catching up

"Octane started the action with a solid find in the left corner of the second field. He showed off his good style and training. At fourteen minutes he recorded a good back and then another find at forty minutes going into the long corn field. He ran well, finishing the hour much the same as he started."

This was how the AKC reporter described brace 35 of the Gun Dog Championship Non-Retrieving Stake. With a fair

number of dogs not completing their runs, and to have your own dog's conditioning and bird manners openly recognized, it's no wonder that his mother, Joan, has a smile on her face. Sadly, Ocky's performance did not get him into the ribbons for the non-retrieving championship -- but it sure sounds like he did well nonetheless.

Alan Davidson at DogsUnlimited was there running his own dog, Solo, in addition to being one of the events' significant sponsors. His report with a few more pictures is here.

I gather that this venue, Cloverdale Farm in Danville, VA, will be the venue for this coming fall's Vizsla Club of America's National Championships. We may need to take some time off work to go watch some fabulous red-dogs.

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In other news: we just got back from a cousin's wedding in Ireland. I will post some pictures at a later point, suffice to say we had a great time and the wedding was a wonderful excuse to catch up with family.

We did kennel the boys up at Grace Lane Kennels in Ossining, NY. Friends had recommended it to us and while I would have loved it to have had a large, fenced outdoor enclosure like our old kennel in Maine did for the monsters to run free, they had a nice double pen to themselves -- and all the staff seemed very attuned to meeting individual dogs' (and owners') needs.

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My first riding lesson seemed to go well -- well enough, anyways, that my instructor agreed to have me back this coming Sunday. And well enough that my kind wife decided to buy me a riding helmet. I know, not as cool as a beat-up blaze-orange baseball cap, but I feel like I came close enough to death riding bicycles and climbing ice and rocks while wearing helmets that it feels especially stupid not to wear one. It fits nicely -- and mine is black, by the way.

Assuming that I don't blow it this weekend, I'll put up details of where and how I've been getting lessons. And a couple of good books, too.

congratulations + good luck

For those of you who may be wondering, the AKC Pointing Breed Gun Dog Championships are currently taking place in Danville, VA. Here's a picture of the top-placed vizsla from the Retrieving stake -- Clinton + Valerie Sails' DC/AFC Bitteroot Semper Fi Cutter (aka. 'Cutter) -- who ended up taking 4th overall in the retrieving stake. As the reporter described their brace: "This was a fun brace to watch. Both dogs were fast on the ground and displayed a natural ability to run to the front. Cutter had two finds and a nonproductive late in the brace. Maggie also would be credited with two finds and a nonproductive. Both finished their time with plenty of gas in their tanks."

The non-retrieving stakes started this morning. We're rooting for all the vizslas that Bob Seelye is handling -- Greta, Boone, and the maniac known as Grasshopper -- but there's a special good luck prayer going out to Joan Heimbach's DC Fieldfire's High Octane (aka. 'Octane'). He's probably not going to run till the middle of next week. All very exciting.

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In other news: I have my first horse-riding lesson in 25years tomorrow. I'll keep everyone posted.

i am not worthy

It's a sad day when you realize your dog has more potential than you're capable of bringing out (at least for the moment). We headed down to the Conestoga Vizsla Club field trial in VA this weekend, in all honesty to get the kind of experience that Jozsi and I needed if we want to keep running with the big dogs. Being a horseback trial, I wanted to get more comfortable on a horse -- and to be sure that Jozsi was not at all phased by his dad sitting up high. And we had also picked up Kim + Mike's Rogue to take her down there to run in another Puppy stake (which was on foot).

In that regard, we were successful in all three areas. In a lot of ways, the highlight was my run with Rogue. Happily I had found another spot in the Phelps WMA (where the trial is held) that I could run the two monsters free, using Jozsi as the role-model for following directions and coming back -- and to get Rogue used to my kinds of squalling* and gesticulating. I should also mention at this point that it rained all weekend. I mention this now because when I mentioned to Kim how well Rogue had run, she was surprised that she'd even really wanted to hunt with the weather being what it was. But the monkey was hunting for sure. After a quick dash to meet the other puppy in her brace, she had had enough and wanted to get to business. In what seems like the majority of puppy stakes, clubs will run the little dogs on a course that has already been used for another stake but don't put any additional birds out. Puppies (dogs between 6-15mos) don't have to find birds to place, but if a puppy can show its intensity by demonstrating something resembling a point, it can't hurt. She had three false points on hotspots, ie. where birds had been (which I and the judges knew from having seen the previous stake), with nice style. That a puppy, especially a 7mos old, would not have the experience to distinguish between a hotspot and a live bird is no penalty. In any case, I continued my now-tradition of running out of course and we looped back to try and find an actual bird in one of her last hotspots. Bearing in mind that she is 7mos old, petite, and could easily have found herself braced with another much bigger dog, her 3rd place was well-earned. The judges said some very nice things about her. And I will run that dog anywhere -- watch out world!

*'squalling': thanks to Dale at LoBank for this word to describe the caterwauling that handlers will do to keep their dogs aware of their location.

Did I mention it was raining all weekend? Add a novice rider, a couple of rolling hills, stream crossings, and mud and, to be honest, we did okay in our Open Derby run. But it was also clear that Jozsi has the legs, lungs, and most of the bird manners to do this horseback thing with some success. He had three finds, a stop-to-flush (if we were being charitable) and something that approximated an honor. He handled well, but was hampered by a combination of factors that meant his handler was not up with him where he belonged -- and so he tended to run loops to the side rather than continually drive forward. I'll probably blog on these more, so stay tuned. But he is a madman and can cover ground. So, while I am disappointed for him, all in all we did just fine. Sadly, rain prevented too many pictures -- and however dumb it sounds, to be comfortably riding a strange horse back to the clubhouse in the rain and muck while roading your dog in his harness after his run felt pretty cool.

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Postscript: in my haste, I forgot to mention that one of the highlights of meeting the folks at Conestoga was also meeting Jack Sharkey, owner of the legendary AKC quintuple champion Chartay, as well as Don and Angel Brown of Dobrocat Vizslas.

I should also mention that I met the dignified and eminent Broad Run Blaze, winner of the 2009 Conestoga Vizsla Club Hunting Dog Stake -- and both her parents, Amber and Luke.

a matter of honor

As folks might be able to tell from my Dopplr widget, we have a trip to Sumerduck, VA, next weekend.  After considering various options, I decided to enter Jozsi in the Conestoga Vizsla Club field trial  -- in no small part to get him some more horseback experience while he is still a Derby. That way, if the horse throws him slightly in terms of his bird-work, he still has some room for error.  Nevertheless, to make the travel worthwhile, in addition to Open Derby, I have also entered him in his first adult stake, Amateur Gun Dog.  If he does what he normally does, he should be fine -- if he doesn't, he'll get picked up and there's merit in that, too.

I also chose to enter him in this AGD stake because it is non-retrieving -- and heaven knows, I haven't had time to force-fetch Mr. Enthusiasm!  However, the adult trial stakes do require that if a dog encounters its bracemate on-point that it honor.  (Unlike a Senior or Master-level hunt test, every dog doesn't have to display an honor during its brace.)  And I have only had the opportunity to whoa him into an on-point Momo a couple of times.  So we went up to TMT to see if we could get some practice in.

Because Jozsi is just so much faster, I figured I would send Momo out for a head-start and then release the Beast.  But Momo being the great foot-hunting dog he is, as soon as I turned around to go get Jozsi, he would track back around.  So, I ended up sending them out at the same time and had to hope for Momo maybe getting to one of the birds first.  And besides, he needs honoring practice, too.  On the first pass, Jozsi got to two of the three birds first -- and Momo, bless him, required a little tap on the e-collar for the first bird and then settled himself nicely for the second.  Both boys were hauling for the third bird and, to be honest, I didn't see what happened.  However, Momo was clearly pointing the bird and Jozsi was clearly looking at Momo -- and not the bird (although he was downwind).  The omens were good.

So I decided to put out three more birds to test the hypothesis that, perhaps, Jozsi had a pretty good idea of what was expected of him.  I will summarise the next three birds shortly, by saying that the basic spirit of things was very promising --  Jozsi did perform two honors with very little pressure from me.  However, he was starting to step in on the birds and even considered trying to grab for one.  There could have been any number of factors: competing with his brother, birds on limiters that he knew he could catch if he really tried, unusually warm weather, and rising barometric pressure.  So, after I put out three birds to shoot for Momo and for him to retrieve, I left one unfettered bird out there for Jozsi to find and for me to flush + blank, and fly free.  He got the bird nicely and was steady through the shot, but kept wanting to take steps in despite his obvious desire to go rip out for the chukar 50yds away.  With each step he got to meet Mr. Sparky -- although it took serious effort

on my part to say nothing as he took each step, but instead to ping his collar.  The key being to give the dog a command he is fully aware of and has successfully performed in other situations and then have the dog associate the shock with its movement rather than with your subsequent re-command.  I made him stand and stay where he was supposed to in nice gentle tones, heeled him away, and then let him run and hunt for another 15mins before putting him up for the day.

So, all in all, while I would love perfection from my two lovely boys, we at least found ourselves in the right ballpark.  While I have no pictures of today's experiments, here is a nice picture of Momo at TMT from January, courtesy of Bob.

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In other exciting news, we will be taking Kim + Mike's Forest King Upland Tsunami, aka. Rogue, down to the Conestoga trial where I will run her for them in Open Puppy.  Happily, being a puppy stake, there's very little I need to do or can screw up -- so she should get some great experience.

weekend update #?

We apologize for the time-out in our normal transmission service. But we have a few updates.

This weekend we were down at the Eastern GSP Club Walking Field Trial at the historic English Setter Club grounds in Medford, NJ. Jozsi has his Amateur Derby points, but I wanted to see if he might be able to run against the pros and squeak out an Open win. Kim + Mike were taking their 6mos old puppy, Rogue, to run in the two puppy stakes and had hoped to run Kyler, but she just went into season -- and Jen + Dennis brought Sally to run in the Open and Amateur Limited Gun Dog stakes, and their monster, Tucker, to run in both puppy stakes as well.

The grounds are really nice... and completely fenced in, so while it is still possible to lose your dog at a trial there, the chances of it getting on to a road and into traffic are pretty slim. Mildly reassuring. There's a nice clubhouse there with what turned out to be an essential, efficient woodstove. Saturday's weather was great: cool, breezy, and dry and sunny. Sunday's weather was grey, blustery, with a midday patch of rain that turned to sleet.

Saturday, for us, was a day for watching braces, learning the course, and cheering on friends. I even managed to rent a horse to watch Sally's brace in

Open Gun Dog... and a slightly ornery horse means no free hands to take pictures, sadly. Sally runs great (and I love her), but dogs that have more experience and have been trialed from horseback will sometimes get the jump on her at the break-away. And she was braced with Greta, a firecracker vizsla bred by Michelle Dowd at Broad Run Vizslas, and handled by Bob Seelye... who immediately set out at a blistering pace and most likely found the first bird (although Sally was nicely honoring when everyone got to them). But, as ever, Sally excels on her bird manners... and while it might have been a close race till the bird-field, Sally stood perfectly for a weird flushing bird and then retrieved her subsequent bird directly to hand... and ended up taking 2nd over all. In Amateur Puppy, Tucker ran a good race getting out there, not playing at all as he is wont to do, and ended up with 4th. While the pic is from Sunday, here's Dennis and Tucker. Kim had a nice run with Rogue, as well -- who instinctively knew she wasn't there to play with the other dog either, but to get out there and hunt.

Sunday came around and braces kept getting pushed back -- and we finally got Mr. Enthusiasm out around 12noon just as the rain started. I couldn't have asked for anything more from him, or at least not reasonably. He made the first find and while he broke when the other dog ran through his bird and flushed it, he came back around and found his bird-manners. He ran huge and made four more finds, two of which he held point for at least one minute while I walked up to him, staying steady-to-shot on all four. He ran so hard that we, literally, ran out of course and had to loop back on ourselves to make up the allotted time. He got a big hug and lots of sweet nothings from me. He rocked. But as the picture with the red ribbon says, and even though they had very nice things to say about Mr. Enthusiasm, the judges saw something in another dog and he took second. Even good dogs get beat.

Tucker had another nice run with Dennis on Sunday, taking another 4th, this time in Open Puppy. Kim, too, had a great run with Rogue who is really looking like she could be a barn-burner, especially once she muscles up and gets some more birds under her nose. A little strangely it seemed, Rogue didn't place -- but these were her first trials, too, and is just barely six months old. This pic is of her breaking away for her Open Puppy stake. She looked awesome. Dennis had another great run with Sally on Sunday, which sadly I missed while trying to thaw out -- and took a very close second in Amateur Limited Gun Dog behind Yogurt, the #1 vizsla in the country in 2008, and a dog that has won more trials than all the stakes that me, Dennis, and Kim combined have even entered. The fact that the judges even told him it was close is a tremendous compliment to both Dennis and the lovely Miss Sally Pants.

Kim + Mike + Jaida, and the entire Team Vizsla -- Northern MA chapter, came to stay after the trial so we could go shoot some birds at TMT on Monday morning on their way home. It was cool and chilly, but the chukar were giving off some nice scent. We put Kyler and Momo down together to see if we could get some honoring practice... which we did, as the picture testifies to, but they were vacuuming the fields like pros. After Cedar's accident this fall, he hasn't had a chance to hunt this season -- and while he still has either a pellet or a bone fragment trying to work itself out that is causing him some pain, he was eager to go chase some chukar. And for giggles we put down Rogue so she got get some more bird time, too. She may not have found quail over the weekend, but she certainly found chukar... and actually got the first point of their brace. And once that bird was shot and went down, she was all eager to get it. The future is promising for that little girl.

I wanted Jozsi to get some exercise, but didn't want him to really find birds so we could keep his mind single-tracked on standing still through the gunshot, so I ran him once we'd cleared the fields of all the 'official' birds. He had also sustained a long shallow cut on one of his pads on Friday and so while he shows no signs of any problems when he's running on soft ground, the cut is now opening up a little and so he's being a little tender-footed at home. So, he's getting his foot cleaned regularly and is on prophylatic cephalexin till the end of the week.

birdsalicious

We had a great afternoon today... good company, good dog behavior, and nice weather. We went up to TMT with a friend from work, who is a heck of a shot, and another friend, who is no slouch either.

I realize that Brisztow Jones is feeling a little neglected, but I've apologized several times to her mother for my lack of clarity. Hopefully, we can find a make-up date sometime in the next six weeks. I will say that the ground was wet and slushy, except when you were wading through the heavy, melting snow. So, all on all, Brisztow, you were probably better off staying at home.

In any case, I put Momo down to go find pheasants. I'll be brief and just say that he's really starting to look like a pro. He seems to be getting a little less creepy on point and is most definitely staying put to be sent for a retrieve. He's a little picky about how he picks up a big bird like a pheasant, but made some awesome retrieves on shot, but not killed birds. One of the things with a force-fetched dog is that it shouldn't have an opportunity not to retrieve a bird once it's been sent... which is to say the dog should never get an impression that it's going to have a choice about a retrieve. But in the case of a bird which has been shot, but is not dead, you are potentially asking the dog to make a retrieve on a bird which might still outrun it. I will never worry about a pheasant outrunning Jozsi, but Momo is not Mr. 200mph. Nevertheless, he made great tackles and retrieves on three birds which had been squarely hit, but were still capable of running. Having a dog that will retrieve cripples is a real bonus... and it's great to see him have that confidence.

As this second picture shows, he also made some stylish points -- and got practice at his stop-to-flush. The pheasants were all pretty active today, and the hen in this picture wild-flushed before Ed and Ron could get in position and headed off to fly another day. We need to get some training time in with another dog or two to make sure his honor is up to scratch, but so far he's looking really good for his try-out for Master Hunter in the spring.

We cleared out two fields of pheasants and, after two hours on the snowy ground, I put Momo up and took out Mr. Enthusiasm. He goes like crazy, despite the snow. We had asked Tom to put chukar down for him because they were more likely to stay put while we got folks in place for the flush. And while he has done great at staying put while I fire a blank pistol, I wanted to get him on his pinch-collar and checkcord today because he really wants to break after the shot on a dropped high-flying bird. He got caught out by a wind-change and a little too much speed on his first bird -- but stopped-to-flush like a pro. For a young dog with that kind of self-discipline, I'm not sure that inadvertently busting your first bird isn't a bad thing.

In any case, this picture is of his second bird -- which is actually hidden on the far side of the rock. And yes, the collar and cord was necessary. I wish I'd had the coordination to flip the e-collar at the same time, but after three cycles of getting caught up on the collar and being repositioned back to his original spot, I am confident he is beginning to get it. Certainly by the third time, as much as he wanted to break, he was resisting me less. His fifth and final bird, sadly, was also a stop-to-flush. But again, he is holding nicely even as relatively nervous birds pop off in front of him... so I am pleased.

So, Brisztow, get your people to call my people.

yet more training

If folks are sensing a theme, you'd be correct. All I know is that if you have a nice day and relatively easy access to birds, then it's time to get out and take the vizslak training.

I'll keep it brief. Before going up, I had debated whether or not to put the limiters on the chukar we'd use because it seemed to make Jozsi a little less intense when we came back around to a bird we'd worked before. But I figured that I'd use the limiters just once and that way still be able to use the birds for The Mominator. I also took care to store the limiters in the bird-bag (to try and mask their smell with whatever residual bird scent there might be) and once I had found a spot for each bird to go, placed the limiter in first and lightly covered it with the nice, dry snow we had.

Interestingly, while he bumped the first bird and performed a nice stop-to-flush, Jozsi set up nice points on the next two birds and stood still through the entire flush. I had read on a bulletin board about Bill Gibbons (whose Magma Birddogs is permanently on my blog-roll) stressing the importance of the trainer's hands, even literally the sensation of the trainer's hands, when working your dog -- and I have been making a point of running my bare hands down Jozsi's back when he's standing tall, both before and after the flush, to let him know that I love what he's doing. And whether a result of regular training or not wearing gloves, he's been standing more consistently after the flush and letting me collar him up without fuss before sending him on for the next bird.

What was interesting about his run was that I had set up the three birds along a mile or so loop and as we came back down after the third bird, I realised he had gone to find the first bird all over again. And was standing tall behind a snowdrift with the bird in plain sight. So, I flushed it again. I think he's getting it. The picture is from the third bird -- as you can see he's got a nice, high style.

I gathered up all three birds, untethered them, and put them out in a different field for The Mominator. He got close to the first bird which had decided it didn't like where I had put it and was walking around in some trampled corn stalks. I'm not sure if it was my noise humping through the snow, or the bird seeing just how close Momo was coming, but it got up before he had set himself (and about 15' from where he was) and so he got to practice his stop-to-flush. The next bird was textbook and he's doing well with just one simple 'stay' as I move up in front of him. The third bird almost got away because I am an idiot... and had left the safety catch on and ended up with a 3o+yd crossing shot rather than a 20yd going-away shot. I saw feathers fly of the bird and marked it down. I tried to flush it again, but realised it was too seriously wounded to fly and as it ran I sent Momo to retrieve it -- which he did really nicely. (Some dogs will balk on picking up a still fairly alive bird -- Momo, happily, seems to understand that a retrieve command is exactly that.)

All in all, a good day. And here's a pic from last week of Their Majesties enjoying each other's company on the couch.

Some Random Equipment Notes:

a) these flight limiters from Dogs Unlimited are intended to work well for pigeons. I'd trim them if I was going to use them on quail, but for chukar I found that 2-3oz of extra weight kept them from going too far. (I duct-taped three 20ga shotgun shells to the tube.) You can definitely make something yourself, although if you're like me and were ordering something else from them already, then save yourself a trip to the hardware store.

b) Jozsi has had a couple of short runs in his roading harness from Christies. Feeling a little nervous about having him drag chains (because it seems like they would get kinked and pick up crud), I took a suggestion from Kim Sampson and bought some lengths of welding cable. Right now, Jozsi is dragging 10' of 1/0 AWG cable, which translates into just over 4lbs. To start, I had folded each of the two 5' lengths in half with a clip in the middle, but it seem just short enough to get tangled in his back legs -- so I undid my previous work and simply created a short loop at the top of each length this time to create a longer single strand on each side. Seemed to work okay for him today.

c) Have also just started experimenting with Annamaet's Impact supplement. My apologies to whoever told me about it, but I've been giving it to the boys after either a day of hunting or, in Mr. Enthusiasm's case, after he's been dragging cables. The goal is to give them better probiotics to absorb the all the nutrients in the good food they're given and provide things like Omega-3s and 6s and anti-oxidants.