No, not yet.

Larsen in his blue barrel


I went to Pocataligo Kennels on Tuesday to do a practice run with Larsen and bring him home. Unhappily, Kim, Devon Ruth (who stopped by with Amanda) and I agreed that he needed a little more seasoning.

Larsen worked very well with Kim. He ran down a 50 yard wounded bird and brought it to hand. He pretty much unraveled with me, to the point where ultimately, that afternoon, Kim tossed him onto the table for a refresher course in force fetching. Poor guy. I know I'm a pushover, but watching that force fetch training was tougher on me than on him, which was half the problem. He looked at me with his spaniel eyes and asked me to not just stand there but do something about all of this, and I was very tempted.

Ultimately, I agreed with Kim to give it another 2 weeks or so and either she will run him in the upcoming HT or I'll spend some time again in Sumter, SC. It's not an open-ended commitment, but even I could see that he was on the wrong side of the hump as far as training goes and that there was a real concern of back-sliding and total loss of all of that work. For my part, I have to be more assured in my presentation to the dog. Getting the right amount of discipline is a work in progress mostly because I still don't have a good sense of the full range of discipline and, honestly, I've never really looked to explore the high octaves.

Larsen's half-brother, Archer, was on the field. He has really matured. Like Larsen, Archer was entirely a hairy mess and wild looking, but in a very good way. He looked very striking in the field on a gusty southern winter day. Both dogs are healthy and hearty-looking and ate like wolves (I stayed and helped feed the dogs and clean the kennels). For the entire session, Archer was staked out on the side of the field to watch the goings on and to continue his progress with the gun, which to my eye looked fine. He turned and followed the fly-aways to the extent that his check cord permitted. Kim ran Archer once and he looked good and birdie. He got several good fetches on tossed birds and, like I said, he didn't seem to respond in any negative way to the accompanying gunshots.