. I was genuinely surprised. And very very happy. He showed his intensity, his application, and his handle and left me just remarking at how much he must have inherited from all the great dogs behind him. My plan for developing him has been pretty simple: establishing a handle on him, giving him just enough birdwork to see what his style looks like and to keep him hungry for birds, and to break him to the gun. I did enter him in a JH stake and I will say no more than he got hosed. But the intent had been to see if he would stick with me without singing him too much, to run him with a bracemate, and to reassure myself about his being broke to the gun. In that regard, he exceeded my expectations.

Know the rules: you may not be able to change a judge's mind, but you'll figure out quickly whether you'll run under him or her ever again. After the fourth invalid reason for his non-qualification, I realized the judge was either not looking at my dog or had forgotten the standard for Junior Hunter. I do believe there is merit in JH for any pointing dog, whether they are going to be trial dogs or hunting dogs -- and my plan had been to get Jake broke to the gun and then run him while he was wicked young just to get him fired up and used to running with a bracemate. From his first trial down at Conestoga to his JH run, he has shown no interest in his bracemates whatsoever. But with the summer getting all messed up due to the Wallow Fire, Jake's development was a little out-of-synch with the plan, and with the JH title really being a means to an end, his 'not-qualifying' run was disappointing and will probably be his only run at that title. In short, I got a pointer because I like their style and, frankly, I wanted to see what it would be like to try and raise a potentially all-age dog. And trying to handle a young dog into a small birdfield four more times for the sake of a introductory level title doesn't fit the plan in the long view.

*******

After the Mayflower trial we headed up to Widdershins to pick up Miss Capo and take her for a ride in the Luxury Cruiser. It was hard to imagine that it had been four years since we were there the last time when I went up to pick up Jozsi -- but it was great to see Chris & Wendy, to see all the renovations they've made to the farm, to get reacquainted with Munro (the ridiculously ripped cat), and to meet the goats, cows, and sheep. We headed over to our usual spot around Oquossoc and waited to meet up with our friend, John DeSantis, and his great young vizsla, Luna. Unlike all four previous years, the weather was in the 50s with bluebell skies -- no hint of snow or rain in the air -- and it proved to be a real challenge when it came to finding birds. Luna ran over a bird in our first cover which I shaved some feathers off, but which otherwise left unscathed. And then we hit a drought. We saw a few other birds, but I don't think either of us fired our guns in the next day and a half. I felt bad for John who could only stay 36hrs, but I guess this is why they call it hunting. The picture here is of Luna standing behind a couple of trees scarred up by fresh moose scrapings.

Nevertheless having five dogs to run, I left with a whole new-found appreciation for pro trainers like Joe McCarl who specialize in field-trial cover dogs. We were certainly able to pair some dogs: Momo, Luna, and Capo are pretty evenly matched; Jake & Jozsi seemed like it could work nicely, too. I wasn't smart enough to get data off my Astro to figure out what I actually walked, all I know is that I walked for four hours straight the first afternoon and then had two seven hours straight days after that. What I did discover was that pairing Jozsi and Jake was akin to dedicating profound faith in the battery life of the Astro and the ability of the whistle to penetrate grouse cover. Our little dancing pirate clearly enjoys a little competition -- and Jozsi was not up to the task. In the cover I shot 'Grousezilla' two years ago, John and I watched Jake tow Jozsi out past 500yds before Jozsi clearly realized he was further out than he felt comfortable. After another hundred yards, and realising he was about to crest a hill, I hurriedly chanked up the path and ultimately needed the e-collar to get his attention. I don't want to imply that Jake was blowing me off, I genuinely believe that he couldn't hear me in his excitement at that distance -- but again, with all the work I've put on him developing his handle, and getting him used to the e-collar, he knows my touch well enough to know the difference between being punished and being cued and showed up shortly thereafter cheesey grin on his face and happy to see me.

(Of course, as we all walked back to the truck, in much the same spot that I missed an easy bird two years ago, John and I were caught entirely off-guard by a grouse that had sat tight through two dogs running past it but which popped off as we walked by in conversation. We quickly christened this the 'FU Bird'. I resolved to come back for it the next day with Mominator and The Princess.)

John then left and I resolved to find more birds the next day. I took Momo out early by himself, carrying my precious Grant sidelever, hoping to find birds still on their night roosts and hoping to extend the life of this beautiful gun. We found nothing in the strip of cedars along the path, no trace of the bird Luna had flushed the day before, but as I rounded a corner where Dudley and I had both missed a bird over Momo four years before, there he was 25yds ahead pointing with a 90degree bend in the middle. I snuck toward him, cocked the hammers, and when nothing flushed, I relocated him. The bird must have left its roost shortly before Momo got there and kept moving as I came up because as we then headed off in a new direction, we heard the bird flush off to our left.

Jake had actually had a spectacular point on a grouse the day before, looking just marvelous all the way through the flush (which I can only credit to the genetic payload that he carries from his mother's side and especially his grandmother, 7xCH Hard Driving Bev). But I felt bad for Capo who had, so far, failed to have any bird contact. This picture is from our failed attempt to find a new cover, but it was a neat downed tree and a good place to take a quick break. Sadly, the closest she got was a nice honor on a stopped-to-flush Momo after we went back for the FU Bird. Jozsi redeemed the team the final day, too, stopping-to-flush on a grouse in what I call Momo's Rain Cover and then repointing it in a tree with wonderful intensity. We were past being terribly sporting at that point and one tossed branch later, the bird came down -- it's crop full of clover leaves like all the birds we've taken in November. The sad statistic was that in the indian summer weather we had a total of 9 birds moved in two-and-half-days.

*******

After a couple of judging assignments, the first weekend of December meant our Connecticut Valley Vizsla Club all-walking trial -- and the joys of bird-planting and hosting the raffle and trying to fit in running the dogs between all that. Although a little out of sequence, to summarize: Momo wasn't going to be a contender anyways, but got picked up early somewhat uncharitably; Jozsi acted like a complete ass and I didn't need to be told to pick him up; and Jake ran like a real champ. And won. All I can say is that we'd put the work in and he and I have figured out our timing so that I can let him make a good cast, anticipate a turn in the course, and then sing him around without having him necessarily lose ground. And so, with a win in both AWP and OP, he is done with Puppy stakes and the process of breaking him begins.

My plan is not to run him in Derby till I feel like he is virtually broke -- and then either till he has his Derby points or till he starts obviously misbehaving and acting on his own behalf (whichever comes first).

*******

Since we all came back from Arizona, I began working with Jake just using his regular leash and collar to get him used to the idea of a small tug as a cue to stop and stand still. (This is in addition to the more general, good citizenship kinds of routines where he isn't allowed to leave his crate or step through the front door until told and to stand to be wiped down when he comes in from a run in the woods.) We have since transitioned to the checkcord and pinch collar as part of his regular yardwork -- and also to the whistle as a cue to stop-and-stand-still. For us, the whistle cue to stop is an important one in our life here in the Bronx where we never know when we might need to stop and/or corral the dogs when we encounter a deer/a paintballer/a drunk/a park ranger/someone looking for random stranger sex. In any case, we've also begun to overlay the e-collar over both the whistle and the pinch collar in preparation for his actual birdwork.

And that began this past Wednesday. We were lucky to have both Jeremy + Jackson and John + Juli + Dustin. While Jackson and Dustin are still puppies, Juli is a MH qualified dog and a great candidate for Jake to learn what 'working behind' means. He's already shown some fairly natural inclination to stop-to-flush (which he actually displayed earlier that morning on an exultation of mourning doves) and to honor (which he did rather humorously on a birdhouse in his first trial down at Conestoga). But now it becomes about combining natural inclination and structure. And he did a great job -- and while this is a wide-angle lens, he has already figured out the cues for either a situational back (on the humans) or an actual honor (on Juli) even at some distance. Exciting stuff, for sure.

work finally paying off?

2011-10-11T00:23:00.010-04:00

Since I owned up to not being the calmest dog trainer on the planet, a whole lot has gone on. First of all, Her Majesty, Widdershins Skypoint Capo, came back from Arizona after Bill was kind enough to finishing breaking her for me. As with Jozsi's return last year, she flew direct from Phoenix to Newark through Continental's PetSafe program and arrived in fine shape. As one indicator of what kind of environments she was being kept in before, during, and after her flight, the waterbowl that Tamra had frozen for her was still three-quarters solid when I picked her up.

Once again, the headline you'll never read: "Healthy female vizsla arrives safely at Newark airport!"

With The Road Crew reunited, I immediately loaded them into the Luxury Cruiser and headed up to TMT to get in a morning's training before turning right around and heading south to the Conestoga Vizsla Club trial down in Clear Spring, MD. We met up with Jeremy and Jackson again and immediately began by running the little liver dog through his paces. As you can see in the picture, he is showing a great nose and some very nice style at 12wks of age. Once again, he got to make a retrieve with the birds not wanting to fly in what was a 90% humidity morning. His future is very promising.

Then we put down Her Majesty in an effort to remind her that even though places and faces had changed the rules had still applied. In this way, I feel spoiled. I know how Bill trains, I know how the dog was broke, and I know how to keep her honest and maintain the training so that at whatever point it will become second-nature to her. And as I've said to a bunch of folks in the last couple of weeks or so, the beauty of the West method as practiced by Bill Gibbons is that, even if she messes up, there's no hooting or hollering. I had said this to Jeremy before we went out, to think about how different what he saw the previous week and what he'd see with me working Capo would be. And he did. As should be expected, she tried to bust in on her first bird, got corrected, broke on the shot with her second bird, got corrected, and then stood like a million dollars through all the hoopla of trying to get two running birds into the humid air. Not a word was spoken. All we got to watch was a jacked-up 19mos old vizsla working birds.

With the West method what I've come to realize is that in the absence of any handler theatrics, even if the dog is imperfect, all the focus remains on the dog. Whether you're a hunt test judge or a field trial judge, or simply a guy watching someone else's dog hunt, your eyes never come off the dog standing, you're never distracted by a handler pleading, cajoling, or bullying their dog. Jozsi ran next and while there was still a little tail ticking till I got to him, he stood his birds beautifully and honestly despite having plenty of opportunity to roll out of sight and commit a felony or two. Momo, too, did a nice job -- this great point in truth being a long, long sight point on a pair of birds walking together some 40yds away. Jeremy and I spoke about this, about dogs' color-blindness relative to humans (not that it really helped us last week as we walked right past the hen quail buried in the dead leaves and then noticed Jackson had stopped and was pointing it), but that their eyes have proportionally much higher percentage of of rods in their eyes and a much higher flicker rate, or refresh rate, giving them a much higher ability to detect even small degrees of motion in the world ahead of them.

Luisa or Janine: if I've somehow gotten this piece of canine physiology wrong, please correct me in the comments below.

We then hauled ourselves down to northern Maryland to the Indian Springs WMA. I hadn't been here before and was a tad concerned that it looked pretty compact for running trials at. Compact it is, especially for anything closely resembling a true All-Age stake, but there are enough fields and edges that each stake could be run on a slightly different course -- and with Blair Lake on one side and a rising ridge of hardwoods clearly in the early process of turning, it was a beautiful spot. All the same, while some cutting and management had clearly taken place, it was clear that it had been a warm, wet spring and the cover was very high in places. And while the temperature cooled while we were there, scattered showers were largely interrupted by rain all weekend. It was a great weekend to have an abundance of long riding coats -- but despite the weather, the dogs all did well sleeping in the Luxury Cruiser and I was perfectly comfortable sleep in the back of the truck under the cap.

Jake did a nice job in Open Puppy, showing no signs of being at all unnerved by being handled from a horse for the first time nor any indication of interest in his bracemate -- both great for a 7mos old dog. As I've said previously, my initial want for Jake's development was to build a relationship and establish a handle and then encourage him to run far and wild. And while his range was moderate, he dug into cover when he felt the need, would pop out to the front at appropriate times, and handled like a charm. It was a very nice start that earned him compliments if not a ribbon in a fairly large puppy stake.

For her first trial, Capo also more than acquitted herself -- handling nicely even with a relative stranger. By the time we got to the backcourse, she had really started to open up, rolling out along the eastern woods line. She then disappeared and the judge and I both knew that she was standing someplace -- and then she reappeared and brought me a feathery present, directly and gently to hand. We had run out of course and so the judge alerted me that we could turn back -- at which point, she promptly nailed a point looking like the Million Dollar Baby. The judge gave me the option of collaring her and trying to flush the bird, but I elected to treat the whole situation as if she were a truly broke dog. She stood through the shot and then broke and retrieved her bird to hand. This earned her a 3rd place ribbon, a nice testament to a very promising dog.

While I would have loved her to have acted completely broke, she is still a mere 19mos old. And the best part about the whole situation is that I know exactly how to review the lessons she learned this summer and so we did so on Monday morning after the trial, again progressively improving from grabbing the bird, to breaking on the shot, to standing high and tight all the way through. While the picture above shows how nicely she'll self-stack, this is how she sets up on birds, too.

Open Gun Dog was the actually the first of the stakes the Road Crew ran in and it was raining softly throughout the stake. Jozsi ran in the very first brace and on a course that the judges were not entirely sure of to start with. I think having to make mid-course corrections actually worked in our favor because if there is one thing that I can rely on all my dogs for, it's to handle for and with me. His bracemate was picked up for an infraction around the 5min mark and that, too, probably worked in his favor -- or, at the very least, and in contrast to Momo, causing him no detriment. Jozsi doesn't need a bracemate to make him run hard and so we did our best to look like a well-synched team. Birdwork was at a premium for the entire stake and Jozsi established the precedent by not making bird contact till the 28min mark. There was a little tick in his tail as I rode up to him which disappeared by the time I dismounted. The bird went up, all was in order, I took him on, the brace ended shortly thereafter. On the Jozsi scale it was about a 7.5 out of 10, but truth be told it was also only his second, clean broke dog run. And I was pleased.

Momo went out in the fifth brace and was braced with another lower-powered dog. Both hunted nicely, but neither really got out there. With time coming on, I took Momo back to the same spot that Jozsi found his bird and he made contact, too. His bracemate honored him, all was in order, and the brace ended shortly thereafter. I was pleased with him -- and while I knew only a few dogs had made it round with birdwork to that point (and did all day, in fact), I doubted he'd end up with a ribbon.

But the highpoint of the day was hearing Jozsi's name mispronounced as the winner of the OGD stake at dinner that night. I have deliberately not run him a lot in the last two years because I don't need to try and show a dog that I am not proud of -- and while I would rather he fail gloriously than lay down the mundane, I also didn't need to keep paying entry fees just to watch him blow me off. But to have him take a four-point major towards his Field Championship after carrying the day from the first brace despite strong performances from some local favorites was a real treat. The bittersweet moment is that I no longer have the opportunity to call Lisa DeForest and tell her how proud I was. But I am grateful to the Semper Fi crew for letting me join their toast and remember her in the process.

*******

This past weekend we went to the Finger Lakes region of New York to celebrate our wedding anniversary and so that Meg could test herself one more time in a ridiculously long running race, the CanLake 50. The race features both a 50mile and a 50K race, the 50K folks joining the super-crazy around the 19mile mark. Unlike the previous 50K she did two years ago, the CanLake 50 is all on roads and follows a counter-clockwise route around Canandaigua Lake and compared to her previous race relatively flat (a mere 2200ft of ascent as compared to the approximately 5000ft she experienced the previous time). One side-effect of this was that Meg bested her previous 50km time by over 3hrs! As she'll say herself, she's not fast but she'll get there -- a great illustration of why the tortoise will beat the hare. At the end a number of folks commented on how well she looked during the race.

I pulled a hammy slightly doing a trail run with the League at the awesome Wesley Hill Nature Preserve in an attempt to get them exercised between meeting Meggers at the aid stations at 9.6miles and 23.7 miles. I love places that state that 'dogs under full control' are welcome, not 'dogs on leash' but dogs under control. A good argument could be made as to whether field trial dogs are actually under 'full' control, but I like the logic that says that a dog on a leash is not necessarily under full control either. In any case, the League ran there three days in a row -- and heaven knows, Jakey loves running in the hardwoods. And I am glad that I had an Astro and that he has a handle on him. Zoiks. He needed a whole day to recover from all his exercise once we got home. But here is a nice picture of him looking out on Honeoye Lake early one morning. I don't know if the Iroquois have a word for fog rising off water, but from living in Portland, OR, and kayaking on the Columbia, I remember that in Chinook the word is 'skamokawa'.

don't hand me no lines...

2011-09-26T10:15:00.014-04:00

I have a confession to make: I lose my cool sometimes. I went training with a couple of friends last week, got upset at Momo's shenanigans, and lifted him off the ground by the scruff of his neck, took him 15yds, put him down and heeled him back to the truck for a time-out. Wasn't pleased. Especially with myself.

I'm owning up to my mistakes in public because, like all the other sophomoric mistakes I've made, I hope others will recognize potential error in what they're doing and hopefully not have to go there. I do also believe that sometimes and some dogs do require a more physical intervention -- what I called 'leverage' in this article about my first month with Bill Gibbons -- whether it's spinning a dog during the breaking process like Bill, Dave Walker, and Maurice Lindley do, alpha-rolling a dog, or indeed pinching a puppy's jowl under its teeth when it tries to gnaw on you. Some of these physical interventions provide the dog with a literal sensation of what it feels like for them to keep doing what they're doing, some really are about asserting yourself as the top of a hierarchical social order, and the various forms of 'leverage' are much more about providing just enough of an external cue to prick the dog's consciousness, remind it of its working relationship with you, and ask it to merely repeat what you have shown it and which it has demonstrated numerous times (which in the West method is almost exclusively to stop-and-stand-still).

But this was not one of those times. I can make excuses about the dog, but the fact is that aside perhaps from taking a time-out, this wasn't the way to correct his behavior.

While I was out with Bill this summer, I would watch him intently while he was working dogs with the checkcord and pinchcollar -- short of actually wearing them myself, I was trying to see his 'touch' on the dog. As I wrote in the Strideaway article above, Bill uses a different pinch-collar a little differently than Dave Walker, in particular. Neither is necessarily better, although I understand clearly why Bill does it his particular way. As opposed to the combined pressure and acoustic cue that Dave Walker describes, Bill is pure pressure -- but it took almost two weeks before I could see him apply it. When a dog had stopped, but moved slightly to the side when the bird was flushed -- as Bill would say, it knew it couldn't go forward so the motion it wants to make comes out in a different direction -- he would reset the feet using the pinch-collar (and the tail if necessary) to reset the dog. He would chastise me when I did it, saying that we're not trying to dump a dog like it's a load of dirty laundry, that we need to show it respect. I've already admitted here that I used a heavy hand last week, but what I'm trying to convey now is that I was trying desperately hard to mimic what Bill was doing but somehow he was seeing me do something a little different. The best I could translate what he was physically doing was that he was pivoting the dog in a single fluid motion rather than lifting and turning (and potentially 'dumping') the dog.

Touch is learned through experience.

What I realised even as I was hoiking Momo off the ground was that I was frustrated, frustrated with the call from work that told me someone had managed to blow-up a deal I had been working on for several days, frustrated from what felt like a lack of help from the folks I was with, and frustrated at the high humidity making the johnny-house quail run rather than pop nicely. As for the lack of help, I realized that I also hadn't given enough information to my helpers for them to be useful. Now again, I've been that helper before, presumed to know something I've never been shown or had explained to me -- so you would think I would have figured that out! But the point of this post is to say that it is important to train to a plan each day you go out and make sure everyone who is supposed to be taking part knows what the plan is. Keep in mind that you may be working with people who are very well intentioned but have no idea what they don't know and shouldn't therefore be expected to ask for help.

Train to the plan and stick to the plan. One of the reasons Momo is less than immaculate is because he was trained by a complete novice using whatever method made sense at a given time. There was no long-term plan or vision: I had no idea what I was training towards. The same applied to some extent with Jozsi: I realized I had a really nice, powerful dog but had no idea what my long-term goals were and therefore how I would train to that larger, overall goal. I'd already made some mistakes with him and tried to apply what turned out to be poor advice before I came to the West method. If you have a long-term plan, you can then do two things: figure out the overall strategy for getting there, and break it down into more manageable chunks.

So, for example, I hope Jake will turn out to be a great broke dog capable of competing in a variety of different trial formats (ie. walking, HB, maybe cover dog, but certainly quail trials). If he never shows the ooomph to be a great trial dog, he will still be a stylish hunting dog and loved all the same. Style is critical for the FT game and a dog should be broken in a way that maintains that dog's style to the highest degree possible. In my opinion, the West method is that method. Now I've never owned a pointer but I do know his pedigree and what he might be capable of in terms of run; we also live in a city and while we have access to more space than most, a dog without a handle is likely to end up in serious trouble. I have therefore spent the majority of my initial time with him developing a handle on him, birdwork has come second, and breaking him to the gun has come third.

While I may well still run him through a Junior Hunter title, it will be to stoke the fire, encourage the run, and get him used to the brace format -- it will not be before I've started any significant steadying work with him. I debated whether to run him at the Cape, and even at the Westminster Kennel Club hunt test this past Sunday, but I have seen how long it takes to rehabilitate a gun-shy dog -- and so, running him without feeling like he has enough gun time on him really doesn't make sense. I have seen nothing to make me nervous about him, but I have no control over other handlers' gun manners and have been standing next to, judging, a very experienced hunt-tester inadvertently fire a gun close to another dog's head when it raced in from our blindspot having ditched its handler elsewhere in the birdfield. The long-term goal has to outweigh the short-term fun.

And this same logic has to apply to each training day: for example, if you want to work on your dog not breaking at the shot for the retrieve, how do you plan to stop it if it does break? Is it conditioned to stop with an e-collar command? Do we need a checkcord, even if the dog just drags it while it locates the bird? If the dog appears to be steady with a pop-gun, should we then test it with a 209 primer in a shotgun? Will we, and if so under what criteria, shoot an actual bird for the retrieve? And if I'd taken the same time to initially talk through what I wanted to achieve with Momo with my two helpers as I did with each of their dogs, if I'd taken that time to put the dumb work phone-call out of my head, maybe I'd not have gotten so pissy with the Mominator.

*******

On the upside, the shock of my over-reaction created a need for a time-out for me and The Mominator. I have been working on a few things with Mr. Enthusiasm and, if it works out, I'll post more about it. But I knew I wanted to test him with small coveys of johnny-house birds to give him lots of scent to work through in a finite area and potentially get over-amped on. Again, Jozsi knows his cues and I can stop him with the e-collar so that part of the plan was all set, too. (I know I'm writing here about training to a plan: the thing to keep in mind here is that Jozsi has had at least two different plans and one set of bum advice worked on him. So I'm being a little coy about what I've been experimenting with because the problem isn't the West method, as an example, but that various other things were already ingrained in him before we got to it.)

And as much as I anticipated correcting him, he looked as good as he has in a long, long time. I mean, really really good, like exciting, dynamic, and honest good. The kind that makes a judge sit up. Again, there were still a couple of tail issues which we've been working through for well over 18mos -- but even when there was still some tail movement, the magnitude of those, too, was diminished and at the invitation to move up and relocate, everything went super solid. I was so very pleased with him.

*******

The other major highlight of the morning was taking young Jackson out for his first introduction to birds. Jackson is from my dear friends, Jennifer + Dennis Hazel, bred from their truly wonderful bitch, Sally. I had no doubts recommending them to Jackson's owners, Jeremy + Katie, and was so pleased to hear that I was going to be able to keep tabs on one of their dogs. Jackson is all of 11wks old: he tracked and found this johnny-house bird all by himself -- to the point that we were still walking ahead when I realized he had stopped in his tracks behind us. He held long enough to get this and a couple of other pictures before ripping out the bird. But I'd say his future looks pretty rosy!

just geting warmed up

2011-09-15T08:12:00.003-04:00

It's hard to believe it's been over a month since I posted last -- and heaven knows,things are going full steam ahead already. Hunting season may not begin for a couple of weeks, but the hunt test and field trial season has already. The League and I just got back from a great weekend out on the Cape at the second annual VCCNE/Mayflower doubleheader hunt test. None of the Gentlemen were running (and more on that), but I had volunteered to gun for both clubs and judged JH for Mayflower on the Sunday afternoon. The League did a great job hanging out at theLuxury Cruiser for most of the day, but making good use of the cool weather at dawn and dusk to stretch their legs and work the leftover birds. The first picture is courtesy of Julie Smith and shows Momo using his usual Jedi Mind Trick on Gordon to get the attention he thinks he is entitled to.

This was the first weekend of taking the Luxury Cruiser for a weekend event and sleeping in the back of the truck. While space was a little cramped, it seemed to work pretty well -- especially after I'd resuscitated my Coleman two-burner stove and had remembered to bring all the accoutrements to make a solid cup of Turkish coffee. With the good weather, having the stake-out chain really made things a lot more enjoyable, I'm sure, for the League -- and having dogs that are used to it makes it a lot more enjoyable for me, too. Jake's ability to just roll with whatever is happening continues to amaze me.

Taking a step back or so, it's been a great month to really get to know Jake. As frustrating as the summer was for everyone remotely affiliated with the Wallow Fire, not being able to run him frequently or expose him to birds foralmost two months had me wondering 'what if'... and heaven knows, his sister Dot won her first Puppy stake the day she turned six months old. But the fact is that there is a time for every dog -- and I think we have plenty with the Dancing Pirate.

Living with three hunting dogs has proven interesting: we have definitely had to institute a more regimented schedule for us and the Gentlemen. After their breakfast (Momo and Jozsi just get a small handful of kibble after their morning run, Jake still gets a solid cup-and-a-half in the morning) and after their dinner, they have crate time to let them digest and to give us time to get our own food. Once we've eaten they get supervised playtime, although last night was the first night that Jake actually abandoned wrastling either Momo or Jozsi and came over and lay down on me on the couch, much to Jozsi's chagrin.

In an attempt to let Meg get a normal run in first thing in the morning and to give me the chance to really work on developing a rapport and a handle on the Jakeasaur, I've been taking him out by himself in the mornings and really letting him run in the woods, albeit with both an e-collar and an Astro. There'll be a few words on e-collars at the end, but I have been frustrated by the Astro's sometimes inability to combine correct range anddirection. I did purchase an extended antenna for the DC40 collar and I see now that the long-range antenna that comes on the new Astro 320 is now available as an accessory upgrade for the older 220. I have not been necessarily looking for more range, but more accurate communication between the collar and the receiver, and to that end have also experimented with re-tuning the frequency between the two units. In theory, shorter wavelengths (and therefore higher frequencies) can pass between obstacles more easily and with less corruption of the signal. And so I re-tuned the Astro to its highest frequency range; oddly, Garmin doesn't tell you how to do it in their manual, but it can be found in various places including here. Those two changes did make some difference, although at this point I can now tell that we have pending thunderstorms when it loses some of its normal accuracy. Having the Astro really lets me work on encouraging Jake to range and cast even after I've lost sight of him -- which in our woods is often soon after 30yds out. On our trail system, he does have some favorite spots that he really likes to explore -- and being able to not panic, and instead keep singing him out once he's hit 100yds+ is a real bonus.

He has had one run at Flaherty already, but the grass was so high in the spotwe went to that he couldn't hardly range and was suitably exhausted and abraded after his time on the ground that he slept wonderfully that night. He did also get to run at Crane this past weekend -- and it was pretty great to run him on wild-planted birds and watch how he dealt with new types of cover and tons of old scent. After his first bird contact, he certainly kicks it up a notch and, as a result, having a pretty good handle on him already is a bonus. In addition, I have been able to get my Evil Empire set up and birds acclimated to their respective drums. Today was the first day I released a couple from each barrel and left the recall doors open -- that a hen was already waiting to go back in when I went to open one of them. Hopefully this will be the first of many successful recalls -- I really do think it makes a difference using wild-planted birds, especially if you have stocked your johnny-houses. The two areas we need to work on with him are breaking him to the gun and running from a horse. I'm waiting till he is chasing, not merely following, the bird to the point that he is about to grab it to fire the gun. I've been able to do it a couple of times with a 209 in a single-shot .410, but one of the challenges in the place I train is that it is in the woods and if a bird flies behind a tree where Jake loses sight of him as he chasing, he'll just stop and either try to get a scent or come around in search of the next one. Again, there's a time for every dog and doing it right the first time means not having to take more time to rehabilitate a gun-shy dog.

He met Jen + Dennis's horses at Crane this past weekend, but time just didn't allow for me to take him for a jaunt and I'm hoping to have that opportunity this coming weekend. But this is the beginning of the season, the trial and hunt test season as much as hunting season -- and I'm looking forward to judging for theWestminster Kennel Club hunt test at the end of the month, then heading down to Conestoga to judge their Hunting Dog stake with my good friend, Michele Dowd, along with running all the members of the League as well as a newly-returned Miss Capo. The Road Crew reunited!

*******

For some reason, it seems that the debate over e-collars has risen to the top again, maybe only in my world, but Pat Burns also felt the need to write a detailed (and to my mind, balanced) post about e-collars as a training tool. And from an e-mail exchange with Janeen over at SmartDogs, she said this: "Good working dogs, those bred to do specific jobs brilliantly well, have incredibly strong behavioral drives that both work for and against their human partners. When those drives are emitted as dissenting opinions they put the true working dog at odds with the job he was bred to do and there is no reward strong enough to break that focus." Janine remains one of very few folk who I know who has actually researched the 'research' about e-collars. But like Donald McCaig wrote in a comment to Pat's post: "But there is a substrate of the pro and anti ecollar argument that quelches rational discourse."

As for the guy who yelled at me last night for running my dogs off-leash at dusk in the park who got to watch a pointer turn on command 15ft from him without using the e-collar (but still having it as back-up): bite me!

thwarted

2011-08-07T15:51:00.011-04:00

The short version of the story is that after a phone-call from work asking if I could come back earlier than planned, I did. After seven weeks in Phoenix in a holding pattern and no concrete assistance from the USFS till literally the day I left, it was an easy decision to make -- and made easier with the support of Bill. As he said, if he'd had 25 dogs to break and no other help, it might have been a different conversation -- but as it was, and in this economic climate, a job is a job.

I certainly learned a bunch of things, albeit mostly things I hadn't planned on. Namely, that I don't think I'll be becoming a professional trainer any time soon -- any residual glamor or romance that might have remained from last summer has dessicated and blown away. This is a tough life for the best of people, especially for a pro who is campaigning dogs and on the road for large chunks of time. I've said it elsewhere, but if I go to a trial and see a pro there with their family helping out, I'm immediately impressed. After seven weeks, I did learn that I could probably enjoy owning and operating a boarding kennel -- which is useful for Meg and me to keep in mind for our next move. I also learned that, in an ideal world, a pro owns or works directly for an owner who owns their training grounds -- being at the mercy of a federal agency as well as natural phenomena like fire will test the patience of a saint.

As a testament to the kind of class act Bill is, though, he did offer to keep Capo in AZ to finish her getting broke -- which was a huge relief to me because of the four-member Road Crew she was the one dog getting worked and making progress. And so we will wait till mid-September to see how much progress she's made. Now that they're home, all three of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are enjoying very regular exercise and the opportunity to get back in shape for the fall.

Despite 36hrs of food-related turbulence between NM and TX, the drive home was actually quite pleasant. This first picture, though, is from the initial trip up to Bill's temporary camp the morning I left, hauling my and his remaining dogs up to him in our trailer, aka. The Luxury Cruiser. Driving up into green scrub country with a beautful Arizona sunset in front of me almost made me rethink the decision. Instead, I took an extra two days to come home, stopping off first of all in Magdalena to see Steve + Libby. The drive between Springerville and Magdalena was interesting because while I could see little direct evidence of the fire which consumed over a half-million acres, semi after semi barreled down the road laden with hay. With a significant amount of the ground cover burnt off and the arrival of monsoon season, the next concern for the USFS were run-offs and mudslides (like those that wrecked homes in Flagstaff after the Schultz fire last summer) -- and bales were arriving by the truckload to try and anchor the top soil and channel water.

We stopped over in Alvord, TX, again at Lary + Ann Cox's place. A late start had meant that we initially overnighted just outside Childress but I managed to find a rails-to-trails site just outside Estelline to let the League stretch their legs. (As I read this Wikipedia entry, I realise that I was lucky not to fall prey to one of the worst speed trap towns in the nation!) This picture of Jake is just a testament to his confidence and increasing strength as he powers through brush. He's certainly already got a ton of road miles and experience in different terrain in his short life so far: he was hauled from Alabama to Pennsyslvania as an 8 or 9week old even before this trip, and has already run in the low deserts around Phoenix, the higher deserts and pines of Flagstaff, the grasslands of northern Texas, and the mixed woods and grasses of Virginia plantations. Spending time with Lary is a great excuse to sit and talk about dogs -- and he also made arrangements for the two of us to lunch with WC Kirk, handler of the last setter to win the National Championship, Johnny Crockett, back in 1970. I wish I hadn't been trying to overcome the last of my turbulence to be a little more talkative -- but it was still fun to listen to all of WC's various stories and suggestions. "Get a good-looking horse and learn to ride him well. If you have to do a little horse show to take the judge's mind off something else your dog might be doing, then so be it." (Or words to that effect.)

Before leaving Alvord, I got up early to run the League on a section of the LBJ National Grassland and between the rising sun, lower temperatures, and the beautiful countryside, all four of us had a great time. Certainly to me, the name mistakenly implied something more like palouse -- when in fact, grassland in Texas can take a variety of forms. My guess would be that the portions of the LBJ that I saw on my visit most closely resembled 'Post-Oak Woods, Forest, and Grassland Mosaic.' The important features for me were that there were woods that presented edges, if not the kinds of prominent field and pasture lines commonly found in the northeast. There was certainly room for a dog to run, but real cover for a dog to hunt (and potentially get lost in) -- it made me want to come back during trial season to see how good dogs and handlers negotiated it. As you can see from this picture, there are also stock tanks -- and all three of the dogs paid a visit. One of the traits I like about Jake is that he will water himself if he's feeling hot, including dunking himself in ponds; Jozsi will do it to some extent; Momo not really -- his genius is pacing himself so that he can hopefully establish a pace he can easily maintain for several hours.

We hauled our way over Arkansas and into Tennessee -- where the giant wall of humidity hit us. Blah. This might have been where both the Astro and my cell-phone got a little hinky and are now both headed for some hammer-therapy. In any case, the sad part was that we reached Memphis on a Sunday night which meant that as we headed to Grand Junction the next morning, I knew the Bird Dog Foundation Museum would be closed. Needless to say, though, I stopped by and enjoyed the Walk of Champions and the flushing quail tableau featuring and dedicated to John Rex Gates, Mr. Thor, and Crossmatch. I also did what any decent bird dog nerd would do and visited the Ames Plantation not far up the road. It was a little odd driving up to the main house and recognizing the stables, kennels, and clubhouse just from watching several of Brad Harter's great National Championship DVDs -- although they, like the rest of the grounds, look a little different at the height of the growing season than they do in February. The plantation is primarily administered by the University of Tennessee and I guess the administrative assistants are used to idiots like me asking if its okay to walk around the back of the Main House to see the steps. As the picture shows, yes, it is. Leaving aside the much longer history of what was originally the Jones Plantation, evidenced by the family cemetery fairly close to the house, it's still a little unnerving to think that every National Champion since 1915 has been posed on these steps.

We continued on our merry way, eventually winding up in southern Virginia, passing Cloverdale Farm on the way to visit another vizsla friend, Don Brown, who manages a private plantation in Clarksville. The sad part about that drive-by was the knowledge that Mr. Leggett had sold the grounds recently, apparently to a developer. I had set things up so that we had a short drive to Clarksville so that, in turn, we had time to relax at Cedar Grove and let the League get some well-earned exercise in. The grounds at Cedar Grove are set up to allow the owner to enjoy quail hunting in Southern style, either dismounting from a well-mannered walking horse or from a mule-drawn buggy -- and Don breeds his vizslas accordingly. These are not stretch-for-the-horizon field trial dogs, but dogs able to sustain a well-paced hunt for an entire morning or afternoon without being changed out. And he gets paid to spend the same amount of time and diligence maintaining the grounds by thinning trees, and carrying out controlled burns of understory, and planting warm season grasses, sorghums, and other varieties of beans and seed plants as food sources. It's certainly not easy work, but it's a heck of a nice spot to raise and train bird dogs. Here's a picture of our giddy fool enjoying some cooler weather and friendlier cover to let loose in.

In the meantime, it's back to work and enjoying time with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Birds are ordered for the Evil Empire and hopefully we can start training these guys again soon.

slow bake and a craving for rain...

2011-07-08T13:31:00.007-04:00

...not down here in Phoenix necessarily (although we have had our share of incredible weather phenomena, and our haboob in particular). Bill tried to explain the particular combination and sequence of things like relative humidity and dewpoint that we need in Phoenix so that we might reasonably anticipate rain in the White Mountains -- but as many times as I read the definitions of these things, for some reason I can't figure out how to interpret these numbers.

While the Wallow Fire is now 95% contained, the developed campgrounds at Big Lake, Greer, and others are scheduled to open again this afternoon, and InciWeb will no longer be posting any updates on the fire's status, we still don't have any updates to tell us when we can leave the Valley of the Sun. As far as we're concerned, we're on 24hr standby. But with the opening of the developed campgrounds, hopefully general access to the Apache Forest will come soon.

In the meantime, we continue to train a little north of Phoenix -- getting up at 3am to get everyone loaded and to be at the grounds to start at 5am. It certainly can be beautiful as hopefully this picture shows. Taken at roughly 5:30am before the direct rays of the sun, it felt relatively cool -- but it was already 88degsF and by the time we were done at 8:30am, it had already broached 92degs. For where the dogs are now in their breaking process, it's actually important not to try to do too much irrespective of the weather -- but especially for the dogs that get run later in each session, we have to pay particular attention to their demeanor because of the additional stress factor of temperature. Besides the pretty colors and striking backdrop, I realise that this picture also has one of our carded, training pigeons in the right foreground. Carded pigeons are a huge part of Bill's system for breaking dogs (and while I don't agree with everything in this article, it's more right about more things than most). (Lacking the kind of open spaces that Bill has to train with, Maurice Lindley uses homing pigeons and launchers for much the same effect.) But going up to the mountains means that we set up our larger johnny-houses for quail (and maybe chukar again this year), and our smaller 'Evil Empire' johnny-houses on what will be our horseback course. In the progression of things, dogs will get broke on carded pigeons, then have the lessons re-affirmed on johnny-house quail, and if they've progressed quickly, then get turned loose and run from horseback. (In the meantime, the horseback courses will get used by the already-broke dogs in camp for conditioning and polishing.)

A quick word on what 'broke' looks like in this system: a customer came by this week to pick up his dog, a started dog he'd bought sight unseen and, looking for a broke dog he could take hunting almost immediately, he'd sent the dog to Bill for three months of training. He'd never seen his dog before, he'd never met Bill, and he's had several good dogs from several reputable folks before -- in short, he was not a novice to bird dogs. We have also been blessed with a crop of very spooky, healthy pigeons -- and so the first thing he saw was his new dog stop-to-flush, high and tight, without command on a bird that took us all by surprise. He then went on to point two more birds and had the third shot for him -- all in order and all without any vocal command. He was stunned. He asked Bill if he'd bought a miracle dog: "No, they should all do what he just did. He just looks particularly pretty doing it." This is to say that in several ways, Bill's breaking process relies on dogs being exposed to honoring and stopping-to-flush at the same time as being steady-to-fall. In fact, using Capo as an example, I would guess that she has been asked to point perhaps 4 birds in a month, but has been exposed to roughly 20 stops-to-flush or honoring situations.

In other news, Jake gets bigger and bigger. Taken over the Independence Day weekend, I love this picture for his high tail, goofy smile and his loping stride. We also got confirmation that his official registered name will be Seabank's Dancing Pirate. Meg and I decided that we'd like to start naming our own dogs with out own kennel name (hopefully in anticipation of moving and actually having outside space for our dogs) and Seabank was the name of my maternal grandparents' house in Campbeltown. 'The Dancing Pirate' was the name of a very early Rita Hayworth movie in honor of his mother, Hard Driving Rita.

holding pattern

2011-06-21T18:23:00.011-04:00

First of all, I may need to come up with a new collective name for the congregation of dogs formerly known as Team Vizsla -- Bronx Chapter so I have a good shorthand moniker for Momo, Jozsi, Jake, and the fourth member of our road crew, Capo. And maybe, especially because I've been reliving my appreciation for Motörhead, The Road Crew may in fact need to be it.

We left New York and headed south for the Conestoga Vizsla Club Fun Day -- where I judged several dogs for the Field portion of their Versatility Certificates, and where Momo got to see his brother, Tavish, for the first time since they were littermates. As you can see, they share more than a little resemblance to each other.

I had then planned to long-haul it directly from VA to west TX in one giant 23hr leg. The reasons for considering this were that, with four dogs in tow, any fewer nights I could spend smuggling dogs into hotels would be a good thing. (Even pet-friendly hotels rarely accept more than two -- and for good reason.) And while I am sure the dogs would have adapted just fine, having two dogs in crates on my back seats, and two more dogs in wire crates in the bed, plus all the stuff I need for three months away from home, I wanted to minimize the possibility of any negative associations with road-tripping -- although arguably Jake has more road miles under his belt than most other dogs his age. The primary reason for making Woodson, TX, our destination was also two-fold: Woodson is the home for Jones Trailer Company where we were picking up our new dog trailer, and fairly close to Alvord, TX, home of Christie Saddlery. I've spoken to Lary Cox pretty regularly since I first started getting involved with trial dogs -- and, in person, too, he is one of the true gentlemen in this sport and a real master craftsman. He was kind enough to let me and The Road Crew recuperate for a day before we made our next jump to Magdalena, NM.

In the meantime, we'd already started to hear the news and get the phone calls from Bill that there was a serious fire in the White Mountains. As of writing right now, the Wallow Fire has become the largest fire in Arizona's history and while 51% contained, there is still a lot of dry fuel on the ground, unpredictable winds, and no start in sight to the summer monsoon season.

Even though it was no longer en route, we dropped down to Magdalena to see Libby and Steve again, to enjoy a home-cooked gourmet meal, drop off some more ammunition for the Sidley that I'd since found in the garage, and catch up on gun and dog gossip. When I got there, I knew that that US60 to Springerville was already closed and there was a solid pall of smoke off to the west. After a fabulous dinner of mushroom risotto, the examination of firearms new and old (Steve's new Ithaca, my Holloway & Naughton), spirited conversation, and a breakfast at the Magdalena Cafe, I headed east and north back up to Albuquerque to skirt around to Phoenix via Flagstaff. The wind had clearly changed direction and the soot and smell of the Wallow Fire were clearly discernible some 170miles away.

It was nice to come through Flagstaff and spend an extra day with Denise and Steve -- and for them to also finally meet our dogs. Having a fenced-in yard, a dog trailer, and access to public land to run the dogs was a real blessing. I hauled the dogs over to Marshall Lake to give them all room to really stretch and was really pleased to see both little Jake and Capo really get their legs under them and handle for me. This picture is of Momo and Capo watching a random pair of ducks hidden in one of the few damp, marshy spots -- and I love her intensity and style. She's taken to life on the road and to training like a real treat.

For now, at least, then we're based down in Phoenix and getting up at 3am so's we can get to our training grounds to start at 5am. For now, at least, Momo and Jozsi are making do with kennel life and getting run twice a week; Capo is part of the regular training string and coming along really, really nicely; and Jake gets to beat up on two of Bill's puppies every night. We did take Jake, Tina, and Fey out on Sunday to let them all stretch their legs and get used to handling and going with us. Tina and Fey are from a repeat breeding of Hytest Skyhawk and Tekoa Mountain Phoenix ('Remi') that produced Bill's two, nice Derbies, Jack and Jill. They are roughly a week younger than Jake who turned 4mos old the day we were out. I love this picture of Fey thinking she's about to ambush Jake who's in full tilt. (She failed.)

All of The Road Crew have been getting used to the various prickers, stickers, lizards, jackrabbits, mourning doves, and decomposed granite underfoot and in front of them. Figuring out how to extract a cactus spine from a pointer puppy's tongue was an interesting, novel challenge -- I imagine he'll think twice about trying to lick spines out of his foot pads. Nevertheless, he has been showing both really nice initiative and an attentiveness to me that is reassuring in lots of ways. This picture came out really nicely with the arm of McDowell Peak in the background and the simple colors of the sky, path, mountain and dog.

a couple more updates

2011-05-22T17:54:00.007-04:00

After almost a week with us, both our regal vizslas have realized that the little, long-tailed terror is here to stay -- and in that realization have decided to welcome him into the pack. Jozsi, in particular, was a little intimidated by the whirling white fireball but, with reassurance and encouragement from us, has embraced his role as big brother. For all his little quirks, Momo has always had both a strong sense of self and control -- and as such, has given Jake appropriate feedback since Day 1. But three-dog group-play in our living room is quite the sight to see. We're still structuring their days pretty heavily with solid spells of crate time in part because while accidents in the crate have been non-existent and accidents in the house have been minimal, we are still hyper-vigilant about Jake's puppy ADD taking over in an instant as the need to relieve himself suddenly crops up in his juvenile consciousness. Here is the little prince with his new favorite pacifier! What a handsome chappy!

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that Jake had never worn a collar till he came to us -- and now he wears one constantly. (You can see in the picture that while we had an old one of Jozsi's that would go tight enough, I had to make a zip-tie retaining loop so he couldn't chew it.) It struck me that this was something that he should get used to because his initial training cues will come through a collar, whether for yard work or field work. A friend told me that Delmar Smith had told him that when the pups were very little, he put tiny collars and cords on them, just long enough that if they didn't hold their heads up, they would trip themselves. In any case, we're working on having him wait to be told to come out of his crate, to stand and wait to be told to go through the front door, and to stay to the front when we're out walking off-leash. He's doing great. Jerry Kolter, incidentally, also starts his pups out young on a stake-out line also to acclimatize them to neck pressure -- preparing them for leash work. I also much prefer a stake-out chain to a minefield of individual stakes, and while I don't know if I'll have a legitimate chance to chain out our dogs before heading to Arizona, they will all spend a good chunk of each training day waiting their turn on the chain gang.

What I didn't mention about Jake was the primary reason we got this particular pointer at this particular time. After seeing some nice dogs at the 2009 Northeastern Open Shooting Dog Championship, seeing more at Bill's camp last summer (including Harold's beautiful bitch, Sage), I knew I wanted to own at least one pointer in my life. And unlike vizslas, there are no shortage of pointers -- which are arguably the Ford F-150s of the pointing dog world -- and so I wanted to wait for a special breeding. While Jake's mother, Hard Driving Rita, has yet to earn any major field trial wins, she contains the genetic code of two phenomenal grouse and woodcock dogs -- Joe McCarl's Hard Driving Bev and Frank Lanasa's Centrepiece -- who between them have accumulated at least 12 wild bird championships. I don't mind saying that I have been in love with Jake's daddy, White Powder Pete, since watching the 2008 National Bird Dog Championship DVD. And everything else I've learned about Pete, especially, tells me that he is something special -- an all-age dog who is also used as a quail plantation guiding dog, a pointer who would as happily as any vizsla sleep on your bed with you. Pete ran his seventh and final National Championship this past February shortly before his pups were born -- and William Smith, who scouted for Colvin Davis this time around, has written a nice tribute to Pete's trial career on Strideaway. (The pictures of Rita and Pete are both borrowed from Chris Mathan and The Sportsman's Cabinet.)

*******
In other news, my official report for the Armstrong-Umbel Endurance Classic appeared in the May 7th issue of the American Field and which has also recently appeared in full on the Strideaway site.

*******
And in a pleasant repeat, I heard the segment of NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" from September 25, 2010, and recorded on location in Oklahoma City that featured Delmar Smith as a celebrity guest. What a hoot that man is!

forgive the absence

2011-05-16T20:20:00.007-04:00

So much has happened in the last six weeks and it's time to come clean.

While we were in Sweden, Jozsi was bred to Mike & Kim Barry's Rogue, also a super nice, hard-running dog who, like Mr. Enthusiasm, will hopefully blossom into a great trial dog. I kept quiet about it because it was the first litter for both of them -- and I wanted to be sure everything had gone right before announcing my grandfatherly pride in my boy. As of this evening, I believe all the puppies (which were born on April 25th) are spoken for. But here's a great picture of Rogue, taken by Jaida, nursing her three boys and three girls. At this early point, Blue Boy seems like the earliest iteration of his father both in terms of looks but also in terms of his fondness for taking Jaida's hands in his mouth.

We also had our CVVC Spring Field Trial ten days ago. Momo ran in AGD and did a fine job -- unfortunately his greatest display of manners also meant that his race, such as it is, was also cut shorter. He stood perfectly through his bracemate stealing point and then grabbing the bird, but in the absence of a bracemate, his run shortened and while he got round clean with another find and a stop-to-flush, I was pleased with him but knew he wouldn't get put up. Jozsi's run in AGD was short, but he got picked up for an honest mistake after relocating too close, so I was disappointed but not displeased. His run in ALGD later that day was, frankly, and I know he's my dog, virtually everything I could have asked of him. He flowed great, checked covers, and handled like a dream. I took him around his bracemate twice to avoid a possible honor situation -- the first time gave me an opportunity to run him down a line I'd always wanted to try with him and which few dogs ever attempt. And he did it beautifully. But sadly, he took himself out at minute 29 when his bracemate raced in, 'honored' touching him, then broke on the bird, and Jozsi went with him. It was another illustration that you need to proof your dog for as many scenarios as possible and that you can only pray that your bracemate is as well prepared.

The other detail I've been keeping fingers crossed about was our decision to bring a third dog into our house (and he will be a house dog). It has been in the works for at least a half-year, but we now have a pointer in our house. I may need to rename this blog, but I want to reassure my loyal readers that we will always be a red-dog house. But I like how pointers do their job, too, and I'd rather get one than try to make my vizslas be pointer-substitutes. And so, welcome to Jake! We're now into Day #2 and things seem to be going well -- although, much to the chagrin of our two, we're trying to make the transition easier by starting with a lot more structure which hopefully we can relax as they all find their place. But for now, lots of structured crate time, lots of structured play time, and LOTS of exercise.

Speaking of crates, but maybe I'm late to the party -- but after talking to several friends, we bought a MidWest Life Stages crate for Jake. After having one dog who cribbed on the wire, I have been wary of them and, heck, you can't fly with them, so where's the versatility? All I can say is that whether it's the internal divider, whether it's the fact that he was hauled up here in a crate from AL to PA, or the frequent exercise, but we've had no crate accidents so far. He even slept seven hours without waking me up to go to the bathroom last night. So, for now, at least, I'm loving the Life Stages crate.

Momo is being a really good older brother, putting Jake in his place in appropriate moments and with the appropriate amount of wrinkle-face. Jozsi is unsure what he's supposed to do just yet. Bearing in mind we still call him 'Big Puppy,' you would think he'd recognize puppy energy as non-threatening and just put him in his place. But in addition to fathering puppies, this will be another part of his maturation process. But Jake is enjoying his new brothers and feels quite comfortable jamming along with Momo on the trail --except when his puppy ADD takes over and he has to sniff flowers or ponder the meaning of life in a tree. Pardon the crappy cell-phone picture, but it's also been raining here for a gajillion years.

And the next detail that has been in the works for a little bit is my intent to go back out to Arizona to work with Bill Gibbons -- except this time, it will be for the entire duration of summer camp. I leave here June 4th, head down to the CVC Fun Day so that in addition to seeing a number of our Confederate friends, Momo can see his brother, Tavish, for the first time since they were littermates! And then not back to NY until mid-September.

congratulations + training updates + plans

2011-04-04T13:46:00.008-04:00

Before we go any further, a hearty congratulations goes to my FTFG (that's 'field trial fairy godmother'), Joan Heimbach, and FC Fieldfire's Spark of Genius SH, aka Geena, aka the G-Funk Endurance Express. Handling her own dog, Joan and Geena took on the rolling, muddy course of Blake Kukar's Circle B Farms in Somerville, TN, at the VCA National Gun Dog Championships. I mean no disrespect to Mark Spurgeon and Ruger, a truly great dog I feel privileged to have watched and who has now won the NGDC three times in addition to the NAFC, but Mark doesn't have a medical exemption from the AKC that allows him to carry a walking stick if need be or have the services of a horse handler (in addition to a scout). In short, Joan handled Geena to third place and I am in awe of both of them.

*******

On the way back from the Armstrong-Umbel, I did stop off at Zukovich Game Birds to pick up a new flock of quail to repopulate my Evil Empire. For a variety of reasons and with the kindness of Tom Mackin, I finished a fourth barrel and did move the empire over to TMT Hunting Preserve. With the NY preserve season coming to a close in ten days or so and with Tom's business largely shifting to sporting clays shooters, it was a good time to get the barrels and birds installed so that by the time they have 'cooked' long enough and gotten habituated to the safety and security of the barrels, we can start training them to recall without worrying about hunters inadvertently bagging them.

I've set up the four barrels in mostly mix hardwood glades which should start to leaf up and offer more aerial cover from predators, but which don't have a huge amount of ground cover. In my ideal training world, I want to be able to see my dogs from a distance, have no problem with a dog sight-pointing, but as importantly want a good flying bird to be able to see the dog -- and pop if the dog starts to move and pressure it.

Folks have asked me for detailed plans for each of the barrels, none exist as such. Besides a 55gal drum, the two core pieces of hardware are a Less Mess watering and feeding system from Quality Wildlife Systems and a decent, framed recall funnel like this one from GunDogSupply. Each drum needs three doors: two roughly 4" x 4" ground floor doors, one with the funnel installed; three-quarters of the way up, and on the side away from the recall funnel, there needs to be a flight door (roughly 7"w x 4"h). You will also need latches, hinges, and either a snap-link or a lock for each of the doors, two long carriage bolts to lock the caps on the Less Mess tubes and prevent raccoon filching, a pair of handles to carry the whole thing easily, some right-angle braces to support the 'sun-deck' and the floor, some solid wire-meshing, a ratchet strap to lock the thing against a tree and stop it getting toppled, and then a rivet gun, a jig-saw, and a drill (with a 1" circular cutter as a useful accessory). Cut out the bottom of the drum, flip it over, and then work from the top down. Install the Less Mess feeders, cut the doors, put in the 'sun-deck' by the flight door (I wouldn't suggest having it extend more than a third of the way into the interior), install the recall funnel, then put in the suspended mesh floor. (In case you are wondering, the other lower door is for sticking your hand in and spooking the birds through the upper flight door, if they don't immediately seize that opportunity when you open it.) Finish carpentry this is not -- and I am no handyman genius.

*******

Bob and I went up to TMT yesterday to see how his younger setter, a rescue I might add, got along and to give Momo and Belle some tag-team fun. Eva looks like she's come with a few gun-shy issues, but we have a plan for her and hopefully we can convince her that birds are a lot more fun than she thinks.

Bob will be the first to tell you that Belle isn't hardly trained and at ten-years-old not likely to suddenly get trained. This is to say that she'll break point while you're moving in on the bird, will break on the flush, and steal another dog's retrieve. But she backs like a fiend. Sure, she'll move when you go to flush the bird for the front dog, but she gets herself stopped and focused like a champ. This was a great photo opportunity on their penultimate bird. And thanks to Bob for the pictures.

We then took a final swing in a spot we'd been before to try and pick up the first bird that I missed -- when we'd just had Belle and Eva on the ground. And Momo got to show his own honoring style even when all he could see was the feathers of Belle's tail. Despite a charging setter, I managed to safely take the chukar down for Belle to retrieve.

We had put down a couple of quail to see if we could get Eva excited, but she seemed reluctant so we didn't force it. And while I had hand-planted them (and want to be careful about getting him on birds that might not be fully awake), I then put Mr. Enthusiasm down briefly. He ran over a bird unexpectedly, stopped-to-flush like a champ, and was then sent on. He ate up the field we were in and started to dig into the denser cover to fulfill his quest for coturnix. He nailed another quail in a thicket, tail looking like a million dollars, held while I thrashed around after the pitter-patter of quail feet, then went back to him and relocated him. Shaboom. I got the bird up, fired the gun, then sent him up the hill away from the bird. And he lived up to Bill's description of him as 'industrious,' finding a running chukar left over from someone else's hunt. Again his manners were good and I took him back to the truck, very encouraged. Once we get the Empire up and running, hopefully we can get the final polish on him and start trialing again.

formula 1: grouse-a-palooza

2011-03-28T10:44:00.017-04:00

I just got back from the 3rd Armstrong-Umbel Endurance Classic held out in western Pennsylvania on the historic Marienville trial grounds. I still have to write the official report, and so what follows is more about the general experience of not merely a wild bird trial, but a true canine endurance event.

As far as I can tell, grouse dog trialing is a game of faith. It might even be blind faith because a true all-age contender will be out of sight for large periods of time, and ideally seen through glimpses in cover coursing across the front in search of the next most likely covert. It takes faith on the part of handler and dog, again, because maybe 75% of what is happening is happening by sound alone. The talisman of such faith is maybe 1.5" deep and 1" at its widest, often copper, sometimes brass or nickel, frequently with an apostle's name attached. (Bob Sorri's is the one that immediately comes to mind.) The chorus of this faith is the jingle or clank of a bell through the trees, and the whoops and hollers of handlers trying to steer their dogs as the course turns and winds. Wild bird trials take faith, too, because one hopes, prays, and makes mystical incantations that grouse and woodcock will be in those next most likely coverts, and that the luck of the drawing also coincides with the luck of weather, course, and cover.

It was cold this weekend -- which might sound goofy from a guy who takes vacations above the Arctic Circle -- but I doubt it got much above freezing, if at all, all weekend. Long-timers familiar with the courses didn't lament the cold so much as the sunshine, claiming that birds would be even harder to find in clear sky weather. And along with the luck of finding birds, there's also the equally strong prayer that a dog doesn't get pulled off course and out of contention by the white flash of deer, or get embroiled in a painful argument with a porcupine. Both of which happened.

A two-hour stake, especially relatively early in the spring grouse trial season, is itself a game of faith -- especially if you live in the snowbelt and don't have the ability to send a dog south for the winter to be conditioned for a two-hour slugfest through mud, marsh, water, high-bush blueberries, and conifer thickets -- in short, grouse cover. I saw some dogs never get their ground race on, a bunch of dogs downshift noticeably at the hour mark (but still finish strongly, credibly, and to the front), and a handful still pulling away as strong as they started, still craving the next objective. It takes faith to run a dog for two hours. And the dogs that can will make all our dogs stronger.

I don't normally care too much for most of the articles in North American Hunter, but Joe Arnette wrote a great piece in the February/March 2011 issue called 'High Octane Dogs Aren't for Everyone.' He concludes in the following way: "Although I still have no interest in following dogs on horseback, and I've long ago thrown away my track shoes for chasing points, when spring is on the make, I'll continue to dream dreams that will never be. Magical dogs with music in their feet, speed in their stride, and distance in their brain are better left to range the forgiving covers of the mind's eye." (p. 61) Nevertheless, as William Brown wrote in The Field Trial Primer back in 1934, "It [the sport of field trialing] aims to provide competition of the highest kind among bird dogs, to stimulate enthusiasm among owners, and to act as a practical guide for breeders by setting a high standard of performance." (p. 8) In short, while most of these screamers will make the average foot hunter a little nervous, the genetic cache of their stamina, strength, and bird-sense is something all of us would want in even our hunting dogs.

But the game of faith is perhaps even more profound when one considers that, firstly, an all-age caliber dog will be stretching the limits of bellshot. (And keep in mind that at this time of year, in these temperatures, with this much moisture underfoot, handlers were frequently de-icing bells to be sure that their mutual faith could hold.) The paradox of course is that the adrenaline actually only truly spikes when the bell falls silent. The true genius of the grouse dog handler is knowing when the quality of an absence of sound signifies that a dog is now standing a bird -- as opposed to having slipped over a rise, the sound of its moving bell caught in a hollow, trapped by brush. And then triangulating the likely invisible dog's position from a sound that only meant something truly crucial after it had stopped.

In ancient Greek, the word pharmakon has multiple oppositional meanings including both poison and cure. And arguably the bell is the same. I know I'm not alone in saying that when I hunt grouse I don't use a beeper or a bell. And Dennis and Bob have seen the proof of what happens in our western Maine covers when a hard-running, jangling dog approaches a brood sunning by a trail. And so, it was no surprise to come across at least two dogs, stopped and silent, but who before even a flushing attempt was made were indicating that their bird had left, if not as it heard the bell, then perhaps as it heard the relative cacophony of a handler calling point, horses carrying judges, and maybe even the gallery's whispered conversations down the trail. The short version is that the single piece of equipment critical to locating the dog locating the bird may also be the same thing that scares the bird out of its roost.

Besides watching mostly red-phase grouse boil out of covers ahead of dogs standing tall, the other major highlight of the trip was getting to meet Joe McCarl's 7x grouse champion, Hard Driving Bev -- there to be run by Joe's grandkids in a junior handler's stake after the main event. At 12yrs old, a little deaf, and a little heavier from a well-earned life on the couch, she was still looking into the trees, eager to to get going and find just one more ruffed grouse. I can only imagine how many hundreds of grouse and woodcock that dog has smelled and seen -- I know I'm still having audio-hallucinations, wondering if the bells I can hear are really there or just out on the edge of my imagination.

exciting spring

2011-03-08T10:56:00.009-05:00

Just got back from a weekend down in northern Virginia at the Old Dominion Vizsla Club trial on the grounds of the very beautiful Blandfield Plantation. I was asked by my wife to be out the house one weekend in March so she could do our taxes -- and then my field-trial-fairy-godmother, Joan, asked if I'd care to run her nice little (Field Champion) dog, Geena, in a couple of amateur stakes to see if a) I could earn a placement or two towards my judging qualifications, and b) we might get a few more points towards finishing Geena's AFC. That was all the excuse I needed.

Jozsi isn't ready to run yet, so I elected to enter Momo in Amateur Gun Dog as well to merit the six-hour drive. We met up with Jamie Fountain, the professional trainer who is getting Geena and Joan's great dog, Octane, ready for the VCA National Gun Dog Championships at the end of the month. I had first met Jamie at the VCA Nationals in Danville back in 2009 and was really pleased to spend a bunch of time with him. In addition to scouting for Jamie in the Open Gun Dog stake, I also ran his Brittany pup, Chip, in Amateur Walking Puppy, and was then able to scout for my southern friends, Michelle and Stephanie, with their Derby dogs, Luna, Frida, and Reece. All three of them ended up with a ribbon, but amidst three solid performances, the highlight came while scouting Reece.

His third find (of six) was that thing of complete magic that we all want to see a pointing dog do, a full 180 skid stop, high and tight front and back, and a bird too uncertain to move because of his precision and certainty of motion. It was a truly lovely moment in a very competent run. And while at least one other dog ran bigger and required some actual scouting, Reece looked so much like an aspiring, and potentially great, broke dog that he came away with the blue ribbon. I have been to a number of trials recently where it seemed that 'run' was being prized more than anything -- even if the dog was gone for minutes, never found on a bird, and brought forward by a scout -- and this was reassuring to me that even for a Derby stake, bird finding and style were being placed on a premium.

Shortly thereafter it started to rain. The birds started to get wet and the wind even less predictable. Joan's Geena has a heck of a nose and, like Momo, is a bird-finding machine. After breaking away like a bat out of hell and a solid first find, sadly our AGD run together was cut short as Geena then found herself on an exposed slope and stuck a point. I was already working the bird in front of her when the wind puffed from a slightly different direction and indicated that the bird was in fact running behind her, and she did a full 180 to indicate her mistake. I was allowed to relocate her, worked the bird successfully, and sent her on. However with the other dog committing a felony on a random resident pheasant ahead of us, and the rain coming down, Geena's previous footwork was sufficient to now get her picked up and end the brace. In the meanwhile, Momo had gotten bumped to the final brace and hit his first bird within 3-4mins. Three more finds, a perfect stop-to-flush, and a really nice run in the back course, and he and I were having a great time!!! My hunting buddy (who's only been trialed from a horse once before) came through like a champ. He placed FOURTH!!! I was told by one judge that if he hadn't taken a couple of small steps before I got in front of him to work the bird on a couple of his points, he would have placed higher. I knew he'd probably creep some after he saw his first bird, the steps an attempt to stay in contact with a wet, running bird -- and I couldn't really fault him for it. But his style was good and his footwork after the flush great, so I was still really satisfied.

*******

I am also very excited to serve as the official reporter for the 2011 running of the Armstrong-Umbel Endurance Classic, a two-hour wild bird stake under the auspices of the American Field. For those of you who don't subscribe to the Field -- and especially those of us that live in the snowy northeast and would rather be working dogs than digging -- it's almost like a time-travel trip getting that white-covered magazine every week. It's like being a kid again, literally waiting beside the letter box every Wednesday morning for my comics to drop through -- Warlord and then 2000AD -- so's I'd have them to read on the way to school. In this age of Tweeting and Facebooking, actually reading paragraphs devoted to trials big and small all across the country, sometimes months after they'd happened, feels delightfully idiosyncratic.

But then again, I like shooting a hammer gun.

In any case, I was flattered to be asked -- and I hope that I can not merely accurately capture the details of what happens but also the dogs' enthusiasm and application. If I can come remotely close to the skill of the great reporters -- Bill Allen, William Brown, William Bruette, amongst others -- I will be pleased with myself.

*******

Next weekend is back to Virginia to meet up with Jamie again, this time for the Conestoga Vizsla Club trial -- and hopefully Geena and I can figure each other out a little better and maybe Momo can squeak out another meritorious performance. Wish us luck.

xtranormal: Pirates of the Caribbean, Rudolf, Conan, and La Jetee

2011-02-27T10:35:00.020-05:00

Thank you to everyone who has been ~~nagging~~ encouraging me to write more -- I guess it's a nice compliment. There are all kinds of things up in the air here at the Regal Vizsla, some of which can be disclosed, some of which can not. But for now, a mammoth post about all kinds of things.

In any case, we just returned from vacation in Sweden. And I hate to say it, but we went conventional. I'm not insulting Sweden or Swedes when I say that they are pretty conventional, but compared to Mongolia and the Ukraine, the alphabet is the same and Swedes' fluency in other languages (especially English) puts most of us to shame. As a point of comparison, we came out of the Arrivals area looking for a taxi into Stockholm. Unlike Mongolia where a horde of drivers will grab the luggage off your back with the magic password 'taxi', the entire taxi stand had roughly twenty cabs parked in an orderly grid with the drivers looking attentively at you waiting to see who you'd choose.

As a side note and after one more trip through JFK airport, I should also say that JFK is increasingly looking like the stereotype we used to have of 'Soviet' airports. Even with its non-enclosed smoking areas, giant Kalashnikovs of vodka, and assorted Merhan Nasseris sleeping in the lounges, Sheremetyva now seems polite, clean, and in relatively good working order. JFK is an embarrassment in terms of its facilities and what passes for customer service.

The purpose of our trip was really to spend three days above the Arctic Circle just outside Kiruna at the Ice Hotel. But we had elected to spend a couple of days on either side of that in Stockholm. Meg did a great job of finding nice places to stay in different districts and we spent a good chunk of each day walking around and being good old-fashioned tourists. On our first full day after consuming a fabulous buffet brunch, we decided to walk along the waterfront and over onto Djurgården to the Vasa Museum. The Vasa was the largest warship of its time and sunk very shortly into its maiden voyage, after capsizing most likely due to stiff winds and insufficient ballast. The ship was brought up from the shallow sandy harbor roughly 350 years later in phenomenal shape, apparently because that part of the Stockholm waterway has relatively brackish water -- and whatever worm it is that eats ships underwater apparently needs salt. The restoration efforts are phenomenal and its museum strikingly effective. As a royal flagship, the Vasa has a level of ornamentation to it that, frankly, made me think of Pirates of the Caribbean and I kept imagining Geoffrey Rush jumping out from one of the cabins. We also took a harbor sightseeing cruise, one of the coldest things I have ever done -- and a little disconcerting to feel the wooden-hulled ferry breaking ice and brushing it out the way. And while we barely glimpsed a few of the islands, it was a great exposure to the Stockholm Archipelago -- which, like coastal Maine, is very different in the summer than it is in the winter.

After the Ice Hotel we stayed in Gamla stan (the 'Old Town'), whose waterfront can be seen in this photograph taken from the tour boat. The tall spire in the center belongs to the Tyska kyrkan (the 'German church'). Gamla stan has all the charm of other medieval cities that I've been to -- Edinburgh's Old Town, Kiev's Podil neighborhood, or indeed the venerable St. Andrews -- with its handful of longer, wider thoroughfares and narrow, meandering side streets. While we were there, several folks mentioned Talinn, the capital of Estonia, and I imagine I'd like it, too. We walked all over Gamla stan, enjoying the hidden nooks and crannies, the colors, the architecture, and the sense of time that inhabits the place.

We had talked about going to the Ice Hotel for a while... which in some ways is a little like going to Las Vegas, probably something everyone should do once (and most will not choose to do again). It is a brilliant marketing idea and a great solution as to how to diversify the economy in a distant, rural mining community with a still prominent indigenous community. One of the features of the Ice Hotel is the annual design competition that gives artists the opportunity to submit drawings for one of the thirty-two 'art suites'. Here are pictures of two of our favorites: Marcus Dillistone's Frigid-Dare and AnnaSofia Mååg's Arktikos. As you can probably tell, the first is set up like the inside of a fridge, the second features a mother and two cub polar bears (presumably) watching over the bed. For those of you who are interested, the hotel has both 'cold rooms' and 'warm rooms': when you stay in a cold room, and because the ice rooms are all open during the day for visitors to see them, all your stuff goes in lockers and when you're ready, you check out a sleeping bag, change into your sleeping stuff, slap on a hat, and clamber onto the reindeer pelts and into your bag. And marvel at how different the room looks with the lights off, in almost complete silence, and the cold crisp air on your face. And you are woken from your 20degsF sleep by a cape-clad gnome carrying a jetpack of warm lingonberry juice. True. Drank a lot of lingonberry juice and ate a bunch of reindeer meat on this trip.

We stayed in a regular ice-room our first night and then, at the hotel's imminent wise suggestion, spent the next two nights in a 'warm room.' Which felt like luxury. And it made enjoying our various excursions even more fun. Like riding an Icelandic pony for 2.5hrs in -20degsF in a quest for moose. We didn't see any moose till we got back to the stable and found them chomping down the horse forage. I'd love to say that I got to experience a true tölt on my lovely mare, Elja, but between the cold, snow, and a ridiculous amount of clothing it would be lying to say that I somehow summoned and sustained either of her gaits on our way round the training track afterwards.

We also visited a musher's kennel and took a dog-sled back to the airport. It was pretty interesting hearing about the legal requirements the Swedish government expects of mushers' kennels and also hearing about various ways they take care of their dogs. (FYI: at least in Sweden, a fair number of mushers cross-breed their huskies with pointers, in part to ensure a certain genetic variance, and in part to try and compete with Alaskan mushers who it seemed had bred pretty much developed the best huskies from within their 'pure' lines. Some folks refer to this cross-breeding as a 'Eurohound' -- although legendary Swedish musher, Egil Ellis, calls his experiments with cross-breeding to pointers, 'Scandinavian hounds.') There are some pretty not-surprising legal requirements of musher kennels -- minimum run space, insulated dog houses -- but the surprise was the requirement that no dogs were kenneled alone, but in pairs. What was pretty neat about our kennel tour was that we were guided by half of Belgium's Iditarod competitors, Dries Jacobs, and it was neat to hear how a young guy from a flat country with no real winter had comes to compete in both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest and has hopes to compete in the Finnmark. He was excited to hear about how field trialers get their dogs in shape by roading and dragging cables, with horses and ATVs, and he in turn told us about the world of booties, massage, and ridiculously long races. A couple of things folks here might be interested in would be mushers' use of either Algyval or Emu Oil as a post-exercise liniment and shoulder vests that feature internal pockets for hand-warmers to ensure warmth and therefore blood flow for mushing dogs' shoulders and chest. The ride back to the airport the next morning was 75mins of freezing cold and pretty damn cool. There's not much else to say about it, other than it was a great way to leave Jukkasjärvi and head back to Stockholm.

*******

If any of my readers happen to be experts in either film history or Swedish maritime history, can you please explain to me what the heck this has to do with a 17thC Swedish warship? Meg and I both think someone punked the Vasa Museum. Turns out someone else saw this in 2007 and was equally confused.

*******
On the shuttle bus from one part of Terminal 2 at Charles de Gaulle airport, I couldn't help burst out laughing. If you haven't clicked on the 'Going to Ruffled Grouse Camp' cartoon on the right sidebar, please do so. It might be the funniest thing I've seen in a long long time (except perhaps 'Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy' with Swedish subtitles). However, it's the same voice giving you directions in English on French airport buses! "Oh! By the way, we have just passed your gate..."

As much as Stockholm's Arlanda airport was like landing in an Ikea store, Paris's Charles De Gaulle Terminal 2 wins for the 'best aesthetic design' award. If you click on the Wikipedia link, you'll see that Paul Andreu's design has experienced some challenges largely due to shoddy construction firms, but the pierced sides of the oval walls are pretty striking, especially with the contrast of bright carpeting and bare concrete. Would have taken more pictures, but I think it's illegal. Having said how nice the colors were, I should also say that for what seemed like long periods of time as we walked from the shuttle bus drop-off (back) to our departure gate, the place seemed deserted -- almost like Chris Marker's La Jetée (1962). Nevertheless, even the no-sink sinks in the washrooms were really cool.

*******

Worthy of mention: we left the boys at a new kennel this time around. I mention what will now be our short-stay only kennel, Grace Lane Kennels, because the comparison is useful for others and because I genuinely believe that the folks at Grace Lane are attentive to our dogs. But Grace Lane is a turn-of-the-century kennel with fixed runs for its clients -- and while they offer additional leash walking to customers, that might work for froofy 5lb dogs, but it's not going to be fun for either one of our two demons.

At Kim's recommendation, we took them up to the not-at-all-manly-sounding Bow Wow Bathhouse up in Deerfield, MA. First of all, as folks who do read this blog know, our dogs have done great with kenneling, even sharing a pickle barrel for a month out in AZ this summer. Second of all, I don't necessarily believe that an off-leash facility is the best place for every dog, or every dog at the same time, or that there aren't any number of charlatans out there who market 'off-leash' as a substitute for 'supervision,' but here's what I will say to Marcy at Bow Wow. I picked up my dogs and they were happy to see me -- but not anxious to get away. Momo has historically lost a little weight at boarding kennels, even if he is being fed above his normal ration and not getting the hours of free-running exercise he normally gets. He looked awesome this time around, his weight seemed the same, and his mood was clearly upbeat. Very pleased.

*******

The Team will be headed to Virginia for the next two weekends -- for the Old Dominion and Conestoga vizsla club trials. I hadn't planned to go and won't be running Jozsi (who needs more not-hand-planted birds), but was asked to run a friend's dog in the Amateur stakes in the faint hope that we can finish up her AFC. I am entering The Mominator in the Amateur Gun Dog Stakes and also in Conestoga's Hunting Dog stake, so we'll see what happens. If he decides he's going to light out 200yds and finds birds with as much style as he did at his last trial, who knows what will happen.

честита нова година

2011-01-02T20:42:00.009-05:00

Or 'Happy New Year' as our Bulgarian friends would translate for us! For some reason, when I hear it said in Russian, I become Robin Leach: "Snoooo-vum Goooo-dum!" This may only be funny to my wife and I, but funny it nevertheless remains.

The first weekend of December was our CVVC Walking Trial and, in addition to fulfilling my usual bird-planting obligations, I ran both our dogs -- even though one isn't quite ready for the big leagues and the other more an energetic hunting dog than a trial dog. I won't give the long detailed story of why neither of my dogs got anywhere at our field trial, other than to say that sometimes you just have to make peace with the fact that sometimes they just do stuff you don't expect. If you'd have told me Momo would blow an honor (which was only seen by one judge who 'picked him up' after the heat was done) but have perfect footwork on 3 stops-to-flush and six finds, and that Jozsi would get picked up for footwork -- after laying down a beautiful ground race that also included one stop-to-flush and a five-bird covey find that flushed wild as I approached, I wouldn't have believed you. If I did learn one thing over again, it's make the judge tell you to do more on your next bird. I frigged around with a bird running around a tree for too long and should have fired my gun after the first two attempts and, in doing so, not given Jozsi the opportunity to take a step or two. Still had fun though. For better and worse, Momo still surprises me with how good he can be (even if he'll probably never make a trial contender) and Jozsi is so close to being a genuinely great dog.

If it was easy, we'd call it golf or brain surgery, right? We did have a professional photographer on the grounds for the whole weekend -- and George Ross did an amazing job lugging his gear around for 8hrs each day capturing some great pictures along the way. He was also kind enough to put together a slideshow video on Facebook and you can see it here. There is one nice picture of Momo on there, scrunching up his face as he busts through cover.

On a high note: I got my wife to come out to her first field trial and even got her on a horse. I should point out that while she enjoyed it, she still felt like riding a walking horse was a little too passive. This is the wife who runs roughly 8 miles a day and is looking for her first 50-miler to run come fall time. Here is my roadrunner with Jen + Dennis: and yes, it was not at all warm.

On another high note: I got called in for last-minute gunning duty for the call-back retrieves and the only gun I had was my Grant. Happily no-one complained about the guy with the musket.

We did also, finally, manage to get together again with Her Majesty, Broad Run's Ottilie of Red Oak, aka. Ottla. Wowzer! was she excited to see us! Again, I will spare the details -- but suffice to say that Momo is both a smart dog, a one-man dog, and a devious wee s*@$. So that I could work Ottla behind for the first time, I gave Momo to Annabella to handle. And did he quickly figure out that she was pretty inexperienced. And did we discover that Ottla is a wee hard-head like her mother? Yes, we did. But to her credit, she seemed to have settled into the novelty of the pinch-collar and checkcord by the final three-bird flush -- and when turned loose on her own birds hunted like a fiend.

2011 has all kinds of possible adventures ahead of us in dogdom. I will not divulge them yet, but I am excited by the possibilities.

gun trades and good kharma

2010-11-26T20:06:00.006-05:00

I know Steve is going to blog about this some, but here's a story of everything somehow being connected. Folks who follow this blog know I spent July out in Arizona, but I don't remember if I mentioned that part of my journey featured stops in to see Libby + Steve in Magdalena. (Steve was kind enough to celebrate my passing-through here.)

Steve and I share an interest in a number of things -- Central Asia and fine shotguns being two of them. And I had brought my little 20ga out with me to Arizona and, of course, showed it to Steve. Who in turn showed me his own small arsenal. My little gun, incidentally, was a W & C Scott Model 300 private labelled for, probably, an ironmonger's shop -- but unusual in that it had long 30" barrels, open chokes (roughly Cyl and IC), and a very light weight (5lbs even). It was a wonderful upland gun that could be carried all day -- but was still capable of taking birds at decent distances with the right ammunition.

The past tense should signal that, in fact, Steve and I have traded guns. Steve will doubtlessly share what his motivations were, but when he offered me his 12ga Grant sidelever hammer gun, there was little need for deliberation. I can credit my love for fine side-by-side shotguns to my good friend, Paul Hermann, a true craftsman in his own right, who was kind enough to let me shoot trap with his 1926 Purdey -- although just once. From Paul, I came to appreciate that, especially when working with well-mannered pointing dogs, nothing need be rushed -- and the solemnity of the moment-to-happen marked with a certain grace. Taking the time to cock the hammers on your shotgun is another reminder of that.

The Grant is all original, as it was when it was built in 1879 -- heel and toe clips on the buttstock, 31" barrels, and traces of the original case color behind the hammers. The real treat is when you take it apart. I don't know if Steve ever had the locks off during its tenure with him, but the interior of the locks retain their full case color and the springs are still so strong that my gunsmith (who is easily 6' 2" and 220lbs and no weakling) had to order a special spring vise to compress them to reassemble the gun. As folks can see, the gun has Damascus barrels, although these too have a lot of wall thickness left in them -- some 0.037" at the thinnest spot way out towards the muzzle. Folks have mixed opinions about shooting Damascus barrels -- for me, even though it is chambered for 2 3/4" shells, I am going to shoot 2 1/2" RSTs and wear a filet glove on my left hand under a shooting glove.

At 7lbs 6oz this gun will not be my regular walk-up gun -- I have a 2 1/2" chambered 6lb 7oz Holloway & Naughton for that -- but I have a few schemes in mind to keep this gun in service. And I did shoot some training birds with it on Wednesday to give the boys some retrieve practice. It does fit me remarkably well. And it is beautiful. When you realise that all of these curves were molded and shaped by hand with files and sandpaper, something as utilitarian as a shotgun really does become a work of art. Even my wife thinks it is lovely.

Steve was also kind enough to send me a copy of Cyril Adams & Robert Braden's Lock, Stock, and Barrel (Safari Press, 1996) which contains the following immortal quote: "The preferred double has external hammers, double triggers, and no ejectors. After all, it is reliably reputed that God shoots a Grant sidelever hammer gun with 30" Damascus barrels made around 1890." (p. 177) Sadly, once you've gone sidelever, I have a feeling you never go back.

grouse camp: where the wild things are

2010-11-07T20:52:00.007-05:00

Our annual pilgrimage to western Maine is over once again. Sadly. And while weather would have prevented Momo + Jozsi from really consolidating all the knowledge they were picking up, I would have surely loved to have stayed longer or had multiple opportunities to get up there this season. Last year was the first year we had been able to get up there in opening week -- and I was curious to see if the upswing in bird numbers we saw last year was the start of a trend or not. I can't tell from my blog notes whether the 34 bird contacts I reported last year included the ones Dudley had seen on his own or not -- but I was really pleased with the 29 bird contacts I had with Momo + Jozsi this year. Here's a picture of Jozsi all kitted out with his skidplate, e-collar, and Astro collar -- and I don't care how hard it is to hunt wild chukar in the mountains of Utah and Idaho, but trying to keep your feet on piles of wet, snowy slash on old skidder trails while carrying a shotgun is a whole other ball of wax.

As ever, we stayed with our old friends from Ellsworth days, Dudley and Susan, at their beautiful home overlooking Mooselookmeguntic Lake. And as ever, Momo's girlfriend, Lida, ran out to the truck mewing like a kitty cat, so happy to see her old friend again. Momo really does play with Lida differently than almost any other dog -- and she is clearly fond of him. It's quite charming. This was the view from their dock one brisk morning, as the fog moved across Toothaker Island midway across the lake and hid the far shore. The drive up had been relatively uneventful and I was lucky to be able to stop off for a quick lunch at Mike & Kim's in Northfield, MA, on the way. The drive up I91 is really nice even with the leaves clearly past their prime, but still in fading russets and browns, but after getting off I91 around St. Johnsbury, it's the drive east towards Oquossoc that seems strangely familiar -- the big red Locust Grove Farm barn in East Johnsbury, VT, the snow cap on the hills behind Lancaster, NH, and the LL Cote gas-station in Errol, NH, before turning on Route 16 into Maine -- and with it the increasing likelihood of seeing our favorite car-wrecking ungulate, the moose. This phone-camera picture doesn't really show anything, but it was a mother and her two calves who decided to amble across the road in front of me. (I was really bummed the camera failed on the way home and didn't get the two year-old buck who was grazing by the side of the road in broad daylight.)

The two-and-a-half days was great for both the boys. We spend a fair amount of time training, but there is nothing like a wild bird to get them recalibrated. This is only Momo's fourth season hunting grouse and, in all honesty, if we've had more than two weeks of actual bird contacts in that time, I'd be pleasantly surprised. For Jozsi, this is only his second excursion on grouse and he's still now had less than an actual week of bird contacts. But it only takes a few birds popping off unexpectedly in front of them to teach them that this is not your average planted quail. It was so great to see both boys not only get lessons in stop-to-flush, but on the other end of the spectrum also get gradually 'stickier' and even stick some unproductive points close by -- and all in spots you'd be expecting to find grouse huddled up out of the weather. Again, I don't know if I combined my and Dudley's numbers from last year, but I know that this year I saw or heard a lot more birds flush in front of a dog working scent or already on point (as opposed to flushing wild off in the woods at an indeterminate distance) -- which tells me that my dogs are getting better at locating the forest kings even if they're still working out the distances. The other unusual detail was that we seemed to be finding more multiple bird coveys than in the past -- a fair number of pairs, but several threes, and even a couple of fours.

For Jozsi, especially, this was great. However, to go back slightly, the two things I loved about working with him this trip (and admittedly I have an Astro to make this a lot more relaxing) were his handle and his obvious internalization of the work that I, and especially Bill, put into him this summer. Of the 29 definite bird contacts, he had seven stops-to-flush. It might be uncharitable to classify them as such, but I'm calling them stops-to-flush because by the time I got to him, birds were gone. (I'm also counting these as single bird flushes, when they might have been multiples.) But my point is this: I want my dog to run and hunt and when I talk about a handle, it's not because I'm hacking him into constant close range, and so the Astro would beep that he was on point -- and then I'd bushwack 80yds through heavy cover to get to him. I'd get to him, he'd still be standing still, maybe looking up into a tree, maybe tail a little soft, but with all my crashing I may have flushed a bird that was in sitting in front of him and never even heard it. But to have a young dog understand that a bird long-gone is not an excuse to break is awesome -- especially if he knows you can't see him. His final hunt, though, he had got a great reminder of why this is a necessary skill. We were hunting a skidder trail and he cut into a line of cedars about 70yds ahead of me. A bird popped in front of him, and he stood. And as I got closer to him, cursing my way up over the wet slash, two more birds boiled up -- one of which flew across the opening but I was too busy trying to stay upright to take a shot. I fired my blank gun, congratulated him and sent him on. After the initial flush, whether he knew there were two more birds or not doesn't in some sense matter. Standing still has its rewards, too. And as I moved on, too, a fourth bird flushed off my right shoulder. How I was able to swing on that bird and knock it down, I still don't really know.

One of the highlights of the trip was meeting up with Chris Mathan of Strideaway fame who made the three-hour drive to come chase some birds, watch some dogs, and give her young dog, Kit, some exercise. I need to hunt with Chris more often. We set off towards our first set of covers and within 15mins Momo was on point at some cedars. I walked in, a bird flushed, and I released Momo. Spoiler Alert: HANDLER ERROR! And so, of course, he goes off to track the flushed bird, two more pop in the same spot, and I manage to shoot one -- even though I would swear there was a tree in the way. I then holler Momo to retrieve the bird (and hear another pop off in the woods nearby). I was so pleased him with him.

I can't hold my dogs to a higher standard than myself -- especially when I talk about learning curves on wild birds. I had never encountered more than a pair of birds in a single spot -- and never experienced one grouse flush as a decoy for the others -- and it took me one more screw-up to learn this lesson. Another 20mins later, Momo again pointed into a small cedar patch -- and as I walked in, a bird popped. Why I didn't then stop and try to stealth in further with the shotgun ready, who knows! I was still obviously sufficiently jacked up that adrenaline was blocking rational thought. And so, I released Momo again onto a second bird that neither of us was in a position to shoot. But two productive points, six birds, and a bird in hand was still a great start to the day -- especially with a borrowed gun. As you can see from the picture, this is no Birmingham-made side-by-side but a Browning A-5 Light Twenty. I remembered all kinds of things for the trip, but forgot that I'd put all my trigger lock keys on a separate keychain for my trip to Oregon. Happily, Dudley has other guns and I've always had a fascination with the ugly duckling that is the A-5.

It was also a learning experience to be out with Chris + Kit and see how someone handles an FDSB-bred pointer already educated in the world of grouse and woodcock. I don't hunt my dogs with bells because I'm concerned (and have seen proof with Bob and Dennis's dogs) that the birds will spook well in front of a jangling bell. But Astros are illegal in trialing for anything other than locating a dog no longer in contention. And so, a bell is it -- and acute hearing a must, especially when there might be a brace of dogs on the ground. Even with an Astro on, it is still a little nerve-wracking to turn a dog loose in close cover and encourage it to run. And despite being hunted hard for the previous few days, it was great to watch our respective Garmins and see Kit tow Jozsi out to almost 200yards in dense hardwoods and evergreens. The only downside was that we had no bird contacts that we know of for either of them that afternoon. It was great to meet Chris, too, and hear some of her stories about her own life with birddogs. Hope we'll get to do it again soon.

suhweet

2010-10-20T20:27:00.010-04:00

I can't complain too loudly, but me and two other guys from work were treated to a weekend out at Highland Hills Ranch in north central Oregon. I love Oregon from when I used to live out there and I don't remember how exactly I first heard about HHR, but I was pretty excited to have the opportunity.

I am also a little skeptical about places like this -- skeptical about places that host British-style driven shoots (because they are 'shoots' not 'hunts'), and skeptical about places that claim four species of native birds and no bag limits. Even before they issue you your hunting license, it's obvious that HHR is a preserve and that these are therefore not truly wild birds in the sense of entirely self-sustaining, indigenous populations -- even though pheasant, chukar, Valley quail, and Hungarian partridge are all native to Oregon. As you can see from their website, some of their 3000 acres is pretty manicured terrain. I went imagining I'd shoot a couple of birds quick and then just take photographs. But shortly after we got out the first morning, I had to leave most of my prejudices behind.

Let me get the easy stuff out the way: this is plush. And even though you genuinely hunt pretty hard six hours a day, you're leaving fatter than you came. The facilities are fabulous and the food exquisite. I know that if the chef's parents, his kid's grandparents, didn't live in the area he would have been hired away many many times over. And this is a huge part of the HHR experience: if I remember correctly, the owner's family were five-generation farmers (which shows in not just the cherry orchards, but even how native habitats have been encouraged), and the idea of owning and operating a facility like this comes from love and passion. Dinner conversations about either windfarm operations and the mixed benefits for farmers and residents alike, the cherry crop, or the state of the mule deer population all made it clear that this was an operation being operated for the long haul by folks who genuinely care about the place they've built because their familes have lived there for generations.

As for the bird-stuff: we drove up to the lodge and shooed pheasants off the road in the process. In some ways, not exactly inspiring as to what the actual hunting might be like, but nevertheless a good sign that there are apparently plenty of birds hanging out on the grounds. I did manage to extract that the native birds were supplemented with release birds to ensure that there is consistency in clients' experience -- but I couldn't tell you how or when or in what numbers those birds were being released. And that's because a) it never felt like you were on a put-and-take kind of place, b) because there were none of the usual behaviors of farm-raised game birds, and c) I didn't hear or smell any evidence of ATVs sneaking around dumping birds in fields. I have no idea the actual numbers or distribution schedule, but it became pretty clear that HHR not only manages their terrain really well, but that 'native' might actually mean exactly that for a significant percentage of the birds a client will encounter. The owner expressed genuine surprise at how some of the roosters hadn't fully colored-up yet and speculated they were from a second hatch that year. I might be a sucker, but I believe him. Heaven knows, that in terms of how quickly a pheasant population can establish itself, one need only look at the history of pheasant introduction in OR and WA to see that Oregon, in particular, went from 0 birds in 1881 to a 75-day season in 1892 with an estimated 50,000 birds taken.

At 3,000 acres, there is plenty of space to allow multiple groups to hunt in multiple locations without shooting out the bird populations. As Dario, one of the guys I was with, said -- there were just enough birds. Meaning that they were both plentiful, but neither predictable, nor too many. And heaven knows, we missed our share and they got wilder as a result. There are essentially three different environments at HHR: plateau hunts up on the hills surrounding the ranch in low grass and sagebrush, primarily for Huns and chukar; milo field hunts for all four species of native birds; and creekbed hunts that could feature sagebrush, reeds, and waist-high grasses and, again, all four species. The first two pictures in this post are from our first morning's plateau hunt featuring the fabulous Tex on point, and then Dario, Scott, our guide, and Bailey & Mel (the GSP and the English cocker). This picture is from our milo field hunt -- and features Reuben and Otis (the GSP and the English cocker), cooling off halfway through our hunt.

As can be inferred, many of the guides at HHR use a combination of pointing dogs and flushing dogs to get the birds located, flushed, and retrieved. In this instance, Scott uses a mixed team of pointers and GSPs to locate and pin the birds and then a spaniel to flush the bird. As an aside, for someone used to preparing dogs for hunt tests and field trials, watching the bird flush and then all three dogs break on the shot took a little getting used to -- but as Scott said, if you have a bird that is clearly shot, gliding off the side of a hill, it can put a dog at a serious disadvantage for a blind retrieve if it stands through the shot and waits to be sent. And without wanting to brag too much about our shooting prowess, if all three hunters are able to bag a single bird each from a covey, then it's pretty cool to have three different dogs bring back a bird each. This final picture has my other friend, Ian, shooting a chukar over the lovely Fancy during our final hunt along one of the creekbeds below.

It was a great weekend filled with some miraculous shots (by Ian and Dario, I might add), some enthusiastic dogwork (including watching one of the cockers literally hip-check a GSP out the way to get a bird for the retrieve), good company, and excellent food.

building an Evil Empire

2010-09-28T09:58:00.015-04:00

It's been a wicked busy 6 or 7 weeks here at Team Regal Vizsla. The weekend after Momo and I got back from Arizona, the day after I put up my last post here, I chaired our Vizsla Club of Central New England Versatility Day up at Sharpe's Farm. As might be imagined in these economic times, it was a smaller entry than last year -- which was actually good because we felt less rushed in the heat throughout the day! Congratulations go to Mike & Kim's Kyler for finishing up her Versati lity Certificate requirements!

A month later I chaired our VCCNE hunt test (although none of it would have been possible without a supremely well-organized secretary, Stephanie) out at Crane WMA out on Cape Cod. This weekend was actually a first for the northeast in that we held a double-header weekend with our friends at the Mayflower GSP Club -- and so we had testing in both morning and afternoon on both days, giving JH & SH dogs and handlers the opportunity to potentially start and finish their titles in a single weekend. With hunt test entries, it seems, down generally across the country, the two clubs wanted to try and create an even bigger incentive for folks to come out to what is a beautiful grounds out in East Falmouth. While we had to limit the number of SH/MH entries, especially, to ensure things stayed on schedule, overall the entire event went really well. Not sure how Stephanie managed it, but somehow this year we avoided any pre- or post-hurricane weather that has thwarted us in the past. This picture is of one of the nicest dogs I saw all weekend, a beautiful Brittany named Cassie, who moved beautifully and handled like a dream even though, for a variety of reasons, she had to be handled by a relative stranger.

Congratulations are in order again to Mike & Kim, but this time for Cedar finishing up with SH requirements! It's hard to imagine that two years ago we were all wondering if he'd keep one of his feet after being shot (not by them, I might add) in a hunting accident. He might be a little gimpy from time to time, but he does the job really nicely! Well done, C-Monster!

In between those two events, I also started work on building my own Evil Empire. It's taken a few years to make great connections like these, but I have been blessed to find a friend with some property upstate who has a shooting preserve license and is willing to let me install four portable johnny-houses on his property so that I can train my dogs on habituated, if not actually wild, quail. I saw the huge difference in the quality of the birdwork when using birds like this (as opposed to hand-planted birds fresh out the bird bag) when I was out in Arizona with Bill Gibbons -- and essentially copied his basic design using 55gal drums as the basic shell. Each drum can comfortably house 12-15 quail and, using the awesome Less Mess feeders and waterers, the birds can easily stay for a week (if not two) without needing a top up -- and you don't need to go inside the johnny-house to replenish the food and water. Finding decent birds that will both fly and recall, that's a whole other story.

Jozsi came back from Arizona last week looking fantastic; I wrote about the decision-making process to fly him home over at Living with Birddogs. It sounds goofy but I realised how much I missed him the instant I saw him bounce around in his crate at Newark airport as soon as he recognized me. This dog only knows how to do everything with the utmost enthusiasm. I haven't had the chance to run him on birds yet, but he has already demonstrated a voluntary honor on Momo that he's never done before. It's already been a busy fall with hunt test judging assignments as well, and we're headed up to the Nutmeg GSP Club hunt test this weekend to both judge and then give Mr. Enthusiasm his first run off a horse since coming home.

I'm also pleased to say that I just got my first article published online in a non-blog by the nice folks over at Strideaway. I was flattered to be asked to write about my month out in AZ with Bill Gibbons and I hope folks enjoy it. Coincidentally, though, in that piece I wrote about Bill's experience and skill in identifying just the right amount of 'leverage' to apply to a dog in a given situation and made an analogy to walking horse bits in the process. In the brand new issue of Eclectic Horseman, Martin Black has a short piece about bit selection -- and how he distinguishes between a 'signal bit' and a 'leverage bit':

A leverage bit meant to amplify the pressure or pain from our hands pulling on them whereas a signal bit is meant to amplify a signal from our hands. Here again the biggest difference could be just a different presentation with the same equipment. (p.5)

I mention it because what Martin is describing is how I understand Bill to be using the e-collar. Why is this important? Any training tool can be abused, but once you see a tool being used subtly, it's then also possible to see that tool in a much richer light. For example, if you can only understand an e-collar as a 'shock collar,' then for better and for worse all you can do is 'shock' a dog with it. And for a lot of dogs, that's going to more than plenty to turn them off.

here's to trial dogs

2010-08-07T09:48:00.003-04:00

With Jozsi still in AZ for the remaining six weeks of dog camp, and with the field trial season coming upon us here in the northeast, I wanted to share a few historical gems about why trial dogs are in many ways the pinnacle of the bird dog world. I am not trying to recreate the 'why trial dogs can't/don't/aren't hunting dogs argument' because, frankly, I think it's something of a disingenuous argument akin to saying that a squash racket makes a useless tennis racket (and vice versa). I was going through several classic books yesterday and came across a few sentences that also help illustrate this relationship. In the precursor to his Field Trials: History, Management, and Judgement, Bill Brown (the editor of the American Field) stated succinctly:

The field trial conception of the ideal bird dog is well defined, rational, sound. To measure up to field trial standards a bird dog must possess speed, range and style. He must be endowed with stamina and a good nose. He must display initiative; he must manifest method in his negotiation of the terrain. He must exhibit character, animation, independence, intelligence. His work must be incisive, merry. He must show intensity and steadiness on game. He must handle. The ideal bird dog, in short, is the finished product, a high-class, thoroughly broken performer which excites constant admiration by the excellence of his work. -- William F. Brown, The Field Trial Primer, (American Field: Chicago, 1934), p. 9; my emphasis

And who would doubt that a truly broke dog, willing to stand steady-to-shot, who will stop-to-flush, and honor her bracemate without command, is both an asset and no less appealing to the hunter in her class and style on birds. Incidentally, the picture above is of Leon's Star in full flight -- as you can tell, a great little dog full of personality and energy. While we have gotten used to the idea of a three-hour National Championship (because for pointers and setters, beyond the two-hour mark working relatively open fields for quail is where the dogs of the highest athletic prowess shine through), I did come across a provocative comment that I hadn't considered before when thinking about some of the differences between successful hunting dogs and trial dogs. As renowned trainer, handler, and judge, Elias Vail put it:

The dog that can “go all day” is not a convincing proof of field trial material. The question is “How much can he show in a comparatively short time that he is down in public competition?” -- Ella B. Moffit, Elias Vail Trains Gun Dogs, (Orange Judd: New York, 1937), p. 182

On the one hand, the point is that the trial dog has an intensity that the hunting dog may not and need not, at least in terms of the demonstrated performance that is required for trialing. On another hand, that intensity also has practical application. As Howard Lytle wrote in his own celebrated training book:

This thing of pinning game, especially certain kinds of game such as the grouse or the prairie chicken or the pheasant, is most successfully accomplished by quick, decisive action – speed arrested so suddenly that the game’s only inclination is to squat before the onslaught… A dog that rushes to his game and then suddenly applies the brakes doesn’t give his game a chance to think and plan out a method of evading pursuit. -- Howard Lytle, How to Train Your Bird Dog, (A.F. Hochwalt: Dayton, OH, 1934), pp. 190-1

I have to admit that I am eager to see the final version of a picture taken by Nancy Whitehead that I was lucky to see last fall in a proof version. If there was a picture to illustrate Lytle's two previous sentences -- a quick decisive action and sudden arrested speed -- it will be 'The Slam.' Put slightly differently, while hunting we may get to see the almost sublime moment that our dog goes from liquid to solid, from hot, dynamic motion to absolute stasis, but in a trial hopefully everyone else will see it, too. Unlike hunting, trialing is by necessity a public activity -- even if the only three other suckers that see it in the inevitable driving rain are the two judges and your bracemate. As Horace Lytle wrote elsewhere in his book:

And when the thrill of your first win surges through your very soul, it will mean many, many times more to you that than any mere private shoot can ever possibly mean. The latter may some day begin to pass from the picture; but the vivid memory of your first field trial win never will fade. -- Lytle, p. 176

Wins or not, I can tell you that I remember Jozsi's two best runs clear as day. I also remember judges' compliments even when he's been picked up early -- and I would still take flawed genius over passing mediocrity any day. To be fair, I also remember Jozsi's first hunted bird -- and a fair number of the various assorted finds and retrieves on grouse, woodcock, and pheasant that Momo has pulled off with aplomb. But the fact is that the trial format with its fixed time and standards makes it possible to remember the narrative flow of an entire 'event'. Each bird find is a paragraph, framed by bold, deliberate casts to cover; placements and ribbons add exclamation points. In conclusion, as Horace Lytle states:

For after all is said and done – and all beliefs to the contrary notwithstanding – the ideal field trial dog is the gun dog of your dreams. Notice I use the word “ideal.” Not all field trial competitors fulfill the meaning of the word; hence not all of them would make good gun dogs. -- Lytle, p. 171

Why is public performance necessary? Because it is the process of judgment that identifies the strongest dogs in the breed -- and by 'strong' I mean the genetic sum of intelligence, strength, and courage that Frank LaNasa has written eloquently about. The best analogy I've heard for describing the necessary relationship between field trial dogs and hunting dogs is between Formula 1 racing cars and every other car: few people have the time, money, or expertise to really drive a Formula 1 race car (and while you could drive it down to the shops, the amount of groceries you could really bring home is limited), but every regular car on the road has benefited from the technology developed for Formula 1 racing -- steering, suspension, tires, etc.

However, and this is a strong 'however', trialing identifies the strongest dogs in a breed and in their specific game. While every litter will have a cross-section of abilities -- and not every puppy bred from a National Champion at Ames will turn out to be an all-age champion -- if one is looking for an energetic, stylish dog to hunt grouse, one probably shouldn't be looking at dams and sires that excelled in wide-open prairie trials. However, once one has narrowed down the particular game that one enjoys, it behooves us to think about pursuing a puppy from parents that have succeeded in that particular game - -but which are also the product of a long-running, objective breeding program. I have a good friend, too, who will never trial his dogs, who only occasionally breeds outside his own pool of vizslas to ensure genetic diversity but does so to dogs he has seen and admired -- whether they had field trial paper titles or not. He prides himself on having raised 8 generations of Master Hunter-titled dogs, dogs which will he will guide with throughout the season in front of clients -- and which will turn in a finished performance that will leave those clients hopefully more than merely satisfied. My point is simply this: his dogs also have to turn in a public performance and that to ensure his success, he breeds to the best dogs he's seen that demonstrate similar kinds of inspired, public performance.

Much of the friction between 'hunters' and 'trialers' is the result of ego getting caught up in an unclear distinction between ethics and aesthetics. Jim Tantillo has written a great, succinct piece about the difference between these as it is mis-applied to 'hunting ethics.' Although we might mistakenly frame an argument in terms of 'better,' 'superior' or 'best,' the vast majority of the time what we are describing is our preference for 'how' a particular game is played. (W.B. Hyrum has a great related piece at the Foster Award site on genetics, how we create self-fulfilling prophecies, and how our language fails us.) As an example, I have several of Brad Harter's great National Championship DVDs, but if push came to shove, I would probably have to say that as awesome an all-age performance as Gary Lester's Snowatch turned in in 2008, I would probably be more at home with horseback shooting dogs. The best dogs for me are not the best dogs for Colvin Davis. And so, as the new trial season comes upon us -- whether we run All-Age American Field setters, NSTRA Brittanies, or AKC vizslas -- let's be grateful for the great dogs ahead of us and keep an eye out for the best ones to come.

Dog-Camp: Part Four: Chicken-Shit

2010-07-21T16:49:00.008-04:00

Jozsi is starting to look like he actually knows what he wants to do, but hasn't quite reined himself in yet. Over the last year, I've been trying to figure out why he started flagging on some birds and why he would suddenly come un-broke (and try to rip out birds). And while this post is largely about our first attempts to bring him back, it's also about why professionals can be a real asset to amateurs: first, because they should have experience and, second, because your dog is not 'their dog' -- and they don't carry all the emotional baggage about our pets that we do.

This is not to say that professional trainers benefit from being cold-hearted, or callous, or cruel -- but it is to say they can be more objective with your dog than you probably can. And I imagine this is more prominent with some breed owners than others -- I'll even go as far as to say that I imagine there may be a higher percentage of vizsla owners who use their dogs' 'soft' reputation as an excuse not to enforce or maintain a certain standard of behavior. I don't think I'm one of those, but getting Jozsi broke and quitting his flagging seem to be related -- and that may be because I have been chicken-shit. (Before we get into the meat of it, here's a gratuitous double rainbow picture.)

I wish I had known about the West method before I started training Jozsi -- because if I'd known how to establish and build upon a solid skill foundation earlier, it would have been a smoother transition from talented Derby dog to reliable broke dog. But I didn't -- and I knew I had done some things with Momo that now I just cringe thinking about, and so I tried to merely channel Jozsi's huge natural ability. And so here is where we find ourselves.

When Jozsi had grabbed birds in the past, I had shocked him pretty good when he did that -- but I wasn't entirely clear what I'd do next. I'd also get paranoid that I'd shock him too much, and so would often switch to trying something else. Ironically, though, it seemed as though after I'd given him a dressing down, he come back just as fired up, but solid as a rock... and so the flagging did not seem to be related to the pressure of the discipline. But being nervous about letting him repeat a mistake (and having limited training resources), I wouldn't repeat the opportunity.

Now that we've completed two cycles with Jozsi, I feel more comfortable sharing what we've been doing with him. I should say that he is broke on pigeons, although he would still periodically flag even with them in plain sight (until I got in front of him). Along with several other dogs, we've taken Jozsi out to one of the quail johnny-houses, released 6-8 birds, and turned him loose. The following is a synthesis: he would run over the first couple but would stop-to-flush nicely without correction, then point one with a strong tail (which I blanked) -- but then we'd keep going and even send him after birds he'd just stopped-to-flush on. If he flagged, I sent him on until he either pointed staunchly, bumped it and stopped-to-flush, or went it to grab it. If he tried to grab it, he would get shocked -- but just enough to stop him in his tracks (and not to make him squeal, yelp, or come back to me). And we would keep going.

Now, Bill would tell me when to stop (in part so we didn't get into some kind of non-productive cycle) -- but more importantly, he wouldn't let me stop too soon. And that's one difference between a pro and an amateur. Where I imagine many of us amateurs cringe or get frustrated at a bird that isn't pointed, but is either bumped or flushes wild in front of a moving dog, a core element of the West method is that the bird teaches the dog. While a dog that learns how to catch hand-planted birds can become a nightmare, ripping a bird out isn't necessarily bad if you can correct him just enough to stop that action (but not make him scared of birds). If the dog either stops-to-flush or gets a hard point (that earns a flush, a gunshot, and a pat on the back), he'll know that the bird was there and that will hopefully firm him up. But Bill's other general practice (which I've seen him successfully apply to a dog that was blinking) is to keep on with a task till it's done right and the dog can be praised. (There are obvious caveats and exceptions -- and keep in mind that Bill believes that the more stress or force a dog experiences, the less stylish it will appear.)

*******

Vizslas vs. Setters

As great as the boys look here, I have to admit that especially when you consider the body-weight to power ratio, Jack + Jill pull like fiends. There is no let-up for the 45mins we're out and they love roading from the ATV. I don't know much about setters, but I'm guessing their intensity might come from their father. 8-)

Dog-Camp: Part Three: Revenge of the Nerds

2010-07-17T00:22:00.006-04:00

It doesn’t feel like there’s any major news to report here – although there have been a few more milestones. Most of the dogs will graduate shortly from being broke on pigeons and will then begin applying that knowledge to quail and chukar. Here's a picture of Bill flushing a carded pigeon in front of Tucker.

I should say up front that I have never hunted wild quail or chukar – and by ‘wild’ I mean a population that is self-sustaining in a given area (and which, in effect, have never been handled by humans). I have hunted wild woodcock and ruffed grouse – and living in a state where pheasant are largely stocked for public hunting, I would nevertheless make the argument that you can still tell the difference between a bird that has been on the ground one hour, three hours, or overnight. (Mark Coleman at Wingshot has a brief, but interesting post on the subject.) Rather than an attempt to build a soapbox, this is a segue into saying that Bill + Leon + Harold have an entire course set up with johnny-houses of birds, a course that if need be is large enough to accommodate a one-hour horseback stake.

The birds are bought from a gamebird dealer and brought up to camp. They then spend a minimum of three weeks getting acclimatized to the johnny-house and the environment, understanding that the house will offer them safe refuge, food, and water. Over a certain period of time, increasing numbers of birds are let out of each johnny-house – and while they might forage for a while, the birds generally return to the safety of the house each afternoon, called in by their remaining covey mates. In effect, after their initial encampment in their johnny-house, the quail and chukar are never handled by humans and acquire their own quotidian habits and schedule. And they don’t sit around for any blundering dog or human.

This picture is simply a illustrative request: a wild iris (albeit backlit by the arriving dawn).

I ran Momo from a horse two days ago – Bill’s fabulous Diamond, a horse with great feet and balance despite rocky Arizona soil – and watched him first have to stop-to-flush on a pair of quail, then barely establish a point on a log as I quartered back towards him just in time to watch a half-dozen chukar bail out of there (mercifully, one remained which I was able to flush and fire my blank gun on), and then watched him stop-to-flush on another quail. And while only one other dog we ran that morning established a point on a bird, it made me wonder how dogs filter out the ambient smells of one region and pinpoint the smell of game birds. Or how a bobwhite quail raised in Arizona might smell different from a bobwhite raised in Pennsylvania. (Or for that matter how a blue scaled quail raised out on Long Island might smell different from a native Arizona scalie.) All I know is is that Momo is a generally cautious dog who hates to bump birds – and he’s always been a quick learner. We’ll see how quickly he rebounds from these insults to his diligence.

I forget if I mentioned that Momo blew a pad during his first attempt at roading from an ATV two weeks ago – but he still impressed folks with his commitment to hunting tripod style while he rehabbed his foot. In the meantime I’ve been roading Jozsi with a variety of running mates, even getting up to the full octet on the ATV. But this afternoon was the first time I got to take Momo out again (with Jozsi, Jack, Jill, Saddle, Freckles, Bull, and Speck: two vizslas, two pointers, one GSP, and three setters). And they were just having a ball, pulling against their harnesses, and enjoying the cool, relatively damp air as it slid over them. The only nervous point is noticing if one or other of them has to go to the bathroom – and I apologize for this scatological observation in advance. It is generally one or other of my boys, in part because they are house dogs. Which means that they are accustomed to being let out to go to the bathroom, and the idea of potentially stepping in their poop in their kennel, or peeing where they might lie down, is anathema to their normal existence. And so while they have acclimatized to kennel life here, neither of them has gotten used to going to the bathroom on a stake-out. Being taken off a stake-out to work birds, or being taken out to go roading, therefore gets them to an appropriate psychological time and space for them to go the bathroom. Which means that I road my boys on the front sets of harnesses so I can keep an eye out for the first clues that they will need to stop (and so I will need to brake).

My apologies for the graphic detail – but it’s funny the things you notice.

Dog-Camp: Part Deux

2010-07-09T22:58:00.005-04:00

It’s been a wild few days here at dog-camp watching Bill (and his two helpers, Leon and Harold) work dogs. I hope some day that I’ll be able to read dogs as well as these guys and know when to push through and when to back-off. I’ve seen Bill literally get one dog that was blatantly blinking birds all fired up and staying steady-to-shot in 30mins. And we ran that little dog again yesterday and he was all business. To celebrate here's a gratuitous scenery shot.

But here are a couple of neat things I’ve seen that just make sense: one related to honoring, the other to handling your dog as you get in front to work a bird. What I’m going to describe will make a lot more sense if you understand that the Bill West method – as practiced by Bill Gibbons, Dave Walker, Maurice Lindley, and others – begins with the foundational skill of ‘stop-and-stand-still’. I am sure that I will write more about the how, when, and why of this as the month goes on, but let’s assume that this is the first thing you’re actually going to teach your dog.

Initially the dog comes to understand the cue from the ‘no-hurt collar’ (as Dave Walker calls it) to stop-and-stand-still – at which point you begin to overlay the e-collar as the cueing method so that you can continue to work the dog without a checkline. As the dog gets more experienced, you add more scenarios and cues (such as a bird that flushes in front of it, or their own initiated point) – but you are still expecting the dog to stop-and-stand-still. At the point that a dog understands the cue from the ‘no-hurt collar’, Bill begins to bring less-experienced dogs ‘behind’ more experienced dogs. Whenever the more experienced dog is cued to stop, or points the training bird, the less-experienced dog is stopped with the collar cue when it has a view of the scenario. And while you are building the less-experienced dog’s self-discipline to stop-and-stand-still, you are also keeping it excited by letting it see a bird in flight. Depending on your timing, you are also, however, prepping the dog to honor and/or stop-to-flush – so that by the time the dog is recognizing the e-collar cue to stop, you can turn the dog loose and have these kinds of scenario not be novel to them when, or if, you need to use the e-collar.

As folks who read this blog know, I am trying to work Jozsi through some flagging issues. Again, because I haven’t recognized a pattern to the ‘when’ and ‘where’, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious reason why – although I suspect that me sending him mixed messages somewhere however unknowingly around the age of 18mos is largely at fault. But I did want to share this observation.

Bill said one thing really interesting to me after he saw me work Jozsi the first time -- that I was handling him and the birds like I didn't trust him, that I was handling scared. Which in a lot of ways, he's right on about -- and that may be adding to whatever anxiety is making his tail wag in some situations. And so this is what he told me to do: when Jozsi points, I should get up to him as quickly as possible, jog if necessary, concentrate on getting the bird in the air, fire the blank gun immediately, and without looking him directly in the eye, walk back to him slowly and calmly and to one side, pet him, style him up, and move on. So, try to minimize what might be uncertain and/or confrontational body language, be assertive and exciting about getting the bird in the air to keep the dog jazzed, but don't make them wait longer than absolutely necessary to get the birdwork done.

And if you have to kick around, do it vigorously; Bill even told me to use whatever the loudest gun/cartridge combo I have. At that time, I was trying to use up an old box of .22shorts in my NEF; tomorrow, I'll go back to the Alfa and the Ramset nail-gun cartridges. As he said, the excitement should be in front of the dog and the dog should be getting amped up by it.

dog camp

2010-07-04T14:50:00.006-04:00

I haven’t really posted anything up here in the last two weeks about where me and the boys are – in part because my personality doesn’t like to get its hopes up too much and get ahead of itself, even when I’m just really excited about an opportunity and the possibilities it might afford me and my dogs.

And so, it’s time for disclosure: I am in Arizona. After a few calls back and forth with Bill Gibbons over the spring just to catch up (but in which he’d tease me about coming out to work dogs with him again), I took a month off from work. And drove out from NYC last week to beautiful eastern Arizona with the boys in tow. I’m not sure Bill had any idea I was quite this crazy – but my gratitude goes out to him, my wife, and my colleagues at work for giving me this opportunity. Leaving aside the various specific issues I’d like to take care of with Jozsi, I just want to be better for my dogs. They give us so much, forgive us so much, and ask very little it seems – except for the joy of hunting birds with us.

And so we’re up in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona at 9500’ feet with huge meadows to train in, elk and antelope, the smell of pines, and wild mountain irises everywhere. For someone used to the tight spaces of the northeast, the heat and humidity, it feels like a small piece of heaven. While we haven’t had any precipitation the last couple of days, it seems the usual weather routine is for sunshine with afternoon showers that help keep the humidity and the dust down. We generally get up around 5am, have a gentle breakfast, and are working dogs by 7:00am; we work dogs till around 12noon, and then put up the dogs and feed them their daily meal. Generally we sit around for the height of the afternoon: a couple of the guys who’ve been helping Bill out for summers will go fish, or take a horse ride, or road the dogs that didn’t get worked that day.

Here's a picture of Bill roading 8 dogs at once. The dogs come to love it -- and what you can't tell in the picture is that Bill is riding in neutral and didn't even engage a gear on the ATV for another half-mile or so. You can see his and Tamra's three 'little dogs' -- Bella, Lucy, and Purdy Girl -- riding right behind him. They love the ride almost as much as the dogs in the harnesses.

It’s been a few days of firsts: the first time my dogs have been worked on pigeons, first time they’ve been roaded from an ATV, which they’ve dealt with really nicely along with being in a kennel with 30 or so other dogs of all shapes and sizes (and not with their dad the whole time). They seem to have adjusted pretty well to the warmth and elevation pretty well. Bill’s got a pretty good idea of what we need to work on with my younger dog – and so, as much as I’d like to leap into running him off a horse, it’s good to have a sensible game plan. I’m just excited to have someone who actually knows what he’s doing literally looking over my shoulder and educating me as much as we are the dogs.

heat + humidity + adventures

2010-06-21T14:29:00.009-04:00

Since I last wrote, I completed my first Senior Hunter and Master Hunter judging assignment. It's always helpful to have someone consistent, calm, and experienced as a judging partner and I got lucky this time around. The judging standards have to be adhered to to keep the title standard meaningful -- but it's still reassuring to come across fellow judges who are still trying to judge with the dog, the standard, the conditions, the handler, the bracemate... in short, trying to keep the entire picture in view and not just trying to find a way to disqualify a dog or its handler.

I have also judged my first ever 'trial' and my first ever 'obedience' standard! The latter, in particular, shocks me. In any case, this past weekend I judged both the CVVC's Hunting Dog Excellent stake and one leg of the next day's Versatility testing. Happily, both dogs testing for their obedience legs were easy passes and the setting a little more relaxed than a formal obedience trial. Probably the biggest compliment that can be paid to the dogs who competed in the Excellent stake came from my fellow judge, a Brittany guy, who said that he'd hunt over any of those dogs -- and, not meaning it in any backhanded way, that after judging for 15yrs, it was great to see a vizsla-only stake where the quality of the dogs was that high. The hot conditions could have easily reversed the order of the placements -- but that is the nature of a trial-type environment. It was also great to see two older dogs -- and not just young hotshots -- win both the Excellent stake and the regular Hunting Dog stake. Congratulations to both Sid and Blue!

Here's a great picture of The Mominator from Sunday. Looking good despite the heat! It was also great to get some good, controlled repetitions in with both Jozsi and Lyric -- reinforcing and praising Mr. Enthusiasm when he stands his birds, and getting Lyric accustomed to the idea of steady-to-wing-and-shot. Here are a couple of good articles on heat and summer conditioning -- one from our friend, Sean Wayment, the other from Joe Spoo. The detail I like about Joe's article is his referencing the magic number '150', ie. the total from adding both temperature and relative humidity together. Saturday was both a little cooler and a little drier -- but we were close to 130 on Saturday and in the high 140s on Sunday. That hot and the dogs take a long time to cool down even with misters, shade, and plenty of cool, fresh water -- and even birds in launchers will barely fly. I mention this 'heat index' because I imagine a fair number of folks in the northeast would forget the cumulative effect of heat and humidity -- and sometimes a 70deg day can be harder work that an 85deg day if the relative humidity is conspiring against you.

For now, at least, we're taking a small break. Just a small one, though. Till we get past this nasty humid weather.

*******

Here, however, is a small cheer for good, old-fashioned customer service. Back in January 2009, I noted that Remington, the parent company of Harrington & Richardson, and in turn of New England Firearms, had closed the Gardner, MA, plant thereby ending production of the iconic HR/NEF starter pistol. This pistol was always known for its simplicity, reliability, and ease of maintenance. Somehow, though, I ended up with the lemon of the bunch. I could never get more then about a 50% detonation rate on mine; I even had one gunsmith replace some springs and file the firing pin; and, in fact, even went so far as to give it away for parts. The friend who took it gave me it back saying 'Oh, you just need to oil it'. Mildly amusing, but I figured that maybe my NEF was like a Remington 1100 and needed constant lubing. Sadly, he was wrong, too. However, I did discover that Remington was still offering service on the NEF pistols. And after two weeks and taking my word that the gun was still less than two years old, I have it back. Working perfectly. For free.

In the meantime, I have been using an Alfa pistol -- which has worked completely smoothly for me. As compared to the NEF, the common criticism leveled at the Alfa is its full-frame size and six-shot capacity. I hear, though, that there is a new 209-primer pistol, the GunX, being offered through DogsAfield that will at least address some of the size and weight issues.

oh the places you will go

2010-06-06T07:17:00.001-04:00

Today is The Mominator's fifth birthday. Five years ago, I didn't know what a pointing dog was. We got a vizsla because we wanted an energetic dog that would run with my wife -- and because of their temperament. And just watching him slowly find his instincts in the wooded park behind our house (we lived in Maine at the time) was enough to prompt me to explore training him and me. I had shot a lot of target rifles in my high-school and university days, but never a shotgun. Here he is, not quite 3mos old!

I should acknowledge that we wouldn't be where we are without Momo's first girlfriend, the lovely Lida, who keeps our friends, Dudley and Susan, company up in western Maine. She encouraged him to leave our side and get out and explore the woods. We try to get them together every fall and somehow Lida not only knows who is in the truck when it pulls up, but mews like a kitten when she sees him. Here is a picture of Her Majesty from our trip to Rangeley last fall.

I should also acknowledge the continuing friendship of Paul Hermann -- a true gentleman of the grouse woods with his love of English setters and English shotguns. He was the first person I met whose eyes immediately lit up when I said I had a pointing dog and was trying to learn how to train him -- and the person who had already made contacts for me by the time we moved to New York City. I can also say with certainty that my own love of side-by-sides comes from shooting his 1926 Purdey at the local trap range in Maine -- although it may be some time before I can afford anything quite that nice.

I think about all the miles on our truck, the worn-out boots, the faint pong of quail in the garage, and the hundreds of friends we have made as a result of having The Mominator and, then, Mr. Enthusiasm. And I am struck by how similar (and arguably how much further) another vizsla, Zeke, took our friends, Michelle and Patrick, in his first five (too short) years.

Here's to you, Widdershins Momchil MH VC, the OV (the 'original vizsla'), happy birthday! And the wish and promise for many more adventures together.

"think harmony with dogs"

2010-05-14T11:34:00.005-04:00

As folks who read this blog know, while I have been blessed with the external success that comes with good dogs earning titles and ribbons, I am still struggling to get The Mominator's feet absolutely still while he is in a 'stay' (or when I walk up to flush a bird when he is on point).

I have been doing a little yardwork every day -- and sometimes he is a dream. Other times he will step as I walk up to him to pet him; other times, he will step because he thinks he's going to get a treat. Part of my general approach has been trying to minimize the negative pressure and, instead, upping the positive reward -- whether in the form of a biscuit treat or stroking his back. And I am embarrassed to say that this very-quickly learned behavior (of expecting a treat) drives me bats*&^t -- because he clearly understands what he was supposed to do, and is therefore trying to preempt his reward. This is a similar behavior to his creepy feet on point -- he wants to try and preempt the reward that comes from retrieving a bird. In the case of his recent yardwork, I am embarrassed to say that I have lost my temper -- it's not like I'm beating him, but I hate to raise my voice and I hate to see his anxiety come when I can't control my own frustration. And I know it is primarily a frustration with myself, for the inability to communicate that (ironically) all I want is for him to do nothing when he's stopped.

However, I have been trying to internalize some of the advice of legendary horseman, Ray Hunt, who sadly recently passed away. And so, following my line of trying to be honest about my mistakes in the hope that others might not make them, I share some of Ray's wisdom from his book Think Harmony With Horses (1978):

"When you ask your horse to do something it should be his idea... As you work with your horse, see how much of this is the horse's idea, or how much of it is your idea and if he is forced into it. If he's not forced into it, you'll see a great attitude. Your idea should become his idea, and when it does, then there will be no drag." (pp. 1-2)

"The way to do it is to work on yourself, to recognize and understand the situation... You make the wrong things difficult and the right things easy as you adjust to fit the situation. If the rider is alert and aware and in a learning frame of mind, the horse can be the same." (p. 2)

Ray outlines some great examples for how to put a horse in training 'in a bind' -- to make doing the wrong thing more difficult -- and then giving it an opening -- to make the right thing easy, as if it were the horse's own idea. The challenge, of course, is that standing still is not something that comes entirely naturally to either a domesticated prey (horse) or predator (dog) species. But reading Ray later in the book talking about anticipating a horse's move gives me some new ways to think about how to undo what is a minimally two-year learned behavior for The Mominator. For example, though, I realize that Momo loves to retrieve almost as much as he loves food -- and he knows that he can't break when a bird is thrown (or shot) out in front of him. So I have been making him stop and stand still for his dinner -- and, in an effort to reward his keeping his head faced forward even when I'm close to him, tossing a frozen quail from 2' behind him and making him stand to go get it.

And it reminds me that I need to be willing to learn -- arguably more so than to teach.

numerous highlights

2010-05-04T16:34:00.009-04:00

It's been a busy two weeks here at the Regal Vizsla -- and I am looking forward to summer so I can hopefully recover a little!

First of all, we had our Connecticut Valley Vizsla Club Spring horseback field-trial up at Flaherty Field. This is the second year I have been on the organizing committee and it makes a huge difference to be part of an experienced team, all focused on keeping a busy event running smoothly. Which was entirely necessary bearing in mind we had 150 starters to run -- including folks from as far south as VA and as far north as Ontario. I had entered both my dogs, as much as anything to reward them for their patience -- and to see how each of them was progressing. Momo will likely never be a field-trial contender, but he is also no boot-licker and he loves to run in front of a horse; Jozsi is a locomotive who I wanted to see how his tail was coming along and whether he was developing patience; I had also offered to run Ottla in both Amateur Walking Puppy and Open Puppy to see how she, too, was coming along.

In short, I had a ball with Momo -- he was one happy dog, got his 30mins in, had two clean finds, and slept like a baby. Jozsi had roughly 12mins of glory: in which time, he had explored most of the backfield and Tobacco Row, and had two finds -- the second of which was a fur + feather combo. Sadly, as I was conferring with the judge as to how much effort he needed me to make on his second find -- a clearly visible, wet bird -- Jozsi decided to take three or four steps. And so, he came to understand the vital lesson that a dog with fancy feet becomes a dope on a rope -- and his big happy running comes to an end. With two others of her littermates present, it was interesting to note that Ottla's desire to play with her bracemate appears to be a characteristic of her litter. She has fantastic ground-speed and threw a wicked point on a hotspot during her AWP run -- but in both stakes was too easily distracted by the other handler's whistle and would then run with her bracemate. This is hardly terrible news, that a 7mos old might not be quite able to distinguish between a bracemate and a playmate, but it would have been great to see her apply herself fully forward.

I spent the first two days almost entirely on a horse -- Travis, to be exact -- planting birds. While even a good wrangler's horse like Travis can be a pain sometimes when it comes to planting birds, he and I spent 25braces together in the first two days. My own personal highlights from the first two days were watching Greg Ritching's Huck win the OLGD stake (Huck also won the OGD stake and finished his FC) and Dave Pomfret's setter, Specter, take 2nd in the All-Age. By the time Sunday came around, I was slated to run my two dogs, Ottla in OP, and to help my field-trial fairy godmother, Joan Heimbach, as her scout and horse-tender while she ran her two dogs, Octane and Geena, in both the AGD and ALGD stakes. And it had started to rain. The dust of the first two days became the mudfest of the third. I get almost as much enjoyment out of supporting Joan in my role as 'chair-man' as she does continuing to run her own dogs from a horse -- although by Sunday afternoon, trying to figure out how to hold her dog, hold her horse, get the mounting stool and give her a boost while standing in sloppy mud was making me feel like a contortionist. Happily, I had arranged to borrow Larry the Wonderhorse from my friend, Kim, for the day... a horse who will happily stand still in one spot with his reins dropped while guns are fired and birds are flushed. And as frosting, Geena took 3rd in AGD! This picture is of my lovely Whites boots (complete with some lovely spur straps from my friend, Kent, at Snow Canyon Outfitters) trying to recover from the slop.

*******

In other news, we headed up to Cape Cod this past weekend to attend the Mayflower GSP Club hunt test at Crane WMA. I was scheduled to finish up my SH/MH apprenticeship on the Saturday and then run Momo in MH on Sunday. It was great to meet up with a bunch of old friends -- Jeff +Val, Bill, Manny + Steph, Mike + Kim -- and have a nice time camping out. I love the grounds at Crane and was especially grateful to Jen + Dennis for bringing their horses over to the grounds so we could run the two hotshots, Jozsi and Tucker, once the hunt tests were done.

And it was a real pleasure to watch the two youngsters rip out for the edges. Jozsi held it together for two finds (the second of which had Tucker backing like a champ), interspersed with an honor of his own, before lighting out for the horizon, skidding to a halt, and then taking steps on a running quail. At least he stopped to flush... and then became a dope on a rope once again. I have a training plan for both boys that starts tomorrow.

It was a good weekend for friends and their dogs: Kyler earned her third MH leg, Cedar his second and third SH legs, Raven earned two legs of her SH, Kevin Smith's Clay earned another JH leg, and Jose Roman's Heidi earned a couple more JH legs. And Momo earned his fifth MH leg... and so, pending official AKC recognition, he is henceforth to be known as Widdershins Momchil MH VC.

I love this dog, as stubborn as he can be. There would be no Regal Vizsla blog, no two-dog box in the truck, no trips to Maine to chase grouse, or trips to VA to watch other people's red-dogs run, no chaps, spurs, and Packer boots, and so many other things without this dog. He has his flaws, but his strength of character and the strength of his genes have meant that we were both able to get this far together. And while thanks certainly go to all the judges who watched him run and saw all the great things about him, here's a raised glass to 'The Mominator.'

trying to keep momentum

2010-04-20T13:43:00.005-04:00

We had another lovely day to train this past Wednesday -- and this time around we had just my two monsters and Her Majesty, Broad Run's Ottilie of Red Oak, aka. Ottla. This first pic is from her first run of the morning and you can see how nice she is starting to look. Her parents keep her in great shape and she is really starting to establish a nice long style to her point.

For the past week or so, I have gone back to 'barrel' training with The Mominator -- although using a roughly 18" x 24" Rubbermaid storage tub as the barrel. It's small enough and light enough that he can't move any of his feet without tipping off -- and I have been both flushing and flying birds on tethers in front of him, as well as asking him to retrieve from it on command. I gather the use of either flat boards or carpet squares are used to much the same purpose in the retriever world. In any case, this was going to be his first time trying to take that lesson and applying it in the field. As with every piece of yardwork, making the transition from the backyard to the actual birdfield is the challenge -- how to help the dog transfer the learning from one situation to another.

Ottla's mom, Annabella, was kind enough to serve as training assistant for me, carrying my new favorite training accessory -- the lid off the Rubbermaid tub. In any case, the trick was to help Momo remember that while he wasn't perched on top of said tub, the expectation was the same. To summarize all his birdwork: each time he went on point, where possible, I picked up his front legs, stood them on the lid, then worked the bird -- coming back to praise him each time he did it well. Over the morning, he probably worked seven birds in this manner. Not quite perfect, but definitely better. (Although as you will read, that only solved half the problem so far.)

Jozsi is a work in progress -- but I'm hoping that I've turned a corner. And his wagging tail might be developmental after all. The previous week a friend had suggested telling him to relocate once he was on a bird but wagging his tail. And I tried that a couple of times while I was still coming up to him and he bumped the bird both times. On two other occasions, he also saw a bird in flight and chased it -- catching the first one. Thank heavens a) I don't have him in an e-collar, but b) had the presence of mind to tell him to bring me the bird (albeit in an angry tone). Which he did. That he would retrieve in a stressful situation is still a positive -- and reassuring that his retrieve while deliberately infrequently practiced on birds is probably more reliable than I think it is. But I think that by asking him to relocate I was just confusing him.

As you can see in this picture, we did try waiting out his tail a couple of times, too, which did work -- but seems to address a symptom not a cause. After he chased the second bird, though, and refused to leave it and come around, he got some old-time religion. I pinned his sorry ass on the ground and let him know I was not pleased. Nothing especially rough, but the message was clear and we got back to business.

And his next two birds were perfect, tail and all. Bizarre. Which is what makes me wonder if, in a much broader sense, this is developmental and he needed his ass kicked, metaphorically speaking. (That doesn't mean that that he hasn't also gotten confused messages from me and others which were contributing to the problem.) In any case, I also remembered that when I did barrel work ('tubwork') with him before, his tail never flagged. And so he has joined Momo, albeit on a bigger bench, getting birds flushed in front of him and flown around his head.

As ever, Ottla is the panacea to all the hard work that my two present me with. I wanted to take her round a relatively long set of edges to see if she'd be a little bolder and really hook on to the wind and the cover edge. The answer is 'not yet' -- but she is certainly an animated pup and most definitely a hunting dog. When she did get a bird in flight and chased it, I also fired my pistol at the point she was roughly 5yds away. By her second run, there was clearly no trepidation on her part.

As you can see from the pics, her tail set is getting a little higher -- and she's letting me style it higher when I can get there. The flipped ear seems to have been a theme for this time out! I forget which picture it is, but I was genuinely impressed by her willingness to stand a bird in plain sight -- now she may not have seen it when she first stacked up, but she sure as heck did after it started running away. It's a good sign though that her second instinct was not to merely break and rip it out.

Birds definitely fire her up though -- and by her second run, even though she'd already worked both sides of the hedgerow and had somewhere close to 5 or 6 finds, she was eager to keep going despite a couple of thorns to the face. This final pic is neat because Annabella managed to capture the bird in flush while Ottla stands in the thorns and brambles.

*******

This past Sunday up at the CNEBC hunt test in Belchertown, MA, Momo was the recipient of some kind judging and passed his fourth MH leg. One more to go. But he was still creeping a little once I got up to him: however, I learned two more things.

Let the judge judge your dog -- meaning that it is the judge's job to assess whether your dog is good enough to qualify in the test, not you. You might have a higher expectation for your dog and you may even be a qualified MH judge -- but on that given day, it is your job as your dog's handler to concentrate on getting the best from him.
On that note, one judge was kind enough to point out to me that in a couple of those instances that he appeared to be taking small steps it was because, in his opinion, I, as the handler, was actually kicking cover into his face.

He did a great job in some awkward circumstances - a bracemate who had just qualified into MH the day before and who, through his own handler's error, ended up in an honoring situation where he couldn't actually see Momo and so, being a Senior dog, when the bird was flushed and shot, he went to retrieve it. And so poor Momo needed to find another bird of his own. He and I were then sent to the Outer Mongolia section of the birdfield while another bird was procured and his bracemate set up on point for him to honor. So, he did all those things and actually held steady on birds that were running around very close to his head.

*******

And so I have now transitioned Momo to the ground in our backyard, putting a stick in front of his front paws, in part so that he sees a barrier, in part so I have a clear visual marker. The best part is that he now has room to set up in one of his nice long points -- which in turn means that the real villains in his creepy feet technique are more obvious... his back legs. I felt bad for him because I could see him trying so very hard not to move -- but a dog that never makes a mistake, never gets a correction, and as a result doesn't also get a clear picture of what isn't acceptable.

I'll keep working him like this and hopefully he'll realize exactly what I want and how much love he's going to get when he does. Wish us luck for #5!

puppy brilliance...

2010-04-03T07:10:00.009-04:00

It's been a busy few weeks for the Regal Vizsla -- and I apologize for not keeping the blog as up-to-date as I probably should. To summarize: we've had two more training dates with the puppies, one successful hunt test performance, one not-so-much, and two judging assignments.

*******

Regarding The Mominator and his run to complete his Master Hunter (MH) title, we went out to the Long Island GSP Club hunt test out on the island two weekends ago. It was the first time going to the Otis Pike Preserve area and I was pleasantly surprised. While I could have napalmed the entire place to eliminate the tick population (and no, the winter didn't kill the little bastards), that's a nice grounds for a hunt test -- too too tight, enough open space to see a dog actually hunt, and a good-sized shooting field. It was a low-entry test and Momo was the only MH dog registered -- which meant that we needed to find him a suitable bracemate. Fortunately, Steve Anker showed up with one of his older dogs, Grits, and gave Momo something pretty to honor. All I can really say about his run was that he had an honor and a stop-to-flush in the backcourse, then a second honor and a retrieve to hand in the birdfield. He has been looking so nice recently and when he went on point for his bird, one of the judges said he wished he'd brought his camera. His reward was being asked back immediately to run as a bye-dog for one of the SH dogs. Three down, two more to go.

His performance at the ISCNE hunt test up at Sugarbrook was a little too short. But the lesson learned is this: you might be an amateur, but act like a professional. This is to say that in the AKC rulebook there is no definition of what a 'flushed bird' is. Some folks would argue that the bird has to take flight, others that it at least leave the ground briefly, others that if you've made a couple of genuine efforts, a visibly running bird is still sufficient; you have, after all, now produced the bird to demonstrate that your dog is pointing for a reason. The point being that if you've made genuine efforts to flush a bird that will not fly, whether by choice, injury, or exhaustion, then you might contemplate firing your gun before the bird ends up running underneath your dog and potentially causing a trainwreck. If the judge hasn't said anything or asked for more work from you beforehand, you might consider putting them in the position of deciding whether it was enough work rather than waiting for their benediction.

*******

We have had a couple of great training outings with Ottla, her brother Murphy, and for this past week, another puppy, Nugget. I know Nugget because his father, Octane, belongs to my field-trialing fairy godmother, Joan Heimbach. (Rod Michaelson had the opportunity to meet Joan out at the Pacific Vizsla Futurity at the Kistler Ranch in Jamestown, CA.) We had actually gotten together with Nugget (who is now unofficially referred to as 'the Beastie') after the LIGSP hunt test and given him a couple of birds to get excited about.

In any event, it really is a joy to watch puppies dig deep on their genetic heritage and begin to look like bird-dogs. All three are coming along really nicely -- and after only two or three times on birds beginning to develop both hunting sense and style. All three dogs established points, some longer than others, and all three dogs went off the beaten patch to find birds in spots that they had previously flushed to.

Murphy has had the least exposure to birds, merely twice so far -- but is a very biddable dog who has already figured out that quail will head for dense cover to escape aerial predators. We broke him away for his second run and he immediately doubled back into the wind and produced this point and several others as the small covey of a half-dozen birds dispersed themselves. If it's not clear, these are evil brambles only turned away by the likes of Filson Double-Tin chaps. To see a young dog not merely point, but then pursue quail into nasty, pointy stuff like this is a great sign of drive.

Where Murphy and Ottla are 7 mos old, Nugget is still not quite 6mos old. When I saw him last out on the island, he was already using his nose and to find birds and was clearly interested, but maybe not excited per se. Since then, he has had another bird session with the folks of the Long Island Vizsla Club -- and I had already heard legend of his prowess in taking down flushing quail. In part because he is still a young man growing into his body (and in addition to his feet being huge, he is also bigger-boned than both Murphy and his sister), his general application is a little subdued. But get a bird flushing in front of him and he is off to take it down and bring it back. As you can see in this picture, he has a nice long, solid tail that should unfurl and firm up nicely as he grows up.

Ottla is beginning to look like a young bird-dog, as opposed to a pointing puppy. She is so very deliberate in her points -- and as you can see, she has a lovely top-line and her tail is becoming more emphatic. Her parents have already been bitten by the bug and so Ottla will be running in both the AWP and OP stakes at the CVVC Spring field trial in three weeks. (Nugget will be, too, but his mother will be running him in the AWP stake; we're still working on Murphy's mom.) With that in mind, we're also working on building her focus and encouraging her to run cover ahead of me in search of birds. And so we set up four birds along a long line of sorghum to draw her out and keep her attention. We have also been keeping an eye on her intensity to see if she's ready to begin formal gunfire exposure. After her first run on Wednesday taken at high speed and with great efficiency, we decided that Mario, her father, would stand in the middle of the field some 30+yds away and, on my signal, fire the blank pistol once she was chasing. In short, she showed no signs of even acknowledging that a shot had been fired.

For her final pass, we set out a couple of birds on the sorghum strip then a final one all the way across the open field -- in short, requiring her to come with me, stay focused, and then (hopefully) be rewarded with a final bird. I should also say that after two weeks of using blue scaled quail, we were using bobwhite quail this time around. Where the scalies seemed eager to run, the bobwhite tend to hunker down a little more -- and so we were planting birds rather than using the releasers that we had previously. I mention this because after she arced across the field in front of me, Ottla blew past the spot we had planted the final bird and then pointed at a thicket of the purple nasties. It was great to see both her faith in me in crossing the field and her faith in her nose in finding a wandering bird.

Her education will continue tomorrow. I am headed up to bird-plant for the Nutmeg GSP club field-trial at Flaherty and Ottla is coming up with her parents to run after the trial is over. I've arranged to borrow a horse to run her, Mominator-X, and Mr. Enthusiasm so they can all get back in a horseback frame of mind.

*******

As you can maybe make out in this final picture, Mr, Enthusiasm suffered a long, shallow cut on one of his main pads and is currently bombing around the countryside in his Lewis boots. They are a bit of a pain to put on, but we've gotten into a routine with Jozsi and he now understands that they are a necessary prelude for him to run big. Coupled with Tuf-Foot after every run (which we apply while he's eating), his feet are recovering nicely.

You will also see that he is no longer wearing his e-collar for birdwork. As I've written here before, I don't know what I did (if anything) to have him wag his tail when he's on point (but not after you get in front of him), but if I did something with the e-collar then I'm going to take it out the equation for now. We've done a fair amount of groundwork with his pinch collar and a checkcord that I feel comfortable with him standing his birds properly. And so, now I am also trying to be patient and once I know he can see me in his periphery, I stop. And when his tail stops I start walking in; if it starts again, I stop. This seemed to work well on Wednesday. Hopefully we can get him all the way back.

what we did in school today...

2010-03-11T07:42:00.008-05:00

Last weekend, we got invited to go up to Flaherty to join a group of friends who were running a 'mock horseback trial' training session. Heaven knows, any excuse to ride a decent horse and chase a decent dog is a good one for me.

Besides my two, the only other red dog was Stephanie's Rye -- all the rest were GSPs. I wanteed to give Momo the chance to get used to be running from a horse because I thought he'd enjoy it -- and he ended up braced with Baldur, my friend Kim's biiiig-running dog. In terms of run, Baldur has it in spades -- but the box score at the end of the day was the same: one divided find, one honor, and one find each. But I swear that Momo was running with a smile on his face. We need to do this again. He may never be a trial dog like his brother, but he is certainly enjoying himself.

Mr. Enthusiasm ended up braced with Jen + Dennis's Tucker. There aren't many dogs that I enjoy watching as much as my own crazy man, but Tucker is one of them. We were in for a footrace. The wind must have been fishtailing something fierce because none of the dogs I saw run ran quite the long, linear race that you might expect. But Leadbelly and Mr. Enthusiasm found birds. The first picture is of Jozsi high and tight on a running pair in The Pines. He had two more finds, including one on an obviously running bird that often provokes him into getting in after it. He looked great. This second picture is of Tucker -- he's a good looking boy with some nice manners for a young dog. (These pictures are courtesy of Jen, by the way.)

*******

Yesterday, we took the boys and the lovely Ottla up to do some more birdwork and get her used to being handled. I am grateful to Ottla's mom, Annabella, for taking these pictures -- and especially this one of me and The Mominator. As you can imagine, it's tricky trying to get pictures of yourself with your own dogs while they're actually working. In case folks are wondering, while I am wearing my blank pistol, I am carrying my shotgun. One of things I've realised -- and I might have gotten this suggestion from Don Brown at Dobrocat Vizslas -- is that Momo tends to creep a little when you get in front of him, and especially when you have a shotgun in your hands. Completely geeked to retrieve, he is anticipating the flush. And so I am carrying the shotgun and asked Ottla's dad, Mario, to carry my other one to simulate a shooting party. And we didn't shoot a single bird, merely blanked them with the shotgun. Between these kinds of drills and working him each morning with the pinch collar, I'm hoping we can get his feet a lot steadier by the end of the month.

But of course, the highlight was watching Ottla figure out how to be a bird-dog. We're using blue scaled quail (because it's what was available) whose initial tendency as primarily grassland quail is to run rather than fly. My own preference is also to use fully alert quail, rather than sleep them up so they're groggy and don't act like birds -- and so we've been putting her birds out in releasers in likely spots and turning her out. This week though, I offered to teach her to breakaway and to begin handling her -- with the goal of demonstrating how Mario and Annabella can handle her in the future -- and also to give her the clear cue that me and and her orange flash collar = birds = fun.

And after some modeling from The Mominator and Mr. Enthusiasm, she seemed to clearly understand that a certain whistle cue meant to get her running legs on and come with me. (In a side note, she almost ran over a woodcock which flushed as soon as she passed. It's nice to see the mudbats back in the neighborhood even if they're just passing.) She had worked one sorghum strip looking for a bird we had slept slightly (but which had moved on), clearly find the spot it had been placed and filling her nostrils. Then she cut ahead and through the cut in the hedgerow and locked up on the bird hidden in the sorghum on the far, downwind side. She held nicely till I got to within about three feet, then stalked a step, pointed, stalked, and then leapt in for the bird which got up and flew nicely and was pursued by a happy vizsla.

Having just done some research, she and my two boys are remotely related having several common great-grandparents. But it is also clear that she looks like her momma, Blaze, especially here on point. It's great to see a young dog begin to drawn down on her genetic coding and pick up on the game.

the next generation

2010-02-28T07:59:00.013-05:00

Phew wheee! Never got round to writing the second part of our Ukraine travelogue... the part with the mummified monk fingers, belly dancers, and trying not to spontaneously burst into flames for being a heathen. Sorry. You'll just have to extrapolate.

Other folks have been writing some nice things that led me to ponder how on earth I ended up with a pick-up truck full of dogs, guns, and training supplies -- a truck I don't commute in, but somehow still end up putting 12,000miles on a year. This is a small figure to some, but this is the northeast. And so while this post is titled for the folks that get us started in this funny bird-dog game, it should probably be dedicated to my wife who indulges me in my odd obsession (and keeps our dogs fit).

The National Championship for Field-Trialing Bird Dogs is finally over despite (and I quote Brad Harter's official synopsis) several days of "brutal conditions." And the winner is Carl Bowman's In the Shadow ('Buster'). The New York Times ran a nice story on the Championships which concluded with this absolutely fabulous quote: “I told the old gentleman who started me in this sport 40 years ago that it probably would have been better to give me a gram of cocaine because then I could have done my time in prison,” said Larry Garner, an amateur bird dog field trialer from Dallas. “I could have gone through rehab and become a productive citizen again instead of being addicted to bird dogs and chasing them all over the United States and Canada.” Amen.

As for my own perverse addiction, I'd like to thank Stephanie Gutierrez for awarding Jozsi his first blue ribbon -- and have already been informed that she has no intention of running her new pup in any field trials. So not fair. But I think I will have my revenge before the end of the month: while Steph will get to judge The Mominator once more, I will get to judge her and the lovely Rye at the same hunt test! I should also say that amongst many others, Joan Heimbach has been my particular fairy godmother of field trialing. Thank you.

And while she is primarily talking about horsemanship, Gin at High Mountain Horse has a great post asking those of us in the current generation to 'pass it on' to the next. I couldn't agree more. -- and as you'll read, I'm trying to do my part. Holly at NorCal Cazadora asks another poignant question about the dangers of assuming that those of us who enjoy hunting and fishing (and I would suggest even the not-necessarily-lethal kinds of sporting dog events) will be able to do so in perpetuity. Personally, I hate the idea of legislating to protect the future -- but when faced by the slick, but frankly disingenuous, campaigns of folks like the HSUS, perhaps we need to. As Mike Spies at Living with Birddogs notes, there is a new force in the blogosphere dedicated to tracking these jackasses.

I, on the other hand, have become hairy godfather to a couple of new puppies from our friend, Michelle's most recent litter. How two dogs from Virginia end up in New York City seems a little strange, but they have. We haven't had a chance to get Murphy on birds yet, although that moment will hopefully be soon. But The Mominator and Mr. Enthusiasm did get to meet Ottla today -- and she got to rendezvous with some quail.

Even with first birds, I prefer to have the dog use its nose to find a bird -- rather than merely deposit a bird in front of it in clear view -- and so we dispersed a handful of birds in a feedstrip to see how she managed. The first couple of birds literally either ran away from her (because she was still in potter mode, wondering what was different about this particular walk) or flushed behind her -- and while she never saw them go, she buried her nose intently in the hotspots they'd left clearly trying to make sense of this new, strangely exciting smell. And then launched into a different gear.

As you might imagine, even with a small bird like a quail, having it launch in your face can be a little daunting -- and so with her next three flushes she sank onto her back legs a little as the bird took off before heading off after it to much praise from the gallery. Besides the focus in her face in chasing the quail in flight, the best part of the picture at the top comes from the understanding that she has watched the bird flush, then land, and then start running through the brambles. In at least two cases, she headed off after the bird, performed a several-yard serpentine ground track and then boosted the bird into the air.

We had initially run the three dogs together before any birdwork -- and put Jozsi in his hauling rig and cables to really wear him out and work on his conditioning. I should mention that at one point Ottla saw Momo standing ahead of her and immediately stopped and didn't start moving till he did. She didn't know he wasn't pointing, but a natural honor is a lovely thing to see.

Then once Ottla was done with her first five birds and had scattered them to the wind, I put down each of my two. The Mominator had a nice run of his own posting three genuinely impressive finds on quail running in deep cover -- and with nice steady feet; Jozsi had four finds of his own, impressive bar the second where he decided to chase a running bird in the open. I realise this is one of Momo's weaknesses, too, so I will need to start proofing for that over the next couple of weeks as well.

Stay posted.

Not just for chicken...

2010-02-16T15:51:00.011-05:00

Continuing our tradition of spending Valentine’s Day in a post-Soviet country, Meg and I decided to take a week’s vacation in the Ukraine. As with our recent trips to Mongolia, we are lucky to have family members to visit – this time, Meg’s brother, John. But unlike Mongolia, and while John does speak Russian fluently, my wife also has a working knowledge of the language giving us a little more independence.

We’re also lucky that Kiev appears to be a pretty walkable city, even in the winter, even when clearing the sidewalks seems to be an afterthought. And so we’ve been able to take several good walks to take in some of the sights near John’s apartment. (This first picture is looking from the belltower of Saint Sophia down to Saint Michael's.)

Despite the German bombardment and bloody occupation of the city during WW2, itself sandwiched between a Soviet architectural style never known for its grace, downtown Kiev seems surprisingly pretty. There are certainly points of the city that seem to be in the state of practiced dilapidation that we’ve seen in Mongolia and Kazakhstan – and a similar number of tall, construction cranes on the skyline. However, unlike either of those places, a fair number of these cranes are actually working.

The downtown architecture does have a continental feeling to it – in no small part because a fair amount of the downtown buildings were built by Italian architects. The Cathedral of St. Andrew, for example, seen here was designed and built in an Italian Baroque architectural style by Bartolomeo Rastrelli.

Underneath all of this, literally, lies a much older city. The Cathedral of Saint Andrew, for example, is located on the spot that the Apostle Andrew legendarily predicted as the site for a great Christian city. As soon as you step inside the Saint Sophia Cathedral, you realize that in addition to the various layers of 18th, 19th, and 20thC restoration there are also still sections of 11thC stucco work. Saint Sophia is unusual (like the Gandan monastery in Ulan Bataar) in that in it was preserved during the Soviet era as a museum – left perhaps ostensibly as a monument to pre-communist degeneracy, but sentimentally I imagine because even the most cynical Party member couldn’t quite bring himself to level the incredible beauty of a sanctuary like Saint Sophia.

Where Saint Sophia is a museum, the remainder of the churches we’ve visited are all active as places of devotion. Like Saint Sofia, Saint Michael’s is an entire monastic complex with monks’ cells and a secondary chapel (dedicated to St. John and which seems primitive by contrast with its wooden shingled dome); Saint Andrew and Saint Vladimir are ‘merely’ stand-alone churches. And just incredibly gorgeous.

There is some speculation that the reason the Kievan Rus converted to the Eastern Orthodox church was because of Prince Vladmir's evoys' visit to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul in the 10thC and their proclamation that "we knew not whether we were in heaven or earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss to describe it." Saint Vladimir is the only church we’ve been to that permits photography (albeit for a small fee) and, while I have always been fascinated by Orthodox icons. (I should ask my parents whether we visited Kykkos or another monastery when I was a boy, but I do remember being drawn to the religious painting there.) But, and as Sharon Gerstel noted in an exhibition catalog review, to only see these icons out of context on a gallery wall is to miss a huge amount: "Within a church, the icons would have evoked a different response. There, flickering candles or lamps enliven the holy faces, and the wooden panels on which they are rendered emit the pungent smell of incense. Within the darkened church the figures, set on a gold background, appear to wrench free from the strict confines of their wooden backing." Hopefully these pictures convey some of the glimmering majesty of these places.

On a technical note, all these pictures were taken on our new point-and-shoot. We really liked our old Panasonic Lumix (which simply wore out) and decided to go with another, this time the DMC-FX580. I mention this only because I'm still experimenting with some of the shooting modes (of which there are many). The first interior picture, for example, was taken in a mode called 'Candlelight'. It has a a nice grainy B&W mode, and another called 'Pinhole' which puts an interesting fuzzy frame around the image. Stay posted.

keeping busy

2010-01-31T18:04:00.007-05:00

My apologies to my loyal readership. (The Regal Vizsla does have 13 Followers, so I think that counts for some measure of loyalty.) I have been fretting a little over what to do with my dogglers, The Mominator and Mr. Enthusiasm.

There's an adage that says that the owner-trainer-handler will screw up their first bird-dog just because, well, it's your first bird-dog. And Momo's tendency to get a little creepy at times is, when I'm honest with myself, the product of my ignorance and mixed messages. And trying to repeat the same command simply louder only makes his skin thicker.

And so I've been trying to be mindful of that as Jozsi grows up, trying to keep things light but clear and firm, trying to find the line between over-training and under-training, and trying to channel all his energy and application without curbing it. As folks who do read this blog regularly will know, I've been trying to figure out why he had started to creep a little and occasionally pop birds. And along the way, he started to flag on point. And while I initially thought it might be over-confidence (him just sooo excited to go in for a bird), I now think it might be a lack of confidence (because if I find him standing completely rigid, it's because he has the bird in view, too). A lack of confidence as a result of what, I have genuinely no idea. And the answer might just be developmental.

This fall I spent time getting him on wild birds that wouldn't sit still for his creeping, using launchers, and then settling on using Higgins Remote Releasers instead. These allow me to keep a bird in a spot I want him to find one in, to have the bird be fully awake (and not dizzied or slept) and therefore able to flush whenever it feels pressured, and my timing with the remote doesn't have to be quite as spot-on as it does with a launcher. And, unlike a launcher, it is completely quiet. With both devices, you do also need to be sure to find birds that can fly.

But in the last month or so, I've decided to come even further back to basics with him: the checkcord and the no-hurt collar, overlayed with the e-collar. The point of all of these tools, at least in the West-Gibbons method (as illustrated by the Steady with Style blog), is communication not necessarily correction, per se. The blunt brads on the no-hurt collar serve to provide a leverage point so you can pop the strap and buckle and create an acoustic as well as a tactile cue; while it does use electric stimulation or 'shock,' the e-collar is used at a level to merely get the dog's attention rather than apply corrective pressure -- and obviously liberates the dog and handler from the checkcord. Perhaps I should just have re-read The Bird Dog Training Manual. As Bill West student, Dave Walker writes in his foreword: "Repetition and consistency are essential. The training is not linear; it is cyclic... You must constantly go over previously learned experiences as you introduce new ones." (p.xv) And so, I've been going back over heeling with the collar and e-collar, and getting Jozsi reacquainted to the cues.

The first picture is of Jozsi from last Thursday, standing tall in a snowstorm. He's not wearing his collar and checkcord because we'd successfully completed two repetitions beforehand and I wanted him to both test him slightly and reward him by letting him run free. And he did his job beautifully, despite the weather and his father messing with a camera.

The next picture is from this morning. I had gone up to TMT with three friends from work, to serve as their guide and to get in some training with both boys. And while I would love Momo to stand still and not anticipate the flush, the fact remains that despite being 'our first birddog,' he does all kinds of things really well. And he looks lovely here.

And while Momo hauled in a bushel of birds, the highlight of the day was taking Jozsi out for a little structured training. In an attempt to keep him fired up and hopefully settle his tail, I wanted one of my friends to shoot a bird, to see if he'd stay steady-to-fall, and to send him out as if for a retrieve. (I say 'as if' because I haven't done hardly anything with him.) And all I can say is it felt like almost two years ago, that moment when I realised I might have something really special on my hands. He was in full uniform -- no-hurt collar, e-collar and checkcord -- and stopped nicely with only scent and no clear view of the Releaser. I styled him up, dropped the cord, and flushed the chukar. Ed knocked it down mostly dead and there was Jozsi, still standing, rapt. And probably to his surprise, I told him to 'bring it'. And he did, even after bobbling the kicking bird. It was like watching that almost-5mos old puppy all over again.

And I had the brains to listen the voice in my head that said, 'Stop now. He was perfect. Let him hold that as his last memory of the day.' Here's hoping that this was the first of many perfect days.

the weekend's trip to Arizona

2010-01-11T09:55:00.011-05:00

For those of you who may pay attention to my Dopplr widget on the right there, we just got back from a trip to Flagstaff to see our good friends, Denise and Steve. As ever, we sat around, hung out, admired Steve's beautiful handmade bicycles, ate delicious homemade food, enjoyed gorgeous views, and the sharp contrasts in climate between Flagstaff at 7000' and Sedona at 4500' or Camp Verde at around 3400'. Here's a fun picture courtesy of Steve of me with Chuck, a vizsla-wannabe, a sweet sweet hound belonging to their friend, Barry. Thanks Denise + Steve for the hospitality!

I was eager to get back to Flagstaff since my new love of horses and dogs and try to find the answers to a few things that folks who actually ride horses a lot might know. And so our first destination was Gene's in downtown Flagstaff. First off, I went looking for jeans that a) I could actually try on, and b) were actually meant for riding horses. Trying to decipher fit information and buy jeans over the internet has been a real pain. All I really wanted was a pair of jeans that was a little slimmer fit to wear under chaps, but not too slim to inhibit me getting up and down off a horse, with a leg shaped to stack over a boot, and flat seams (not rolled) seams on the inside leg. I ended up with a couple of pairs of Cinch Green Labels. Apparently I am now 'a man who lives his life in denim'.

I've also been experimenting with riding boots. I wore smoother-soled hunting boots when I first started, but could already appreciate that these weren't ideal. So I bought some Ariat pull-ons and immediately felt the difference -- keeping my heels low in the stirrups was now easy, while the snug fit around the instep actually tired my feet out less -- but I would still come out after a long ride with a stiff ankle or two from slightly angled stirrups. Having liked my pull-ons, I bought some Ariat lace-ups and wore them all week at Nationals. There's an obvious trade-off in terms of safety when you switch to a lace-up (because the boot will no longer pull off if you get hung up in a stirrup), but the positive trade-off for me is that I have more energy and better ankle support for doing groundwork. There's also one theory that, in addition to sheltering the foot from either brush or cold, hooded stirrups or tapaderos also prevent the foot from slipping too far forward and getting hooked up. (Incidentally, Wikipedia has two great articles on both stirrups and Western riding.)

Everything comes around: I remember Steve talking about White's boots when he used to work as a backcountry firefighter. And as I spoke to various working horse folk about what kinds of footwear they recommended, many kept coming back to White's packer boots. And Gene's may be the only dealer still left in Arizona. So, off I went. They didn't have any in a size close to my foot, but I did get to see them and admire just how solid they are. But this raised another question: why does the packer boot have such a pronounced underslung heel? The closest I could get to an answer was that it is a 'riding heel' and so while not as pronounced as some pull-on cowboy boots, arguably its function is to avoid the boot slipping forward and getting hung on the stirrup. Drawing on several sources, Larry at HotBoots states that the idea of prominent heels on riding boots originally came from the legions of Mongol horseman that conquered Europe -- whose prominent heels were painted bright red. For those of us not riding technical Western competitions like reining or cutting, and riding in big, hooded stirrups, a packer looks like a good choice.

I also went to Flagstaff so I could hear constant re-runs of the Pace Salsa ad ("Noooo York City") at my expense.

The real highlight of my trip to Flagstaff, though, was the opportunity to meet someone I'd only ever spoken to on the phone after an introduction from one of our breeders, Lisa DeForest. Bill Gibbons is something of a lightning rod within the vizsla community -- he handled the winning dog in four vizsla National Field Championships (AKC) but then won and took runner-up in the inaugural National Vizsla Association National Classic. Rumors abounded that his great dog, Gabe, was (or had to be) part pointer -- although I happen to think anyone handling the winning dogs in a organization absolutely committed to the hard-hunting portion of the vizsla's personality, an organization that had splintered away from the monolith of the AKC was likely to be tarred in that way. Lisa thought the world of him -- and as we discovered, he had trained Jozsi's brother, Rocko, for her -- and I just wanted the chance to meet him. We had spoken on the phone about getting coffee when I was next through Phoenix but my heart slipped a little when he said he wasn't going to be in Phoenix when we flew in.

It then turned out he was going to be a ways north up around Verde Valley, a mere 60 miles south of Flagstaff, with a string of dogs he was working from horseback. And so he invited me to come by and maybe come out with him while he worked. I have only four words to describe my reaction: giddy as a schoolgirl. While it felt a little like 'No Country for Old Men' trying to find his trailer out in the middle of seemingly nowhere, I found him. We chatted a bit and he asked me about my horsemanship... again, I think the Pace advertisement came up at least once... trying to size me up to see if his horse, Diamond, would be taking me for a ride. I understood his concern, but off we went with his first couple of dogs. (These days, Bill has mostly setters and pointers, and arguably mostly hunting dogs rather than trial dogs, nevertheless he's still got a bunch with some zip.) The picture is of Bill and I scouting Max and Pearl on the next ridge; if you click on the picture to enlarge it and look hard in the upper center, you'll see Pearl coming back in.

The next picture is of Max on point. It's just here because I like looking at dogs with nice tails. Bill heads up to Verde Valley to take advantage of the space and the wild birds, mostly Gambel's quail. (Depending on where a dog is in its development, he also uses carded pigeons and soft-planted bobwhite quail. Most of his technique and philosophy can be found at Steady with Style.) And while Max's point happened to be on a bobwhite that had escaped and was trying to get back to its buddies in their johnny-house, we came across a fair number of Gambel's hiding out in broomthorn thickets. For someone in the northeast, it seemed like there were plenty of birds but I gather the almost-decade-long drought has drastically affected quail numbers.

By lunchtime, Bill was already feeling comfortable with my horsemanship; by the end of the afternoon, as we tried to locate two young dogs, Speck and Gracie, who had simply lit out for the horizon, mostly likely initially one egging the other on, Bill sent me down a steep shale slope into an arroyo packed with broomthorn and catclaw to scout out that wash and meet him about 3/4mile further down. Thank heaven for a good horse -- and I think by the end of the day, Diamond and I had come to trust one another. I would trust him to find his footing and he would, in turn, trust my judgement (and higher vantage point) to find our way through the thickets.

As for the two dogs: as Bill's wife returned from a scouting trip down towards the road about a mile away, she returned to find Gracie lying down at her spot on the string, apparently none the worse for wear. The amusing conclusion to the mildly harrowing afternoon was that, first, her owner called Bill to check in to see how she was doing just as Bill arrived back in camp to find her; then, Speck's owner called and, imagining that it was because someone had called him to say that they had found Speck in the back of nowhere, Bill settled in to tell the story. It seems that Speck might have done this before -- but, and literally as his owner reassured him that Speck would return, the dog ambled into camp looking a little tired but still absolutely jacked to go back out if allowed.

It was a great day in a great weekend. Hope I'll get to do it again. In the meanwhile, it's back to Nooooo Yorrrk City.

happy new year + a few highlights

2009-12-27T17:19:00.012-05:00

I hope my family reads this blog. I hope they realise that a) the reason I didn't write half as many blog posts this year is b) the same reason Meg and I haven't sent out our New Year's cards yet. I work in retail... it would appear that the economy is in some state of recovery.

In any case, between the heavy weather that nailed the East Coast and a couple of seven-day weeks, it's been difficult to keep up with the training routine that I had almost established with the boys. And so what happens when you take our two boys out for the first time in two weeks? Lots of imperfect, a few shades of ugly, falling in love all over again, and some nice omens for the future.

With Momo, it drives me nuts that he does the 'difficult' things (like the honor and the retrieve) well, but still insists on catwalking now and again. With Jozsi, however, I realise that all his extra-stepping isn't cockiness but uncertainty. I don't know where this comes from, but I know that if I walk up on him and his tail is rock-solid, he can see the bird as well as smell it. He just needs more birds and more reassurance.

While both boys popped a bird or two (and a bird that flushes because they took an extra step is an even better teaching tool than me nicking either one with the e-collar), they both showed why we love them dearly. Momo has a great nose, a great retrieve, and needs little to no work on his honor and he loves to hunt with you. Jozsi, on the other hand, only knows how to hunt really, really hard -- he was running hedgerow covers like a crazy man, handling at complete ease at 300 yds -- and today also showed some inkling that he knows what an honor is. And so, here's to our boys...

*******

This is also the time to acknowledge a few great musical highlights of 2009.

Khaled: Liberté: I was so relieved to hear this album. I can carry grudges for a long period of time, and somehow his US agent convinced him to release a 'friends' album five years ago that was, to my mind, an abomination against God. I don't care how great Carlos Santana is, but I can never hear him play guitar without hearing Rob Thomas. And I loath Rob Thomas. In contrast to several of his previous albums which were hampered by too many synthesized sounds and over-production, this is stripped down -- and leaves with you with a much greater appreciation for Khaled's talent and for Algerian music, both modern and traditional.

Buika, El Ultimo Trago: last year's album Niña de Fuego was great. With the addition of Cuban

piano player, Chucho Valdes, the arrangements are a little richer -- but nothing eclipses Buika's smokey voice.

Rosalia de Souza, D'Improviso: I know only a little bit about Brazilian music and it seems like a fair amount of it is produced for export -- a little too sweet, a little too cheesey. This is a great mixture of upbeat and downbeat, crisp, clean, and I'm still listening to it every day. And here's one of my favorite tracks:

There are also some interesting Top-10 lists at NPR's All Songs Considered -- and Scampwalker at Eight More Miles has a bunch of picks I have never heard of either.

trials and tribulations

2009-12-08T21:10:00.018-05:00

This past weekend was the CVVC's December walking trial. We had so (too) many dogs last year that we petitioned to expand it to a two-day trial -- and managed to enroll 103 starters for 8 stakes. Zoiks! I know we turned away some folks and wonder if the level of interest was because we are both the last trial of the northeast season and because it was a walking trial only. In any case, it was great as a member of the trial committee to see both familiar faces and a fair number of new ones, too. It was also great to work with a committed team of fellow volunteers to make everything go smoothly and with as much fun as possible!

With training still in full session for both my boys and Meg able to keep them at home, I was able to give a full two-day commitment to helping keep the trial moving along. It would have been lovely to have them there for them to meet friends, but I couldn't have relaxed quite as much or focussed on the tasks at hand... namely organizing the raffle and bird-planting.

And bird-plant I did, all from horseback and, with just a couple of braces' exception, all off a wrangler's horse named Travis. I've ridden some scary-ass wranglers' horses in the past -- but Travis was great. 'Great' is a relative term... he isn't Cypress, Larry, or PC... but for a wrangler's horse forced to put up with a multitude of mixed-ability riders for long hours and low pay, he did great as a bird-planter's horse. For the less-familiar, horses have to fulfill a variety of functions at field-trials: gallery horses, judges' horses, scouting horses, bird-planting horses, and handler's horses. Arguably, a gallery horse just needs to be able to stop, start, and follow the rest of its pack (although one should never entirely presume that a gallery horse has been desensitized to gunfire); in most cases, a judge's horse needs to be comfortable at the front and willing to go off on its own with its rider (ie. not be 'herd-bound'); the same is true for a bird-planter's horse, although the horse also needs to be desensitized to the flapping, cheeping quail in the birdbag on its back; scouting and handling horses cannot be herd-bound and must also park out, ie. when the rider has dismounted and dropped reins, the horse needs to stand still and not wander off. In short, a field trial horse needs to be pretty skilled, if not merely familiar with the game itself.

I did encourage at least one newcomer to come check out the whole field-trial game... and why not with a Puppy? After coming to the VCCNE's Versatility Day back in August, John came down from Portland with his Luna for the Open Puppy stake on Sunday. Luna is a recent pup from an Octane and Seeker pairing and I can see both dogs in her. While she was heavily outnumbered by older, bigger, GSPs, she did well for her first outing -- and I hope John will stick with it at least till our Spring trial!

And if I am not going to be running dogs at a trial, I am pretty content to ride a horse instead. And so I spent 12hrs over the next two days atop Travis (mostly), trotting along with the judges in each stake, and fast-balling quail into the cover. One of the highpoints was a compliment on my horsemanship from someone who has since become a friend. In any case, Tom was one of the first folk to encourage me to handle Mr. Enthusiasm from a horse but for whatever reason, hasn't really seen me ride in 5-6mos. It was a nice bonus on a cold, blustery morning.

I did have my first unscheduled equine dismount, however. Travis and I had taken a cast off to a likely spot to drop a bird (after some 5hrs in the saddle, I might add) and, once done, he decided he wanted to canter back to the rest of the group. No problem. However, he caught a front hoof, dropped a shoulder, and in that moment of clarity I realized I was going to forward roll off to the side into the marshy turf. Which I did, back to my feet. I would have done a full gymnastic arm-raise, but the horse was now loose and didn't need to be spooked further by the Russian judge raising the '10' scorecard. Someone in the group gathered Travis up; he and I reassured each other we were both fine and still loved each other; and off we went again for another hour or so.

Gin at High Mountain Horse encouraged me to share the following: at Nationals I was riding horses I knew and who knew me and got in the (bad) habit of riding in a ballcap. I realized my horsemanship had significantly improved during Nationals as I survived my horse being spooked by another that had broken free and was running wild -- but spooked so hard it broke its curb chain (and thereby rendered the 'brakes' largely inoperable); a horse that slipped in the mud and went to both front knees before getting up; and another that reared as I was trying to mount. After that week of incidents but no mishaps, Audra and I vowed to start wearing our helmets again. As Gin said in e-mail to me:

"I don't ride in a helmet, but rarely run around like you do. Head injuries are all too real with horses... Horses do trip! And when we fall, our head does tend to be the first to touch down. I really, really want to keep my brain. If I start endurance running, I'm investing in a helmet. My brain is worth it."

And that's all I have to say about that.

*******

Mercifully before the truly crapulent weather beset us today, I did manage to get a nice training day in with the boys at our friend Andrew's property upstate to keep them honest. And both boys did well. I am grateful to have found a quail breeder who, however he does it, raises spooky, well-flying quail. And I am pretty much planting the birds with little or no dizzying. I know my boys can find birds, but the fine-tuning I'm looking for is how they deal with running birds, wild flushes, and bumps.

Andrew was able to come out for most of it and serve as a gunner for The Mominator during his two big runs. It's nice to have a second set of hands, especially when they're deft with a shotgun. Here's Momo with Andrew in the background ready to drop the quail. What's interesting about the two boys' personalities is that Momo might get too close to a bird and pop it unexpectedly, but will immediately re-calibrate and rarely pop another. Jozsi seems to stand off his birds pretty well for the first round, then gets a little cocky, and then always manages to bring it back around.

This picture is from Mr. 200mph's first run of the day, and as much as I love The Mominator, watching The Beast eat up ground and then stick a point at a skid is just a thrill-ride. On his first run of close to 45mins, he found and handled a half-dozen birds including this lovely high pose roughly 10yds from the birds. He is now getting to a point where, if I lose sight and then sound of him, I know to sing his praises and just start looking for him standing someplace.

His tail hasn't quite settled yet, but we've begun to hit a nice groove where he knows what will make me happy. While this is arguably a mixed blessing, but his stop-to-flush is much more reliable than not -- and in the two instances where he thought he would take a step to be absolutely sure, my spooky quail got up, flushed and ruined his party without me having to do anything. On a couple of instances, he did establish a point in dense hedgerow cover and I couldn't produce a bird for him - presumably because the bird had run on hearing me approach -- and I was able to send him on to relocate. And while he didn't subsequently find one of those two birds, as importantly he didn't let his fiery personality get the better of him and try to tackle a bird on the ground. This is also progress and a sign that his young brain is beginning to mature and settle.

Hopefully the weather won't close out our training season too soon. Things seem to be coming together for both of them!

more training

2009-11-26T09:39:00.003-05:00

Since getting back from Nationals, we've been in something of a hiatus. The weather has been bad on my days-off and I don't hunt in public hunting areas on the weekends -- at least none near here. And so, I've been a little slow in getting back on the training wagon with the two monsters.

I've been working on a couple of things: on Momo's tendency to creep a little when you walk in to flush a bird, and Jozsi crashing birds by getting too close, either because he's uncertain about a bird's location or because he wants to see it fly. And of course, he's two years old. Which is to say that I've been trying to figure out if its uncertainty or cockiness on his part. Here's Momo showing an unprecedented piece of self-discipline as the brace of quail ran from in front to directly behind him.

And so we've done some launcher work with both boys -- and been lucky to find a quail breeder fairly close by whose last two batches of birds have been energetic and spooky -- and as importantly fairly close to a friend's property that we can train on. The best part about our friend's property is that it used to be sown for arable crops and so while there are some really nice hedgerows and lines of cover, it is largely flat and open. So I can see Mr. Enthusiasm even when he's 300 yards away. No matter how carefully I handle them, Jozsi, though, is also smart enough that you can only do so much launcher work in a day before he'll just blink the launchers, knowing that they will rarely result in much fun for him.

I decided to put out quail in pairs without launchers this time -- and he made four awesome finds, standing off his birds a respectable distance with a nice high style. For every solid point, he gets lots of love and praise. I'm hoping this will just gently reinforce that a solid point, a flush, and a gunshot will come to equate 'good times' for him. On his second run after one good find, he then ripped out one bird in a hedgerow and then failed to stop-to-flush; after no praise, I sent him off in a different direction and watched him rip out a second bird 300yds away with no stop-to-flush. I called him to me and then made him stand in the middle of the field while I walked the 400yards back to the truck before calling him to me. In my frustration, it was the mildest thing I could think of that would be the least-fun for him. Wanting to end on a postive note, I put out another pair of birds for him. I think he inadvertently spooked the first bird, but stopped to flush, and I then worked the second bird for him without incident.

This is him waiting to be broken away for another cast. You can never fault his energy or application -- and heaven knows, he's kicked enough mud up in my face that I break him away from in front. But here are a few reflections:

I realize that no matter how gifted he was as a young dog, Jozsi has still not had the volume of birds that Momo did by this point in his career. He needs birds to teach him his lessons.
He is a great example of a dog almost spoiled by his Derby career. While he had at least one genuinely great broke-dog run as a Derby, he also got to pop a few birds here and there and that had to confuse him as to what the end-goals are.
He therefore needs clear positive and negative signals -- and while I will use the e-collar to signal to him that he should have stopped-to-flush on a bumped bird, it will not be used as a punishment for a flushed bird. (I'm using the word 'signal' to mean that the e-collar sends a cue that is an extension of the snap of the buckle on the no-pinch collar.)

I think I will go back another step with him next time -- checkcord and no-pinch collar overlaid with e-collar -- go through one solid rep and then go to just the e-collar. And in addition to praise, I will also pick him up immediately and put him in the truck when he commits and infraction (as he should expect in a trial). My thinking is that he needs a reminder that being 300 yards away does not mean he is now too far from accountability, and that an infraction will result in his fun being ended. And that good performance equals praise and more fun.

And while he is most definitely a work-in-progress, and as much as he can frustrate me, there is nothing like watching your dog sprint a field, break through a cover line and disappear, and then as you clear the same cover line, see him standing a bird in the next coverstrip. He breaks my heart, for better and for worse.

400yds on the left...

2009-11-08T17:27:00.013-05:00

I got back last night from the VCA National Field Trial at Cloverdale Farm in Danville, VA. The farm was also the site for this year's AKC Gun Dog Championship -- and a number of dogs that had competed there were back to try for the National Field and/or National Amateur Field Championship titles. The first picture shows the breakaway from up at the clubhouse at Cloverdale -- and for five of the six days we were there, this was a typical morning. Light early morning frost would give way to sunshine and afternoon temperatures in the low 60s with winds ranging from light to strong; the first day of the NFC, though, started late in the hope that the steady rain would diminish. It didn't until lunchtime. Thank heavens I had decided to pack my riding coat.

From what I gather, though, a number of handlers were surprised at the difference in conditions from spring to late fall. There seemed to be a lot of high cover that made keeping track of hard-running dogs difficult and an energetic scout a requirement. Interestingly, even when conditions seemed ideal, no dogs seemed to be racking up high numbers of finds -- which made several of us wonder if all the broken cornstalks, dust, or pollen were really masking the bird-scent. The exception, I gather, was Ruger's seven finds during the second series of the NAFC, a run which earned him the title. This awesome picture is courtesy of Kim at Forestking who actually got to see his second run in the NAFC; she has just added a post of her own, too.

Being at a National event, especially without having to worry about my two crazy red-boys, was a great opportunity to put names to faces -- both human and canine -- and to see what national level competition looks like both in terms of the quality of performance and the techniques and tactics of professional and amateurs alike. But all of this took place against the backdrop of Cloverdale Farm and the generosity of the Leggett Family. They have dedicated the farm to hosting national level competition and were able to provide corrals, electrical hook-ups, and a beautiful clubhouse to support the competitors. I had heard this story (in the first paragraph) from the 2006 AKC Gun Dog Championships, but was amazed to see Mr. Leggett on the grounds every day checking in with folks, riding braces, and taking photographs. He lived up to his reputation of generosity and kindness by loaning Mike + Kim his truck while they took theirs to a garage in Danville to have some work done. A classy gentleman and host, indeed.

There was a social hour on Saturday night hosted by Lisa's best friend, Joyce, in Lisa's memory and I had taken a couple of pictures of Jozsi with me to show her the dog Lisa and I had enjoyed several happy conversations about. The bonus was being able to show them to Jozsi's father's owner, Betty Rozanek. She was so pleased to hear that one of Smokey's sons was bringing us so much pleasure.

If there can be any doubt as to where the fun of field trialing comes from, I hope this video conveys it. The clip is from the second series of the NFC -- the first qualifying series of both the NFC and NAFC was 30mins, the second series for those dogs called back after laying down a championship caliber performance was 45 mins with the first bird shot on course for a retrieve -- and featured Wayne & Trish James's Tzeitel and Jim Gingrich's Jack. I forget exactly why, but the gallery had gone on with Jim and was crossing the back loop of the course. It was still relatively early in the morning and the frost was melting and steaming off the grass -- and all of a sudden Jim gets a glimpse of his dog. And so the normal flat walk pace of the trial picked up as we all tried to get in on the action.

If riding a smooth-gaited horse in the crisp early morning to watch a bionic dog or two doesn't sound like fun, then trialing is not for you.

It was interesting to see how some dogs did or didn't make the transition to actual cover, meaning that it seemed like some of the hardest running dogs were so committed to running edges that they ran themselves out of contention; others got so caught up in hunting every edge that they either appeared to potter or were lost in one of the many cover-strips. Howard Shultz's Stormy was one example of a dog right on the edge of too-much speed -- it paid off for Howard in the NFC, earning him a 3rd place, but Stormy was out of touch for too long in the NAFC and was picked up for time. If I remember correctly, the same might have happened for Lotto, last year's and this year's repeat NFC.

Besides getting lots of horse time (and yes, that's me in my all-blaze all-the-time jacket -- the picture is courtesy of Grace Ann), the first real highlight of the week was watching Rogue run in the Derby. She ran like a dog possessed, covering ground like she knew exactly what she was supposed to. Carrie and Mike Syczylo have done a great job with her in the last six weeks -- and loved her enough to arrange with Mike & Kim to repeat the breeding that produced her. Uncharacteristically, during her run, she had two unproductive points to go with her two productive points that effectively put her out of the ribbons -- but as we discovered the next day, this might have been because she was about to go into season!

I did also get pressed into service to serve as a scout for Marcia and her nice dog, Topper, in the NAFC -- although sadly his run ended prematurely after bumping a bird. However, the real highlight was serving as my friend, Joan's 'horse tender.' Joan has been blessed with several good dogs, and one arguably great dog, Octane; between skiing and horse-riding, Joan has also survived a number of good accidents. She has a medical exemption from the AKC that allows her to have a 'horse tender' in addition to her scout -- and clearly the gallery for Ocky's run had never seen a tender in action before. And so, while she was working a pointed bird, her scout would gather up the horses, then grab the dog, and the tender would whip out a mounting stool and give Joan a boost to get back in the saddle. I earned the nickname 'Chair-man' for that.

But being out with Joan, all so very pleased that Octane had made it round the course clean and with birdwork, really reminded me that no matter how big the ribbon, all of this silliness has to be about having fun with your dog. Thank you, Joan!

a blind judge and a kind judge

2009-10-26T22:05:00.006-04:00

I took the boys up to the PANE Hunt Test at Flaherty this past Sunday, and was able to run Momo in the Master Hunter stake before I started judging the Junior Hunter stake. As the title suggests, it wasn't pretty and I was genuinely a little surprised, but Momo successfully earned his second MH leg. I don't know if he just performed the skills that the other dog didn't much better (like the honor and the retrieve) and so the judges either overlooked or were feeling kind towards Mr. Creepy-feet-- but as soon as the test was over we started on launcher work with both boys. Two down, three to go.

Essentially, with both boys, I want them to a) stand off their birds further and b) have the birds teach them that once they have established point, any movement will trigger a flush. And a moving dog and a flushing bird means no shot, no retrieve, and no praise from Pop. And launcher work can also teach the dogs that movement after the flush is unacceptable. As the folks over at Steady with Style have pointed out, there can be several contexts a dog should understand that require him to stand still even in the absence, perhaps especially in the absence, of a verbal command. A bird that gets up in clear sight ahead of a dog, whether on point or not, is one of them.

My previous challenges with launchers were that I hadn't figured out a) the better ways to use them, b) the better ways to store them, and c) the better ways to lay them out in the training field. And so, in the past, the dogs would get too close because they couldn't easily scent what was in there and so any forward movement on their part would bring them too close to the launchers which might in turn be dangerous or frightening for them. However, if you have a good breeze, wide open cover, multiple birds, and a clear training plan... surprisingly, things can work quite well! My solutions were to a) keep all my launchers, bird bags, and some random wings in one big decoy bag together and to only handle them with my bird handling gloves on, b) to either stash a birdbag with some birds in a little further upwind from the trap, or c) set up multiple birds in one launcher, d) or set up duplicate launchers in one location, or e) use a combination of regular launchers and one of Brad Higgins's Remote Releasers.

Even with all this planning, you still need good flying birds. On the downside, Brad's remote releaser will not eject a bird into the stratosphere, but they are both wicked quiet and a great, safe way to ensure that your actual launcher has additional birds around it to create a nice pong for the dog. And, as we discovered, if the bird is pressured, it will get up and away like no slept or dizzied bird. Launchers, to my mind, still have a use -- but I am glad I invested in one of these, too. So, long and short, I think we're already starting to see the wheels turn in both of their brains as they recalibrate their behavior based on the bird... and not on me hooting and hollering.

*******

Momo is officially a woodcock dog. Last Thursday we hunted in both New York at Stewart and at Flaherty. We had hoped for pheasants in both places but only saw one rooster that Momo and I tracked and chased and flushed twice in waist-high weeds. I'm not sure if the lack of birds in NY is a side-effect from our governor's ill-informed, initial decision to close the Reynolds Gamebird Farm -- but I was a little surprised to only encounter a single bird. As for Flaherty, we were able to meet up with our friend, Rick from Marricks Vizslas, and his older dog, Baci. I've been fortunate to judge another of Rick's nice dogs, Latte, a couple of times. Sadly, there were several guys with howitzers out in the likely spots when we got there so we chose to train and chase whatever quail might still be left out in the woods.

In any case, while I actually foot flushed this bird accidentally, and somehow managed to hit it, Momo found it and retrieved it for me. I have been fascinated by this evolutionarily lost bird, a shore bird that somehow found itself marooned and now lives in transit from woody marsh to woody marsh. And as Hank, our favorite epicure at Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, also discovered with its relative, the snipe, these things are small and beautiful with their peculiar shaped heads and long, graceful beaks. Unlike Hank, I don't have the patience or skill to prepare them with quite the same diligence. My criterion for hunting is that I will eat what I kill. But if a) it takes longer to prepare it than hunt it, and b) there's not enough of it to eat without some kind of elaborate recipe that defies the space-time continuum, I may not shoot at a woodcock again.

Now the grouse we took in Maine, however... I may try a variation on something I had at a nice Mexican restaurant the other night, although instead of huitlacoche I may stuff the breasts with shiitake mushrooms, then bread and fry them.

endurance exemplified

2009-10-17T20:35:00.011-04:00

Our dogs' fitness is rarely in question... because my wife, Meg, runs them twice a day for a minimum of 8miles each day. As much as it benefits them, Meg needs to run. On the other hand, I haven't had that compulsion in a long, long time. But Meg enjoys it and, to her credit, has completed a handful of marathons. So, feeling the need for a specific goal and having read such tomes as Dean Karnazes' Ultramarathon Man, she decided she'd like to try an 'ultra' -- and doing a trail run had to be easier on the joints than a regular road race, right?

Here's a short clip of the start beside lovely Shepherd Lake. Everyone happy, cheering, excited, and clearly in blatant denial. I don't know if this fellow finished, but he seemed to think it was going to be fun, too. (Sadly, as of Sunday evening, we have discovered that this fellow didn't.)

So she entered the inaugural Mountain Madness 50k. Bearing in mind that race promoters like to amp things up to sell their event, and New Jersey doesn't really have mountains, how hard could it be? 'Sick-o-saurus Rex' is the answer to that question. Here's Meg running down a typical trail on the way to Aid Station #4 at mile 17 or so. We were chatting with another runner who was accompanying his wife on her first 50km who said that he, after now having finished 6, was convinced this was the hardest one he'd ever done.

And so, approximately 9hrs 20mins after she started, my crazed wife crossed the finish line back at Shepherd Lake. And yes, as you can tell from the flash photograph, darkness was absolutely closing in. When I wrote this first, we believed she was the last person to finish. But now (Sunday evening), we have discovered that she was 66th of 70 folks who completed the course; 30 starters did not finish. Congratulations and thanks to Tim + Branwen Ellis and friends for sticking around the extra 20mins or so to cheer Meg's arrival.

In conclusion, Meg rocks.

********

On Tuesday, I opted to go up to the Northeastern Open Shooting Dog Championship up at Flaherty. Deb had decided to enter Yogurt in the competition because, as an hour-long championship stake, it would be a great training run for her in preparation for Nationals. Being an American Field-sanctioned event, Yogurt was the only non-Setter or Pointer in the race. This is to say that American Field events place an even higher premium on speed, stamina, and range and, with certain exceptions, don't require the dog to demonstrate a retrieve. And frankly, Pointers and Setters will generally on average display those characteristics to an even greater degree than the average 'other' pointing breed. So I was keen to see how a great vizsla would do against a field of long-tailed white dogs.

And the answer is... pretty darn good. Unlike the AKC, there is often prize money given out both to overall champions and to the best dogs on each day. Yogurt finished 3rd on Tuesday, just missing the money, and according to the judges 11th overall for the championship. Yogurt was probably helped by having Sherry Ray Ebert as one of the judges, simply because Sherry has handled and judged other continental breeds and understands that a vizsla's style is no less intent than the ramrod tail of a Pointer or Setter.

I have to admit, though, that while I thought Yogurt had run well, I hadn't seen any of the white dogs put up a performance that was light years beyond hers. Until the final brace of the day. I feel genuinely blessed to not only have seen Mike Tracy and Luke Eisenhart handle those dogs, but to have seen the race that Lawless Lady and Erin's Backstreet Affair laid down. And contrary to the stereotype that perhaps AKC-folks perpetuate these were dogs that ranged hard and far and still had a handle on them. And just stood their birds like it was perhaps the only other thing they knew how to do. Which it might be, but holy mackerel! watching those dogs go through that routine 10 times each during the hour and still finish with gas in the tank was wicked impressive. The final picture is of Lady with her owner, Jane Donze, and handler, Mike Tracy and scout, Alex Smith. This picture, though, is from her win at the Spruce Brook Bird Dog Trial this spring.

chasing pah'tridges

2009-10-07T16:48:00.007-04:00

First of all, congratulations to Jane at The Literary Horse for being the 20,000th visitor to The Regal Vizsla. Jane's blog constantly reminds me not to take all this horse business too seriously.

It's been a busy couple of weeks or so at work and, after waffling like Brett Favre for several weeks, decided I needed to get out of Dodge and go chase grouse sooner rather than later. And so while I apologize for not convening the Momo + Jozsi's Second Annual Invitational Grousehunt, my general psychic state couldn't deal with hanging around in New York City any longer.

Over the weekend, I did head up to Flaherty to run Momo in his next MH attempt at the Connecticut Valley Vizsla Club's Fall hunt test on the Saturday, judge JH on the Sunday, and in between hopefully scout for Yogurt at the PANE Field Trial which was being held on a different part of the grounds. The weather was horrible and Momo fell foul of a wet, running chukar and moved too much to mark it as it literally ran circles around him. The judges asked to see a second honor out of the other dog and so Momo found another bird and then made a 40yd+ blind retrieve. Didn't get him back in the game, but it was a nice bonus. Judging JH the next day was enjoyable, although scenting conditions were tough for the dogs and a number of dogs weren't able to find a qualifying bird until the final minute or so. I will probably write a subsequent post on JH handling because it was very interesting to see how folks dealt with their dogs seemingly not performing at their usual level.

We then jetted up to Oquossoc to visit with old friends from when we used to live up in downeast Maine. The two previous times I have hunted grouse up here, I've come in the first week of November -- and it was amazing to see all the fall colors ringing the hills and lake. We had heard various tales of the demise of the ruffed grouse in western Maine -- but happily found plenty of evidence to the contrary. My friend Dudley and I hunted separate spots in the same general location and the final box score for two days came out at 34 flushes (including one woodcock) with three grouse taken. And for the first time, too, we saw not one but three large ungulates like this young fellow out for a morning wander on the main road.

I had really wanted to bring the boys up here to let the wild birds teach them a lesson or two. The last two years I learned quickly that the November birds were skittish and took the bells off the boys to allow them to at least get feasibly close to their birds. My update on this hypothesis is that Maine grouse are skittish, period. Of those 34 flushes, perhaps a quarter were genuinely pointed by either dog; a fair number of flushes were merely heard as they blew off into the far-away in response to a dog cracking a branch or moving brush too quickly.

The challenge of course now became how to keep track of a moving dog in heavy undergrowth, especially if the dog has decided to point. I try to be really quiet in the woods -- and use a very gentle mouth whistle to alert the dog where I am. At one point, Momo had cut in to some evergreens and I could no longer see him, so I whistled him on... once, twice, and then a third time. He then barked and a grouse flushed with the noise. I felt terrible. We both learned our lesson the next day -- I whistled quietly, heard nothing, and decided to step gently toward where I'd last seen him. I stepped over a downed tree into what looked like moss, but cracked a good sized twig in the process. I was a good 10yds away from the pair of grouse that flushed in front of poor Momo, banking up and away through the mixed maple and pine trees.

The video clip below is what happens when you try to video a crazed two-year old trial dog minutes after he's had his first grouse shot for him. I had wanted to bring him up to Maine so that he would hopefully get a wild bird education and learn that he was the not the master predator he imagined he was. While I can't say that he ever fully established a point, he learned very quickly what he was looking for and got very adept at his stop-to-flush. And a dog standing still does get his first bird shot out of a tree if need be. Not glamorous. Not particularly sporting. But a huge stimulus for a young dog.

I would speculate that tales of the minimal number of grouse are being perpetuated by 'heater hunters,' the old-timers who like driving up forest roads and shooting birds from the window of their jeep. Nevertheless, as you can see, there's not a whole lot that's easy about hunting grouse in Maine -- and early season means more leaf cover for birds to fly behind. And while Tuesday was a beautiful day, Monday was a classic Maine fall day... if you don't like the weather, wait 15mins. As you can see, Momo and I had to hide under a tall fir for 15mins of hard, hard rain but soon after, he got on point just over the shoulder of a slope. I saw him point, but as soon as I walked in to him, a bird flushed and flew up and across me. And miraculously, I made a competent crossing shot. Incidentally, upon dissection, all three birds we took were primarily eating maple seeds -- both regular and the larger striped maple -- unlike the clover and ferns that they seem to prefer come November.

Momo's second bird can only be described as beautiful. I kept the fan -- and now that we are home, I can tell you that the feathers are a solid inch longer than those on from the grouse we took two years ago. And whether male or female, this bird also had a full complement of black collar feathers. Sadly for this bird, it flushed ahead of Momo's point as I hollered to Jozsi, flew into a tree, but then lifted off again as I was walking in and Jozsi was barrelling back. And Momo got to make another perfect retrieve. Here's a picture of two happy vizslas on a cool Maine afternoon... you can see that, in my optimism, I had put a Tracker collar on Jozsi so I could locate him in the unlikelihood that he could stand a point out of sight.

The birds had the final laugh, though. As we got within 50yds of the truck, walking down an overgrown timber path, Momo scooted right and peered over a berm to get scent. A bird flushed up over him and flew down the path directly in front of me. I fired both barrels and probably missed underneath both times. However good you feel about yourself, a grouse slaps you for even approaching hubris.

Here's to good friends, good dogs, and beautiful, wild birds.

scrapbook

2009-09-22T19:44:00.006-04:00

Here's assorted random notes from the last ten days or so.

First of all, we got a little bit of culture by checking out Rodrigo y Gabriela perform at Terminal 5. Being dog-people (which means early risers and therefore not that cool when it comes to late nights on the town), we only caught the first hour... which was still amazing. The picture was taken on my cell-phone hence the low-res glory of it. What you can't see is that they had various video cameras set up on the stage and one handheld down in front which they would project onto the back curtains.

In addition to just being cool, you could actually see just how crazy Gabriela's hands were working. It might actually be fair to say that she plays rhythm to Rodrigo's lead guitar, but that completely understates what 'rhythm' means in this instance. In addition to all her fretwork, she was tapping, beating, and whomping her guitar. Pretty fabulous. I'll guess they were saving 'Stairway' for the encore, but we did get to hear their cover of 'Orion'... and I will stick my neck out and say that Gabriela is a better drummer than Lars Ulrich, too. They have their own website with details of their new album 11:11 and their US tour. If you can, check them out.

*******

Our friend, Michelle, at Broad Run Vizslas found this pic in the archives. We've now confirmed that the dog is FC Upwind Sitka ('Prinnie') -- and here, too, are Bob Seelye and Lisa DeForest. I was lucky to inherit a pair of tracking collars from Lisa's estate -- and every time we strap them on, we see her name on the ID tag, and we miss and remember her.

*******

Dave was kind enough to send me notice of the original petition, but he was equally nice to send me notice that the petition requesting a formal apology from the British Government for the prosecution (and untimely death) of Alan Turing, one of the fathers of computer science and a brilliant codebreaker, had in fact been successful. His work in breaking the German Enigma code during WW2 arguably shortened that struggle immeasurably.

The petition was put together by computer programmer, John Graham-Cumming. As he states in this recent piece, this was a simple case of human rights.

The formal apology can be read here on the 10 Downing Street website. Surprisingly, perhaps, the apology came while the petition was still open.

*******

We were lucky to meet Nancy Whitehead this past weekend and pick up a copy of her book. She is a hoot and the book is fabulous.

We were also lucky enough to get out on some training birds at TMT this morning. While hardly Nancy Whitehead-quality, I think this is a nice picture of The Mominator with a nice high head point on a chukar. As you can tell, the cover is high -- the air was also thick and barely moving, so this was an atypical point for the morning. These weren't conditions to really let the birds teach Jozsi a few lessons, so I turned Mr. 200mph lose in some of other fields in the slim chance that he'd find a pheasant or two left over. Sadly not, but you can never fault his energy or application.

I'm living for the first frosts of October.

glory + great new resource

2009-09-15T07:38:00.008-04:00

Here are a few pictures from this weekend's hunt test weekend out at Crane WMA near East Falmouth, MA. As mentioned before, we had split the weekend with the Mayflower GSP Club -- and I was the chairman for our test, so could only run Momo on Saturday, but serving as the ferry for the SH/MH judges on Sunday I got to see all the birdfield work as a bonus.

The pictures are in chronological order. And first of all, we get to celebrate the first successful step in Momo's next journey. He drew the first brace on Saturday morning -- and somehow miraculously the rain broke just long enough to run all the dogs. Saturday saw 1" of rain fall, although all told between 10pm on Friday and 8am on Sunday, it was pretty close to 2" of rain total. The short version of Momo's run was that he did everything he needed to. I would love him to stand as completely still as Jozsi, and will keep working on it with him -- but he ended up honoring three times (there was a backcourse find, then a missed bird in the birdfield, and then a final set-up), and did a beautiful retrieve. He now has his first leg of his Master Hunter title.

In a lot of ways, I have come to realize that MH is a rather zen experience. You obviously try to train your dog to the standard, but the standard is pretty tight and there are any number of variables that can cause a hiccup. Very few judges are looking to fail a dog, but the fact is that most of the guidelines are pretty spelled out. You can't control how birds fly, how prepared your bracemate is, and what the weather will be -- and the standard requires a minimum of hacking from the handler. And so, knowing that the dog needs me to be calm too, I just try to go with it. After trying to rush into Senior Hunter, I realize that rushing invariably does more harm than good and creates stress in an arena where your dog should be having fun. I am convinced the same is true when it comes to the transition from Derby to adult stakes for young field trial dogs.

The second picture is of our friends' GSP, Timber, returning with her bird to finish her retrieve -- and after honoring her bracemate, successfully completing the final leg of her MH title. Frank and Sam have done a nice job getting Timber all trained up. The third picture is of Mike running Kyler for her second succesful leg of MH, too... such a pretty point in this picture. Her run illustrated one interesting element of the SH/MH retrieve, though. Keep in mind that while they cannot handle the dog in any way, the gunners work for you, the handler; one of the judging criteria for the retrieve is that the dog has to retrieve the bird in a condition fit for the table. As the Guidelines spell out: "Mouthing is a serious fault in a hunting dog. A mangled bird is not fit for the table. Any dog which renders a bird unfit for consumption cannot receive a Qualifying score." (my italics) And so, what happens if a bird is blown apart in mid-air and already rendered unfit for the table? The following is not set down in the Rulebook, but in my experience is a fairly consistently adhered to practice amongst judges in the northeast, at least.

The onus lies with the gunners and you, the handler, to determine whether that bird is fit to be retrieved -- either because it was completely missed or because it was blown to bits. While every retrieved bird will be examined by a judge for damage due to a hard-mouthed dog, a gunner has the responsibility to alert the judges that a bird may be too heavily damaged -- and the handler an ability to express concern to the judge about the condition of the bird before he/she sends his dog. Because you may not have judges who are as concerned for the dog as Kyler did. Her first bird was cleanly hit and Kyler was sent for her retrieve. Uncharacteristically, she spat out her bird twice before coming back to Mike without it. He collared up his dog, convinced she had blown the retrieve -- only to have the judges ask for the bird, examine it, and deem it 'too dead'. She then got to go out again and make the point in the picture and make a perfect retrieve. The moral of the story is a) don't give up on your dog, and b) keep in mind how you can advocate for your dog through your awareness of the guidelines and rules.

*******

With getting the best out of your good dog in mind, I am very pleased to see that, with the help of some friends, pro trainer Maurice Lindley has put up his own website, Steady with Style, that includes a downloadable training manual. Like Bill Gibbons and Dave Walker, whose websites are already on my blog-roll, Mo learned his trade from the legendary Bill West. If there was a single 'approach' to birddog training that I wish I'd known about before I started messing around with my two, it would be the West method. Our next puppy will get schooled that way. As I have said before, at this point, Dave Walker's Bird Dog Training Manual remains the book I go to -- although I was excited to see that Martha Greenlee is publishing a book of Mo's methods that is due out in December 2009.

a few random thoughts

2009-09-11T11:45:00.005-04:00

In the midst today's tragic anniversary, I have to find a silver lining. And while it might be news to her, the attacks on the World Trade Center made me realise that just maybe I was falling in love with my wife. Like many people, I know where I was that day and I remember who told me to turn on the television. I was in Portland, OR; my wife-to-be was in Manhattan.

My darling brother has started a blog of his own, too. And his wish for peace, that today of all days, if we could somehow not kill anyone especially in a cosmic war, is one I wish for too.

A week ago, I became a published poet -- of sorts. And managed to sum up almost nine years of my life in seventeen syllables. Dissertationhaiku is an awesome site -- a really great idea, and a nice way to remember a lot of sweat and tears.

*******

We are about to head up to the Cape for a weekend of hunt testing. Our club, the Vizsla Club of Central New England, has split its weekend with the Mayflower GSP Club, and being the chairman for this fall's test, I can only run The Mominator tomorrow morning.

But here's a little canine foothealth for you. We don't have to deal with things like speargrass or thorns up here in the Bronx, just the usual broken glass, random bits of metal, and the like. (Having said that though, the worst unexpected offender we've encountered in the city is broken acorn cups. Those are wicked sharp.)

I do generally start treating the boys' feet with Tuf-Foot. It has iodine and pine-tar in it, so it cleans and kills nasty stuff and forms a nice protective coat. Bill Allen over at Strideaway wrote a piece about pad-care that seems to endorse both of these ingredients.

However, after Jozsi sustained a couple of either sprains or jars on his front feet, a friend suggested getting him a rigid boot that might provide him with some extra protection while we get him into race shape. And as goofy as they look, we went with these boots from Lewis.

They take a little time to get on and off, but if you do it right, your dogs' feet will get great protection. We've used them three or four times now and once he has them on, Jozsi is off to the races. You would never know that he currently has a 1" cut on one of the main pads on his right front foot. As much as I don't like to make too much fun of the boy, watching him get used to them was pretty amusing. He has a nice gait as is, but adding those boots to his front feet was like watching a Tenessee Walker during the Big Lick. Just that little extra weight has him picking up his front feet like a show pony... till he breaks into a run of course.

rocketships

2009-09-08T15:03:00.005-04:00

We were up in Oxford, NY, this weekend for the first field-trial of the season hosted by the Hudson Valley Brittany Club. The Lost Pond grounds are a working preserve owned and maintained, I gather (but I may be wrong), by the folks who operate Grouse Ridge Setters. And they have a really nice set-up, with well over 1000 acres groomed and maintained for bird cover.

I wanted to go up there to give Jozsi a dust-off and see where he was at, to run Mike + Kim's Rogue for them, and to get plenty of saddle time in. While I don't know anyone at the HVBC, I knew some of our usual cast of characters would be there running dogs or helping out, too. This first pic is of Dennis + Jen's rig as the sun set on Friday night; you can still make out the groomed feed strips and one of the many ponds on the grounds.

The first run of the weekend went to Jozsi. There were only two adult horseback stakes -- and with Brittanies required to win at a Brittany-club-hosted event to claim their Field Champion title, I decided to enter him in Open All-Age rather than Open Gun Dog to be sure he kept finding his range from a horse. All-age dogs are essentially expected to run and range with greater independence than regular gun-dogs. I didn't really know what to expect comparatively, ie. how his performance would measure against a potentially experienced all-age dog, and I was really pleasantly surprised. The short version of the stake would be that he ran and hunted objectives really nicely, maybe came in a little too often for a true all-age performance, had one unproductive and one clean find.

I think the judges may have thought I cautioned him into a point for the unproductive before he was actually sure of the bird. I, on the other hand, know what wagging tail and a low head means and so will swear that he had located a bird, that it was running through low undergrowth, and that he was fractions of a second away from going to get it. And I sure as hell wasn't going to relocate him. From what I gather, in the still air and bright sunlight of the late morning, a number of dogs weren't able to produce any finds. He needs work to get him styled up, but it was his first clean adult stake and I am proud.

Then came Rogue's run in Open Derby. This was to be her first run as a Derby dog, even though she is still 13mos old and eligible for Puppy. And while she is compact like her mother, she is built for speed. This little dog has drive like crazy and I enlisted Deb Goodie to serve as my scout and hopefully keep me and Nutball out of too much trouble. This second picture is of her at the breakaway -- and I think you get a good idea of what this dog was here to do. She ripped it up. Her instincts are really good and it was so great to see her power some edges. She did get a point in about 3/4 of the way round, and then, mercifully after she had popped that one, came around and realised there were more in the same spot and so re-pointed. And then went to the races. It took about five minutes to get her back but we managed to get her heading in the right direction. Then as the judge called time she bombed into the woods and was eventually driven out by Deb after standing quite beautifully, apparently, on a woodcock. All of that earned her a 4th in her first Open Derby!

The third picture is just funny and is from before our Open Derby run. Come Sunday morning, I had a feeling it might happen, but when I saw the course for Open Puppy, I realised we might be doomed. While they hadn't planted birds for it, the course featured a tight loop that ran awfully close to a series of heavily wooded, but groomed bird fields. We initially lost her in there for about five minutes before enticing her back, but as we looped back around she went back in and we couldn't get her back out in time. She, sadly, ran herself out of contention.

Jozsi's run in Amateur Limited Gun Dog (which was a walking stake) was sadly a mere 4mins of glory. To give him a tiny bit of slack, he had spent most of 6hrs in his crate waiting to run. And his first 3:50 was awesome. He ran a beautiful line that I hadn't seen another dog run that day and, perhaps not surprisingly, found a bird in a spot no-one else had either. It was probably 50:50 whether he bumped the bird because while he was making birdy, he hadn't also set up in any way. In any case, a bird popped, he stopped, but started up again. And that, sadly, is all you need to end an otherwise promising run.

The final picture is of Bob and his dog, Belle. Not my regular friend, Bob, and his dog, Belle, but another. In any case, I think it's just a nice picture. This is in many ways what trialing is about. Friends messing about with dogs and horses, having a good time (especially when the weather is good) and trying not to take anything (and especially yourselves) too seriously.

what happens when...

2009-08-29T12:28:00.009-04:00

... you put a hard-running, just-smart-enough, intact, 2yr-old male vizsla on birds for the first time in almost a month? You'd better be paying attention.

We had a productive day of training up at Deb Goodie's on Thursday. Our trial season will start next weekend and I felt a strong need to give both boys a tune-up. And to his credit, Jozsi actually only behaved like a total jack-ass once. And happily, even on the occasion, the quail were sturdy enough to get out of his way. He's a strong dog who knows that if he can get the jump, he stands a pretty good chance of grabbing a bird. Some dogs like to make birds fly. However, any time Jozsi bumps a bird, I genuinely believe it is his prey drive not his chase drive that is kicking in.

This pictorial interlude is brought to you by Lyza.

Training with someone else who knows something about dogs is a blessing -- whether they're a pro or not. As much as I have been taking the boys up to Deb's recently, I woud still advocate for amateurs doing as much of their own training as possible. This is where we might have the advantage on the pro -- having a domestic relationship with our dogs and therefore potentially having a little more time to dedicate to yardworking our dogs. Deb also has horses and birds. But she was also able to spot something with Jozsi which I had noticed but couldn't figure out the context.

He can find birds. When you're working a bird in front of him, he is solid as a rock. But often, unless the bird is in the open in front of him, he flags his tail. In a lot of dogs this can be uncertainty about where a bird is (and for Jozsi I had often thought it was because a bird was wandering in front of him and he hadn't gotten it pinned). What Deb hypothesized was that his wagging tail was actually an indicator of his desire to pounce in... he knew where the bird was and was priming to go get it. Assuming this is the case, the question now becomes how to train for it.

My prescription is to do several things:
a) do some more bench work with Jozsi but with me behind him, ie. with me out of his range of vision, but correcting him nonetheless whether with by picking him up and re-setting him or with a pole (to style up his head and tail);
b) when working birds in his range of site, to stop moving if he flags, but to give him plenty of praise and move directly in for the flush when he firms up;
c) continue 'warning' him with very low stimulation on the e-collar if he tries to move anything when I am working in front of him.

The irony is that he may have been more solid, maybe even more 'broke' (although his footwork, tail- and head-set are all much better now) when he was 13-17mos old than he is now. But then again, he ran great as a puppy, but he is a beast now. What I also needed to hear from Deb is that he is doing what 2yr-old boy vizslas do... testing limits, sometimes quite subtly. In that regard, he is perhaps just merely being sophomoric.

*******

In other news, we received official notification that Momo may now be referred to in official communications as Widdershins Momchil SH VC. While he is a deceptively tough dog, his is not this VC, but rather his Versatility Certificate. Jozsi also received his certificates to say he had finished up both the Obedience and Conformation requirements for his.

But looking at the serial numbers on their certificates, I was surprised they were so low. Since the Versatility Certificate program began in 1982, less than 300 dogs have earned that title -- Momo's certificate number is #281. (Incidentally, Lisa DeForest earned two (if not three) of the first six VCs issued in 1982.)

What was more interesting were the serial numbers on each of the boys' respective Conformation, Obedience, and Field certificates. Jozsi was the 600th dog to have earned the Conformation certificate, Momo was the 368th dog to earn the Obedience certificate, and the 418th dog to earn the Field certificate. I guess I was surprised at how many people have started the VC program but either don't or can't finish it. While the highest number in Conformation might reflect folks with show-oriented dogs trying to embellish their dogs' versatility, the answer could be as simple as Conformation requires the dog to do little more than meet the breed standard (and not bite the judge). I was pleasantly surprised that more certificates have been issued for completing the Field portion than the Obedience portion.

greetings from the Orkney Tourist Board

2009-08-15T21:36:00.009-04:00

We just got back yesterday from a week in bonny Scotland, visiting my parents and surprising my father for his 70th birthday. My folks have lived in Orkney for almost 10 years now -- and from the first moment I visited them, I fell in love with the place. I feel especially blessed that I got engaged and had my marriage blessed in Orkney.

My parents live in the northeast part of Mainland, the largest member of the Orkney archipelago, in the parish of Birsay. Like much of Orkney it is enjoyed a long and vivid history and is home to a broad array of wildlife, from seals to puffins. After a quick Google, I discovered that Toadsnatcher had visited Shetland and Orkney recently and being a little more scientifically minded had actually kept a nice tally of all the plants and critters they'd seen. The Brough of Birsay is linked to the mainland by a tidal causeway and has some tall cliffs on its west side that provide some excellent aeries for guillemots, razorbills, and skuas. The puffins, sadly, had left in the previous two weeks to head out to life at sea again but I did manage to get some nice pictures of fulmars soaring off the cliffs.

The Brough is also home to Ruth Rosie's Teas & Tabnabs Snack Van -- which is awesome.

Homemade soups, cakes, and even if they are flavor-enhanced with salty sea air, magic bacon butties! We met a guy who happily drives 35mins from Kirkwall to enjoy a nice, fresh baconbuttie with a lovely ocean view. Just round the point from the Brough parking lot is Skipi Geo (in Orkney and Shetland, a 'geo' is a narrow inlet or gully) marked by this whale rib and vertebra.

Like many island communities -- Sicily, Cyprus, or the Sea Islands along the South Carolina and Georgia coastline, for that matter -- they have been home to a deep, rich vein of human history as populations came, went, settled, and passed through. One of the monuments to Orkney's rich human history is St. Magnus Cathedral, begun in 1137 and designed and built by the architects of Durham Cathedral. I feel additionally blessed to have heard my parents sing and my oldest cousin play the violin in this wonderful, red,

sandstone auditorium. (One of the unusual traits of the cathedral is that, while consecrated for worship and an annual maintenance fee paid by the Church of Scotland, it is owned and maintained by the burgh of Kirkwall. And as such has enjoyed and still enjoys a variety of secular purposes.) But on this visit home, I wanted to get the special, behind-the-scenes tour of the cathedral, up into the galleries, the bell-tower, and ultimately onto the balcony outside, high above the town. Sadly, I can't find the contact phone numbers or schedule for the tours which are generally offered twice a day, BUT the virtual necessity is to book in advance. Each tour can only take five people, all of whom need to be comfortable in narrow, stone spiral staircases and at ease with heights. While this picture is clearly from ground level looking east toward the altar and choir, being able to see the building from on high adds an even greater sense of the lofty aspirations of Norman and Gothic ecclesiastic architecture.

Our unexpected highlight of the trip came on our final evening as we came back down from the Brough. Call me a freak, heaven

knows my wife did, but I can spot a red-dog from 400yds! And gravity just got me there faster on the downhill. I'm sure there are exceptions, but vizsla people are just plain nicer. And smarter. And better-looking. Like their dogs. Aster (named after the very pretty sea aster flower) was visiting Orkney with her human companions, Judy and Alistair. They were so nice we invited them to my parents' house for tea.

Red Girls? Where were you?

small celebrations in order

2009-08-02T19:35:00.006-04:00

My apologies to the loyal readers at The Regal Vizsla. As will be apparent shortly, we have been concentrating on both training for an event -- and due to unexpected medical emergencies elsewhere ultimately chairing the same event! But here's a nice picture to start of our two, after their run the morning after everything had wrapped up. I had deliberately tried to stage it to look like a nice picture I took last year.

Our original club, the Vizsla Club of Central New England (who is in the midst of rebuilding our website and so no links for now), has its Annual Meeting and Versatility Testing in the first week of August up at Sharpe's Farm in Hopkinton, NH. The Vizsla Club of America offers vizsla owners the opportunity for their dogs to earn a certificate that attests to the dog's intelligence, good looks, and ability in the field. Dogs need to acquire three passes each under three different judges in each of Conformation, Obedience, and Field. It is possible for a dog to 'test out' of any or all of these areas if it has already earned a title in one of these fields.

For example, while Momo earned his first leg of the Field portion this time last year, since then he has also earned his Senior Hunter title whose requirements exceed those of the Versatility. And so we have applied his SH title towards his Versatility Certificate (VC). We had hoped to finish up his Conformation and Obedience legs at the CVVC Versatility Test in June, but as noted here, he had some lapses of concentration in the Obedience portion. Actually just two. Big ones. Jozsi, too, had the opportunity to finish out the Conformation and Obedience portions of his VC this weekend.

And all that stuff involving making them sit behind an active batting cage, sitting in the rain, in the bright sunshine, on wet and dry grass, with the wind in their noses or on their backs, while dogs with no manners abandoned their owners and ran up to them, paid off! Both boys did well in what has to be the longest three minutes of anyone's life... as you try to not freak out while your dog contemplates why it is sitting in a line with four other dogs on a warm sunny day. And so, happily, Momo has completed the requirements for his VC!!! And all Jozsi needs to do is all the stuff he thinks is fun anyways. Wendy + Chris's Seeker also collected her final Field leg to finish her VC, as well! Happy happy joy joy! While this picture is also from the morning-after run, it's just a nice picture of our two in action.

As a club we had also decided to run something called 'Hunt Test 101' to expose our members to the requirements of the AKC Hunt Test program, complete with experienced judges and live-firing where appropriate. I had rounded up some seasoned judges who both knew the rules, and also knew how to encourage newcomers -- and despite the heat, we got 14 dogs through all of that, too! Busy busy! But it was great to see a bunch of old friends -- like Manny + Steph, Wendy + Chris, Val + Jeff, Ivan + Marlena -- and also some new ones.

dogs + horses + dogs +...

2009-07-17T19:30:00.005-04:00

We spent another two days upstate at Deb Goodie's place, running dogs in front of horses and identifying places to work on in our training once we're back home. We did get to see Marisa and her great dog, AFC Cliffside's Run'In On Hi Test, aka Tess. Tess has drive like crazy and lovely manners. Here's a great picture of her at full-tilt fresh off her breakaway. Whooooooooweeee!

As with our last visit, the real highlight was watching Momo have two energetic runs in front of the horse. I have no aspirations to make a trial dog of him -- but he has now come to equate horse = birds = fun and as a result has developed a nice breakaway. He may not be as bold as Mr. Enthusiasm, but he has a great nose, good bird manners, and loves to do well for his dad. Jozsi had an awesome run on Wednesday afternoon with three solid finds, but a great first find on Thursday morning, but got a little squirrely as he squared up for his second bird.

The interesting point for us to consider with Mr. Enthusiasm is what might be going on in his head in such situations when he gets birdy, initially stops, but then angles around before either stopping himself or whoa'ing on command. (I should point out that I don't normally 'whoa' a dog during birdwork, figuring that the dog has the genetics and the self-discipline to know when to stop itself -- and I don't want to create a dog that is nervous about messing up when it comes to its birdwork.) But in this scenario I had called 'stay' as he started to move for the second time.

To deal with the second part first -- of the dog apparently disobeying an obedience command that he is normally very good with: Deb did point out that vizslas, in her experience especially, are very context specific and so if I gave him a command out-of-context, ie. telling him to stay while he was actually moving, perhaps that was why he had failed to acknowledge it. Nevertheless, how you train for that is determined by what may be going on with the first part.

And so to deal with the first part second -- of a dog seemingly moving after establishing a (first) point: Kim Sampson (of Upland Equations and Strideaway fame) wrote the following on a bulletin board we both participate in: "For me it comes down to reading the dog's intentions. And, there is a huge difference between a dog self-relocating because he loses "contact" with a bird, and a dog relocating/repositioning just because the bird is moving. I want the first scenario, don't want the second. Watch the dog in enough different situations and it's pretty easy to tell the difference. I think it's fair to correct a dog for movement if his intentions are to get closer for the sake of getting closer or in an attempt to catch the bird." The emphasis here is that 'contact' means scent contact.

One of my challenges is that I have seen Jozsi deliberately take out birds, either wet birds he knows can't fly well, or deliberately bump birds in the open. Again, not all by any stretch of the imagination, but enough to see that there is a pattern to his behavior. But having said that, and while delicately disagreeing with Deb about Jozsi's second bird of the morning, this appeared to have been a dog losing contact with the bird (which he couldn't see and was masked by thigh-high grass) and merely relocating to get a better angle across the wind to re-establish contact. But I should think about adding some launcher work into our training repertoire to both discourage Jozsi from working too close, but also to work on his stop-to-flush.

The other nice part about getting up to Deb's twice in two weeks was being able to get some horse time on one of her horses, PC, and really start to feel like I knew how to use the horse to the full advantage (effectively to learn the subtleties of the horse's brakes and accelerator). The other nice part was getting to ride one of Deb's other horses, Dakota -- who is both a Missouri Fox Trotter and a gelding, as opposed to Deb's two other horses (which are both Tennessee Walkers and mares). Being able to find and maintain their smooth foxtrot or running-walk was just fun all by itself.

This picture is just for fun, of the boys waiting to get out of their Taj Mahal. Being an insulated box under a truck cap, it really does stay at least 20degrees cooler in there. We had temperatures up around 80degress and the (black) truck was parked in open sunlight -- but each time I took a dog out they were cool to the touch.

So we're going to keep working on our basic obedience in preparation for our upcoming VCCNE Versatility Test on August 1st up at Sharpe's Farm -- but also reminding Jozsi of his 'stop' command (which I use a whistle for and overlay with the tone on the e-collar) and styling him up by reminding him to keep his head high once he has established point.