A big dog with a soft mouth

Rags returns with a gift this weekend at hunt test training.



A weekend with a passel of spaniels never unfolds the way you might expect, whatever your expectations are.  The weekend at Luke Weaver's farm, training dogs, was as enjoyable a time as anyone could have had on a blustery, rainy March weekend.  The forsythia and cherry were blooming but it still felt like late January or February and the field was nothing but mud, to the sheer delight of the dogs.

The dogs behaved well, they behaved badly.  The dogs came in on the run, and they broke all over the field.  In the end, all of the handlers believed that they saw something positive and got some new training ideas.  Rags, Tim's English working on his Master level hunting title (and the shown in the illustration), set the standard for all of the dogs.

We learned that the game, the bird, is a gift from the dog.  You do not take a bird from the dog.  You gratefully accept the gift presented to you.  You calmly and lovingly thank the dog for such a gift.

Larsen was voted "Most Improved Dog," but not really due to any improvement so much as the Sunday contrast with his odd and subdued performance on Saturday.  He was totally lacking in drive on Saturday.  It may be as simple as him not responding to pigeon.  He responded with enthusiasm to the quail on Sunday.

Joe the instructor and Venee, an accomplished handler, gave Larsen a nice compliment, describing him as having a "a soft mouth for such a big dog."  Larsen retrieved twice in a row, and alive, the same peeping, delicate, little bobwhite.  Venee said that most dogs would chomp the bobwhite since they sqeak, they are soft, and they are very easy to kill.  Larsen is a big lunk and he handled the bird with TLC, even after toying and playing with it.

Larsen is his own dog and marches to his own beat.  Right now, he's a jigsaw puzzle with big islands of completed picture that don't yet connect.  It might just take a few small pieces to make the whole thing hang together.  Our approach, based on what we learned, is to keep everything elemental.  Pull the exercises apart and work on one thing at a time.  We will work with his islands of understanding and good performance and gradually extend them until he finds the connecting pieces.